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GOTT-May 24, 2007

PEW Surveys: 1. Young American Muslims on Suicide Bombing; 2. Do U.S. Christians Think of Themselves as Americans First or as Christians First?

  1. The PEW Research Center recently released a survey of Muslim Americans.  It has been interesting to watch which news sources and organizations have reported the results as a pleasant surprise, and which have presented them as disturbing.  The PEW people themselves seemed to think a positive presentation was called for, at least so far as the title they decided to give to their report goes: “Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream.”

Those who find the report disturbing have tended to focus on one number: 26.  At least according to how I heard this figure reported on the radio, that’s the percentage of younger (age 18-29) US Muslims who say that “suicide bombings are sometimes justified.”  And the disturbed find that number disturbingly high.

Well, I wondered about that.  I was mostly interested in finding out what the exact wording was of the question.  Was it phrased so that it would be understood as asking whether suicide bombings could ever conceivably be justified, or was it was asking whether any actual suicide bombings that have occurred have been justified?  The results, of course, are more disturbing if the latter was asked or suggested.  If the former question was asked or suggested, then I was interested in how often people generally give “absolutist” answers to any such moral questions.  On such matters, do many people like to “almost never say never”?  (A question I’d love to see asked of Americans generally is whether they think it’s ever permissible to torture prisoners.  If anyone knows of such a survey, please let me know!)

So I went on-line, and here’s what I found.  I’m not trying to tell anyone whether and to what extent they should be disturbed.  Just trying to get you the facts, so you can decide for yourself.

All 102 pages of the PEW Report are up on its web site.  It’s a big pdf document available here.  The fateful number 26 occurs in a chart at the top of p. 54, entitled “More Support for Suicide Bombing Among Younger Muslims.”  As you can see, the answers given by 18-29 year old Muslim Americans are reported as follows:

Never justified: 69%

Rarely: 11%

Often/Sometimes: 15%

(Net) Ever Justified: 26%

Don’t Know/Refused to answer: 5%

“Ever Justified” was not option given to the respondents.  The number reported — the 26 that’s gotten a lot of attention — was determined by adding together those who answered “Rarely” with those who answered “Often” or “sometimes.”  It represents the percentage of responents who answered the question but didn’t say “Never.”  Given this, I’m a little disappointed in how the results were reported to me.  As I said, the radio report I heard said that 26% of younger Muslims responded that suicide bombings are “sometimes justified.”  But “sometimes” and “often” were options that were actually given to respondants, and only 15% took either of them.  Given that, I’d think there has to be a more accurate way of (even quickly) reporting the results.  (For instance, it would have been more accurate to say that 26% responded that suicide bombings were ever justified. But much better yet, of course, to report separately the two numbers for “Sometimes/often” and for “Rarely.”)

But, anyway, those are the answers.  Here’s the exact question that was asked:

Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified? (p. 91)

UPDATE (added on the morning of 5/25): I’ve now found (thanks to a link from this interesting blog post) a survey result that suggests that Americans generally tend not to be very absolutist when it comes to likes of not targetting civilians in attacks.  In the course of comparing Iranian with U.S. attitudes, this survey reports the following:

Larger majorities of Iranians than Americans reject terrorist attacks against civilians, though both publics are quite opposed. Asked whether “bombing and other types of attacks intentionally aimed at civilians” can be justified often, sometimes, rarely or never, 80 percent of Iranians select never. Forty-six percent of Americans say such attacks can never be justified and 27 percent say they rarely can.

Well, now I can’t resist asking this question: With only 46% of Americans answering “never” to that question, I wonder if those who are so disturbed by the results of the PEW survey of Muslim Americans will broaden out their concern to be greatly disturbed at the attitudes of Americans generally?

———————————————–

  1. Quickly looking over the survey, one result really caught my eye, and some readers of this blog might find it interesting.  On p. 31, there’s a chart for “Do You Think of Yourself First as an American or First as a Muslim?”  28% answered “American first,” 47% answered “Muslim first,” with 18% volunteering “Both” and 7% were “Other/Don’t Know.”  See the chart to see these results broken down by age, by level of education, and in some other ways.  But what caught my eye was at the bottom of that chart.  For the purposes of comparison, they included the results from an earlier, 2006 survey, where they asked U.S. Christians whether they thought of themselves first as Americans, or first as Christians.  The exact question is reported in a footnote at p. 87:

In April 2006, the question asked Christians living in the U.S., “Do you think of yourself first as American or first as a Christian?”

The results?  48% said “American first”; 42% answered “Christian first” (with 7% volunteering “Both” and 3% “Other/Don’t Know).

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The PEW Research Center has released its study of Muslim Americans.  People are concerned because one particular item suggests that 1/4 of younger Muslim Americans believe that suicide bombings are sometimes justified.  The real results dont r… [Read More]

Tracked on May 26, 2007 at 07:29 AM

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IT GETS WORSE

Click on the link to see the accompanying graphs. –GH

Glenn Greenwald
Attacks on civilians, torture and lawless detentions
Salon
Friday May 25, 2007

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

Among four key predominantly Muslim countries — Iran, Pakistan, Egypt and Indonesia — the percentage which believes that there is never any justification for violent attacks on civilians is between 77-84%. By extremely stark contrast, the percentage of Americans who believe that such attacks are never justified is only 46%.

To the extent the poll questions differed, it was in the sense that Americans were asked whether they supported something even harsher than those in Pakistan, Egypt and Indonesia were asked about [i.e., “attacks intentionally aimed at civilians” versus “attacks on civilians” (which could imply unintentional civilian deaths)]. Yet the percentage of Americans categorically opposing such attacks was still substantially lower.

[In light of the substantial support for torture among American Christians, it would be instructive to see comparative polling data regarding support for torture among Muslims.] …

Posted by: George Hunsinger | May 25, 2007 at 04:14 PM

I notice that Internet monk has been discussing whether the display of American flags in US churches is idolatry. The results of the survey among Christians seems to indicate that it is indeed idolatry.

Posted by: Steve Hayes | May 30, 2007 at 12:11 AM

I wonder if the disturbingness comes from the fact that the question was directed to Muslims about how accepting they are of suicide bombing for a Muslim cause. Those who think that cause is in itself enough to disqualify doing anything for its sake are going to be more disturbed about it than they would if they were asked a general question about suicide bombing.

Also, this is suicide bombing, not simply bombing. That means it involves what many people see as brainwashing those who are easily led by manipulative people to sacrifice their lives. That might influence the disturbingness factor for some people who are less disturbed at simply dropping a bomb when civilian casualties are expected. Both involve similar factors, but perhaps it goes over the threshold of acceptability when you rope someone into thinking they’re going to heaven for killing themselves and lots of others.

Posted by: Jeremy Pierce | June 02, 2007 at 06:38 PM

I notice that George Bush called suicide bombers “cowardly”. But at least the suicide bombers put their own lives on the line. That must make the Nato pilots who bombed Yugoslavia from a safe height, without risking their lives, dastardly.

Posted by: Steve Hayes | June 07, 2007 at 11:19 AM

Jeremy: Yes, there are many differences to take account of. But most of the most relevant differences count toward making the views of Americans generally (as compared with Muslim Americans, and as compared with people in other countries) more disturbing. The difference you point to — suicide killing of innocent civilians vs. killing innocent civilians w/o killing oneself — is a tricky matter. Suicide killers are in various ways scarier than other killers: they seem harder to stop & more devoted to their murderous goals. But the attitudes being probed had to do with justifiability, rather than with the scariness, of the actions. Perhaps somewhat in line with some of Steve Hayes’s thought (though he muddies the waters considerably by bringing up a comparison with a case with important complications, esp. the fact that the bombers he discusses were involved in an (eventually successful) effort to end a genocide), I’ve noticed in soliciting moral judgments about cases from people that it usually helps to make actions seem *more* easily justifiable if the actor is among those who die as a result of his actions. For instance, in many trolley cases, when you make the person who flips the switch among those who are killed as a result, you usually end up getting more people thinking the action was more justified. As for brainwashing concerns, insofar as people are evaluating the actions of the bomber, the thought that he might have been brainwashed would likely function as a mitigating factor, if anything. But it’s all very tricky. At any rate, with all the differences that count against the general American attitudes, it certainly seems at the very least extremely strange for people to get so worked up about the results of the survey of Muslim-Americans w/o uttering a disturbed word about the attitudes of Americans generally, now that those comparisons have been raised in many corners of the blogosphere. I haven’t heard of any of the mass media personalities who expressed grave concern about the PEW poll reacting to the vital comparisons that have been raised by expressing anything close to similar alarm about Americans generally or moderating the alarm they expressed about Muslim-Americans. But maybe I’ve just missed some cases, and people can fill me in…

Posted by: Keith DeRose | June 07, 2007 at 12:09 PM

I agree these were not good survey questions. The issue with suicide bombings as we know them is not the choice of weapon or its mode of delivery, but the target. Typically, ‘suicide bombing’ raises the image of someone going to a market or bus and taking out as many civilians as possible including children. That is done because their real enemy is a more difficult target and because they believe their enemy is also good-hearted enough to care about their civilian population. Essentially, they take the role of the classic villain. Lex Luther can’t cope with Superman, but knows that Superman cares for other people who are more vulnerable, so he goes after them instead. Kamikazes were suicide bombers, but I wouldn’t call them terrorists. It is just that Japan had more people than bombs and couldn’t afford to miss. They still attacked military targets. Most of us would consider certain types of suicide missions to be honorable. A brave soldier may find that he can save his fellow soldiers by taking some action against enemy combatants that is almost certain to result in his own death. So a better question would be about what kind of targets are permissible when striking out at your enemy.

On the other question, we would expect that many, if not most committed Christians would say their first allegiance is to Christ, not their country. However, Islam in its original form, was meant to me a union of religion and state. Thus, the results of the poll sound a bit more ominous. Perhaps a better question would be “would you prefer that your nation’s government to be islamic?” Many Muslims consider the body of Islamic believers to be a nation. Perhaps they should be asked if they see themselves as members of that grand Islamic nation rather than as American citizens.

All that being said, I suspect we’d still see some rather ominous results using better questions, but the questions asked seemed intentionally misleading.

Posted by: Ed Smith | June 21, 2007 at 06:24 PM

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