Pew religion survey

[mindstalk]

New survey on attitudes toward religious groups, terror, and prayer.

It's titled "Unfavorable Views of Jews and Muslims on the Increase in Europe" but this is a rather selective titling. The most dramatically hostile country seems to be Spain, but that hostility encompasses Christians as well:

Negative attitudes toward Christians in Europe are less common than negative ratings of Muslims or Jews. And views about Christians have remained largely stable in recent years, although anti-Christian sentiments have been on the rise in Spain - about one-in-four Spanish (24%) now rate Christians negatively, up from 10% in 2005. Similarly, in France 17% now hold an unfavorable view of Christians, compared with 9% in 2004.

In general, negative attitudes toward Jews and Muslims correlate more strongly with the right than the left, which would be a surprise only to those who like to make a big deal out of "Leftist anti-Semitism".

Also of interest are general decreases, sometimes quite dramatic, in support in Muslim countries for terrorism and suicide bombing, and Muslim worries about Muslim extremism. At the same time, support for fundamentalists has increased at the expense of modernizers (Q55c, pg 65 of pdf) -- though in most surveyed Muslim countries, people aren't actually praying more, and support for restrictions on employment of men and women in the same workplace has decreased (pg 64) and there's generally support for women's right to decide to wear a veil (pg 63)

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

In general, negative attitudes toward Jews and Muslims correlate more strongly with the right than the left, which would be a surprise only to those who like to make a big deal out of "Leftist anti-Semitism".

That is a very poor summary of the political data. Note that the actual figures were:

Negative towards Muslims
------------------------
Left 42%
Center 45%
Right 56%

Negative toward Jews
--------------------
Left 28%
Center 26%
Right 34%

which means that while negative attitudes toward Muslims varied from 46 to 56% Left to Right, a spread of 10%; negative attitudes towards Jews variet from 26 to 34% with both extremes more anti-Semitic than the center. The study also doesn't define "negative attitudes," which is important because the sorts of things Jews and Muslims are being accused of are very different.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

A difference of 2% -- 28 vs. 26 -- generally isn't significant in polls, what with their 3% asserted margins of error.