Personal knowledge of Muslims is associated with more positive attitudes
Scott Gardner & Jonathan Evans
Research Summary
Across Western Europe, people who say they personally know a Muslim are generally more likely than others to have positive opinions of Muslims and their religion, according to a recent Pew Research Center study. However, simply knowing something about Islam is less associated with positive attitudes.
This pattern is evident across several questions asked of Europeans identifying as Christian to gauge attitudes toward Muslims, including whether they think Islam compatible with their country’s culture and values and whether they would be willing to accept a Muslim as a family member .
Researchers
Scott Gardner & Jonathan Evans
Research Institution
Pew Research Center, Washington DC
What is this about?
The research is about attitudes to Islam and Muslims among self-identifying Christians in 15 different countries in Western Europe. The main questions were:
- Is knowing about Islam associated with positive or negative attitudes to Islam and / or Muslims?
- Is knowing Muslims personally associated with positive or negative attitudes to Islam and / or Muslims?
What was done?
The data were gathered through a large questionnaire survey. Follow-up focus group interviews were also carried out in 5 of the 15 countries.
Main findings and outputs
- Western European self-identifying Christians who know Muslims personally are significantly more likely to hold positive attitudes to Islam or Muslims.
- But knowing something ‘about Islam’ is less associated with these positive attitudes.
- For example, the percentage who completely or mostly disagree with the statement that Muslims want to impose their religious law on everyone else in the country is much higher among those who know Muslims personally than those who do not: 85% compared to 48% in the UK and in Switzerland, 81% compared to 47% in Germany.
- By contrast, the percentages of those simply knowing a great deal or something about Islam who completely or mostly disagree with the same statement are 75% in Switzerland, 69% in the UK and 70% in Germany.
- Regardless of their level of knowledge about Islam, similar percentages in most of the countries disagree with the statement that Muslims “want to impose their religious law on everyone else in the country.” Swiss adults who know a great deal or something about Islam, for example, are only 4 percentage points more likely to disagree than those who know less about Islam.
- The patterns are similar for different questions such as whether they think Islam is compatible with their country’s culture and values and whether they would be willing to accept a Muslim as a member of their family.
Relevance to RE
The research gives interesting information. It also backs previous research about how RE teachers should deal with religious prejudice, or help pupils manage media representations of religion. It is evident in the research that personal knowledge of Muslims challenges popular stereotypes. This re-iterates the need for teachers to draw on pupils’ personal knowledge of faith group members when presenting or discussing religious traditions, though this needs to be done sensitively. See https://researchforre.reonline.org.uk/research_report/talking-about-religion-and-diversity/?show_me=&about=&taxes=
Generalisability and potential limitations
This is a major survey by an internationally respected research centre. Care was taken to achieve representative samples and the respondent group was large (24,559). Attempts were made to balance the population of focus groups (the focus group research was contracted to Ipsos MORI).
Find out more
Scott Gardner and Jonathan Evans, In Western Europe, familiarity with Muslims is linked to positive views of Muslims and Islam, online article available at http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/24/in-western-europe-familiarity-with-muslims-is-linked-to-positive-views-of-muslims-and-islam/
http://www.pewforum.org/2018/05/29/being-christian-in-western-europe/