By Andrea Useem
Religion News Service
With Islam so much in the news today, experts and pundits are frequently called upon to explain the views of Muslims worldwide.
But according to Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, Muslims should be able to speak for themselves.
In the new book, “Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think,” Mogahed and her co-author, Georgetown University professor John Esposito, offer insights into Muslim public opinion, based on tens of thousands of face-to-face interviews conducted by Gallup with Muslims in 35 countries.
Mogahed talked about how Muslims overseas view America, and why most terrorist sympathizers are less religious than one might think. This interview has been edited for length.
Q: Who does speak for Islam?
A: A billion Muslims do. Since 9/11, that population has essentially been silenced by vocal extremists who have monopolized the discourse.
They are silenced oftentimes by their local governments, by media pundits who claim to speak on behalf of Muslims. The last group we seem to hear from are the very people we’re talking so much about.
Q: If you were to put a headline on the book, what would it be?
A: The conflict between the United States and global Muslims is far from inevitable. It’s more about policy than principles, but if we continue to ignore what people are really saying, extremists will continue to gain ground.
Q: So another way to say that would be, “It’s about U.S. foreign policy, not Muslim theology?”
A: Yes, absolutely. For those who sympathize with extremism, it’s not about piety but perception of policy. They are not more religious.
They are, however, much more intense in their critique of U.S. policy.
Q: In the book, you describe 7 percent of the world Muslim population as “politically radicalized.” What do we know about that group?
A: They are people who have expressed both anti-American sentiment and sympathy for the attacks of 9/11. What divided them from the mainstream was not their piety but their politics. They were not more likely to attend religious services; they were not more likely to say religion is an important part of their lives.
What did separate them from the mainstream was their heightened sense of being threatened and controlled by the United States. When asked, “What is your greatest fear?” that 7 percent generally said U.S. occupation and control.
Q: To many Americans, though, the idea that U.S. foreign policy is at the root of the terrorism problem sounds like blaming the victim. How would you respond to that?
A: As a scientist, I am here to tell you what we see in the data — I’m not advocating for one point of view or another.
Those (Muslims) who condemned 9/11 (explained their response) by talking about things like the loss of human life and that innocents were killed. Those who said it was justified, however, did not cite religious justification. They talked about their perception that the U.S. was an imperialist power.
Q: If terrorist sympathizers mostly care about politics, then how do you explain the religious language coming from people like Osama bin Laden?
A: In countries with a majority-Muslim population, religion is an important part of people’s lives. Religion is the dominant social currency of Muslim societies around the world, and therefore any movement that wants to gain legitimacy will speak in terms of religion.
Q: So are terrorists using religious language inauthentically?
A: In a bin Laden speech, if you take out the introduction where he blesses the Prophet, and the end where he says, “As-salaam aleikum,” you’ve got Che (Guevara); you’ve got any revolutionary. If you analyze bin Laden’s rhetoric for Quranic verses, they’re evident mostly in their relative absence.
Q: I can imagine one headline coming out of this study reading, “Seven percent of 1 billion Muslims hate us and want to kill us.” What’s your feeling on that?
A: These 7 percent are not hardened terrorists — they are what we call the cheering section. They’re people who sympathize with terrorist action, which is very different than being willing to carry it out themselves. But they do represent a potential pool of recruits, so we can’t ignore them. But that’s very different than saying 100 million people hate us and are getting ready to kill us.
Q: What are the top issues bothering mainstream Muslims worldwide — that is, the issues that the terrorists have successfully co-opted?
A: There are essentially three filters through which everything the U.S. does or says is viewed by Muslims worldwide. The first is the perception of cultural disrespect. The second is the perception of political and economic domination. The third is that of acute conflicts–Palestine, of course, and now Iraq and Afghanistan.
Q: Is there any hope for penetrating these filters?
A: It will take a lot to break through because it’s fundamentally about trust, or the lack of trust. Just like in any relationship, once trust is lost it takes not one act, but consistent actions to build it back up.
Muslims around the world express admiration for much of what the United States stands for, but ironically it’s that very admiration that in some ways fuels resentment: “You really must hate us to treat us this way, because it is so against your own values.”
Copyright 2008 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
Beliefnet
Advertisement
posted March 20, 2008 at 3:34 pm
To paraphrase a non-canonical Holmes title, this seems to be about the “7 Percent (dis)Solution”. In Holmes case it was about the percent of drug (opium I believe) he used to keep his deductive edge. In the case of world and religous politics it is the 7 percent that keeps us on edge.
They are not alone, however, I am sure that there is at least the same percentage of radicalized Christians, also mostly in the “cheering section” (a.k.a. the peanut gallery or the cheap seats). Whose ever 7 percent it is, it would seem to dissolve any unity of thought and ability, as it did with Holmes.
Perhaps we can locate an isolated island, or better a planet on which all the 7 percents from all these groups can writhe in continuous warring oblivion. Why not the seventh planet – Uranus?
posted March 20, 2008 at 7:30 pm
“The third is that of acute conflicts–Palestine, of course, and now Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Once again the point is made that the Israel-Palestine issue is important to Muslims; very natural. We need a solution and we need to not be seen as nearly as biased as we have been under both parties and all presidents for a long time.
posted March 20, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Guess it is nice to know that ONLY 7% of Muslims hate us!
Our policies certainly haven’t helped the image we have been projecting world wide…for a long time. And, Gee, do you think that “W” took us to a war with a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 might have influenced the Muslim’s just a bit?
posted March 21, 2008 at 3:02 am
It’s great to know that, despite George Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s best efforts to make the US hated abroad so few do. But Bush and Cheney aren’t through and probably have not given up on attacking Iran.
And if you worry about how the world sees us now, cower in fear at how it would see us after we attack Iran for no obvious reason. Oh, and don’t expect to be able to buy gasoline or heating oil either.
posted March 22, 2008 at 12:28 pm
And if you are dismissive of the idea Bush and Cheney would still attack Iran after the US intelligence review stated Iran is not trying to develop a nuclear weapon, consider that Bush is lying about Iran now just like he lied about Iraq six years ago.
And in fact the very common claim (by the US administration and mainstream media is that Iran’s president wants to destroy Israel (with the nuclear weapon they aren’t actually developing). Well all this time we’ve been hearing about Iran “wanting to destroy Israel” it’s been the result of a (deliberate??) mistranslation. Here’s a segment from the Wash. Post story linked to above:
So, and this is very important, Iran has not stated it wants to destroy any Israelis, just that it wants the state of Israel to go away, a very different and far less serious thing.
posted March 22, 2008 at 1:23 pm
…..but was expressing the wish that the Israeli governmnet would disappear just as the shah of Iran’s regime had collapsed in 1979.
How did the shah of Iran’s regime collapse and disappear?
Iran has not said it wants to destroy Israelis, just that it wants Israel the country to cease to exist.
Gee, is that all they want? Isn’t,Israel the country, what the Israelis are? Doesn’t sound too reasonable to me. Suppose someone said that about America; we don’t want the Americans to be destroyed, only their country to cease to exist. What’s the point here nnmns?
posted March 22, 2008 at 1:33 pm
“What’s the point here nnmns?”
Well I consider it a real big difference between wanting to kill a lot of people, like Bush and so forth claim Iran wants, and wanting a neighboring government to be replaced, like Iran claims to want. A difference of millions of lives.
posted March 22, 2008 at 5:47 pm
But replaced by what? or who?
posted March 22, 2008 at 6:40 pm
“But replaced by what? or who?”
Ask them. The thing is, the first could be considered by some, anxious for another war to rally public opinion to the Republicans or to start an armageddon, to be sufficient reason to attack. The second could not be considered sufficient reason to attack by anyone with half a functioning brain cell. Heck, the US probably wants three or four nearby governments to be replaced as we write.
posted March 23, 2008 at 6:36 pm
O.k. nnmns I get what you mean. You don’t mean the country of Israel, but the administration running it. Thanks for explaining.
posted March 24, 2008 at 10:07 am
“But replaced by what? or who?”
Ask them
Ummm…. a Shiite theocracy jumps to mind, for some reason.
posted March 24, 2008 at 10:59 am
z, that’s likely what they’d prefer. But maybe they’d be content with a leadership where their co-religionists just got a fair shake. We should all want that. Anyway, would it provide justification for us to attack country A because its leaders would prefer country B to be governed by a Shiite theocracy?
And before you answer, you might want to consider what doing so would do to our ability to buy oil or other resources in, and transport them from, an area filled with people who could be convinced we are in a crusade against Islam. And I don’t just mean the Middle East. And consider a world that already views us with suspicion as a rogue superpower, which in fact we were when we invaded Iraq. We are not the superpower we were even then thanks to all those years of Republican control.
We cannot get along without the rest of the world and we cannot force it to do our will.
If we were attacked by Iran no doubt we should respond with great force and we could justify it but Iran is not even a threat to our security. And if Iran attacked Israel without justification we could retaliate but it’s in no way our job to attack a country because it looked cross-eyed at Israel. Unfortunately we still have people in control of our government who see the world in very funny ways.
posted March 24, 2008 at 2:33 pm
What a load of crap. If Muslim extremists really only hate American foreign policy, then why are they also killing Muslims who have nothing to do with the Americans but who disagree with their interpretation of Islam? If Muslim extremeists only hate American foreign policy, why do they persecute others within their own countries who are not Muslim and have nothing to do with Americans, viz., Thailand, Indonesia. If Muslim extremists only hate American Foreign Policy, why did the Taliban in Afghanistan destroy the two huge ancient Buddha statues when they came to power, years before we had anything to do with Afghanistan (oh wait, we did HELP THEM by giving them money and arms to make jihad against the Soviets) — were the statues somehow part of the great American Imperialist conspiracy? NO– these people hate anyone and anything that doesn’t agree with their narrow provincial view of the world. Stop making excuses for Muslim hatred
posted March 24, 2008 at 3:22 pm
“Stop making excuses for Muslim hatred.”
I hope you mean “Muslim extremist hatred”. And I make no excuses for extremist hatred of any stripe.
I won’t speculate on why “they” are also killing Muslims except to suggest there could be multiple “theys” you are conflating. The extremists we really have to worry about are the ones that might attack us, and we make their recruiting oh, so much easier because of parts of our foreign policy. That’s a main theme of the article and it makes a lot of sense to me.