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October 02, 2005

Muslim views of the US: Anger or merely disapproval?

By Jakub Wrzesniewski

A web-only article at the New Republic challenges the widely-perceived notion that the Muslim world is fiercely hostile towards, rather than just displeased with, the United States. It traces that perception back to the hardest data available, the Pew Global Attitudes Survey, observing:

Evidently few reporters took the time to read the fine print in the [March 2004 survey, "A Year After Iraq War: Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher; Muslim Anger Persists."] If they did, they would have found that the poll provided absolutely no evidence to support the charge that "Muslim anger persists." In fact, the word "anger" did not appear in a single poll question. Muslims did give high "unfavorable" ratings to the United States, but there is considerable difference between viewing something unfavorably and being angry at it. (Think of broccoli or Britney Spears.) Pew evidently recognized how problematic this was; in the 2005 version of the Global Attitudes Survey, released in June, references to such sensationalist (and unsubstantiated) terms as "anger" were nowhere to be found. But the damage was already done.

The report further notes that Muslim publics are more accepting of US global leadership than European ones, and that in all Muslim countries but Turkey approval of the US occupation of Iraq had upticked slightly since the previous year. It concludes by noting that there have been few sizeable anti-American protests in 2005, and, tellingly, McDonalds' is reporting sizeable profits throughout the region. But perhaps just as disapproval may not mean anger, so love of the Big Mac may not equal love of Uncle Sam.

Posted October 2, 2005 03:59 PM

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