Participants in the World Values Survey were asked: "On this list are various groups of people. Could you please sort out any that you would not like to have as neighbors? Muslims."
When I lived in California, my Pakistani neighbor had a bunch of photos in the back of his car he had taken of local government buildings. My wife noticed them and called the police. I never heard if it came to anything. I do know he was arrested at least once for beating his wife. Not a pleasant man. On the other hand, I shared a house with some college students, two of whom were a Muslim couple of Indian ancestry. They were cool, and the wife was hot (but boring).
But I digress. Here are the percentages listed by country who answered that they would not like to have a Muslim neighbor:
Percent not wanting a Muslim neighbor (sample size = 138,846)
Turkey 54.7
Moldova 44.4
South Korea 35.1
Lithuanians 33.5
Romania 32.9
Bulgaria 31.1
Slovenia 30.5
Albania 30.4
Slovakia 29.4
Japan 28.8
Philippines 27.7
Vietnam 27.0
Croatia 26.5
Macedonia 26.2
Belarus 25.8
Finland 24.8
Belgium 24.5
Czech Republic 24.3
Ukraine 24.0
South Africa 23.9
Malta 23.4
Poland 21.8
Estonia 21.4
Greece 20.9
Norway 20.3
Latvia 19.9
World 19.5
Nigeria 19.3
Taiwan 19.1
Hungary 18.3
Mexico 17.9
Germany 17.9
Zimbabwe 17.7
Serbia and Montenegro 16.7
France 16.6
Denmark 15.9
Great Britain 15.5
Northern Ireland 15.4
Austria 15.0
Kyrgyzstan 14.6
Russia 14.5
Uganda 14.2
Luxembourg 14.2
Peru 13.5
Portugal 13.4
Netherlands 13.4
Sweden 13.0
Bosnia and Herzegovina 12.8
Tanzania 12.6
USA 12.4
Spain 12.2
China 12.1
Iceland 11.6
Chile 9.7
Switzerland 8.6
Canada 8.4
Argentina 6.1
There is a lot there. Let me mention only a couple items, and of course others are free to comment. The most striking fact is that Turkey is the most anti-Muslim! So crazy--they're almost all Muslims. It looks like the people most familar with Muslims like them least. (I looked more closely at the data and found that others religions were over-sampled. Of the Muslim respondents, 32.4 percent did not want Muslim neighbors.) Second, some of the anti-Muslim sentiment appears to be good old-fashioned ethnocentrism that is more robust in more traditional countries. For example, Koreans don't hate Muslims; they hate everybody. Asian countries in general are more anti-Muslim (China is an important exception). Third, Latin Americans are toward the bottom of the list, but it goes without saying that nobody out-tolerates the West. Like Michael Jackson, we're lovers, not fighters (now, anyway).
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I'd like to see the data for Israel.
ReplyDeleteNor surprising that the Latin countries would be more accepting of Muslims. Many of them have large populations of Lebanese and Syrian descended merchants in their midst. Do the names Carlos Menem and Carlos Slim ring any bells?
ReplyDeleteThe flip side is that anti-Semitism is quite prevalent in Latin America - something like 2/3 of Mexicans dislike the Jews. Tell me again why importing an anti-Semitic peasant class is a swell idea?
Nor surprising that the Latin countries would be more accepting of Muslims. Many of them have large populations of Lebanese and Syrian descended merchants in their midst. Do the names Carlos Menem and Carlos Slim ring any bells?
ReplyDeleteThough many of the Lebanese and Syrian descended people in Latin America are Christian.
Peter
Maybe the Turkish sample was a bunch of Istanbul secular types? Steve Sailer would start hunting for Donmeh here...
ReplyDeleteHatred of the Ottomans is still very hot throughout Eastern Europe, especially the closer you get to the Balkans.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the low China figure is because of the Hui, who AFAIK are about as similar to Middle Eastern Muslim practice as Reform Jews are to ultra-Orthodox? Plus, some of them are national heroes.
ReplyDeleteAlthough on the other hand things are more different with the Uyghurs...
I wonder if in Turkey the question was interpreted such that "Muslim" was taken to mean extremely and perhaps overbearingly religious. As you point out, almost everybody in Turkey is Muslim anyway, at least by birth, so the only way to not have Muslim neighbors is to not have any neighbors.
ReplyDeleteThe Turkey numbers are extremely fishy.
ReplyDelete