I spent a recent evening at the University of Montana attending a lecture and discussion led by Dalia Mogahed, senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and co-author with John L. Esposito of Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. This book presents the results of the first ever data-based analysis of the points of view of more than 90% of the global Muslim community. It was funded 100% by Gallup as part of its R&D. I haven’t read the book yet, but after the talk it is certainly going on my reading list near the top. In the meantime, perusing Muslim West Facts Project (their website with a lot of the lecture material on it) has been quite fascinating.
I have had many discussions with people who harbor anti-Muslim prejudice over the last few years, and I have long felt inadequate in holding up my argument. I am disturbed that many of the folks I’ve talked to are unable to see past a billion person mass collective of Muslims and view them all in one bad light. I felt it simply wasn’t possible that a billion people- or even a significant majority of a billion people- hate their daughters enough to sell them into marriage or kill them for some fucked up notion of honor or that sort of thing. Yes, I was sure that went on, but is that horrifying portrayal representative of Islam? I doubted it.
I went to an all-female Catholic high school in the 1980s. A girl named Susan was in my class and was one of my acquaintances. We didn’t do things socially outside of school, but we chatted at lunch and in homeroom and that sort of thing. Early in my freshman year I learned that she was not Catholic when she got stuck with extra work in religion class memorizing the Holy Mary and the Our Father and things like that. It wasn’t until later in the year that I learned she was Muslim when I asked why she hadn’t been eating lunch the last few days (fasting during Ramadan).
This girl’s Muslim family was paying thousands of dollars a year to put her through a Catholic school because it was the only college preparatory school available to their daughter at the time. Obviously they valued education for their daughter and were not terribly hostile toward her learning in depth about a conflicting faith. She took four years of Catholic theology classes right along with the rest of us. She wore the same uniform as the rest of us with plenty of arms, legs, face, neck and her hair showing. Like the rest of us, some of her classes included guys from the all-male Catholic school next door. If she or her family harbored some deep hatred of us, our religion, or our culture, it was sufficiently well-hidden as to be completely undetectable to my 13-17 year old self. To this day, I cannot resolve this family with a picture of Islam as a religion of hatred, intolerance and violence.
Admittedly, this was just a data point. But those I talk to likewise tend to fall back on anecdotes that fail to provide a big picture. This kind of discussion is not terribly useful, and I have been meaning to educate myself on the issue in more depth for some time.
This fairly brief yet deeply informative talk by Ms. Mogahed provided an inspiring yet evidence-based introductory picture of the Muslim world. I have never been so deeply moved by simple data. I am more optimistic about the future of the world than I have been in a long time- certainly the most I’ve been since 11 September 2001. I would like to share a few highlights of why I was so encouraged.
1. When asked, “What do you admire most about the West?” Muslims surveyed ranked technology first and liberty/democracy second. Americans surveyed shared these same top two answers but in the reverse order. Further, when asked that if they were drafting a constitution for a new country, would they guarantee freedom of speech, defined as “allowing all citizens to express their opinions on political, social, and economic issues of the day,” a vast majority of Muslims said they would include that.
Why I am encouraged by this: This flies in the face of the hard-peddled notion that “they hate us for our liberty” and instead demonstrates evidence of common ground.
2. When asked whether the 9/11 attacks were justified (scale of 1-5), Muslims who responded that the attacks were completely justified represented just 7% of respondents. 55% said that the attacks were completely unjustified. Moreover, of the group who believed the attacks to be completely justified, not a single respondent, when asked about the reasoning for their response, gave a religious reason. The reasons of all these respondents were secular, for example, political grievances. On the other hand, moral/religious objections were common among respondents who said that the attacks were in any degree unjustified, with many of them citing specific passages in the Koran to support their objections.
Why I am encouraged: The data indicates that sympathy for terrorism does not correlate with religiosity. We are not going to change the religion of a billion people any time soon. On the other hand, political grievances can be addressed and alleviated much more quickly. The thing that is more resistant to change is actually a benefit to the world in this case, conflicting with extremism, whereas the problem is much more susceptible to change.
3. Mainstream media portrayals of Muslims have failed to represent the Muslim world with any reasonable degree of accuracy. In a survey of the U.S. media, 53% of the time Muslims were represented by militants whereas 62% of the time Christians were represented by religious leaders. Yet militants are only a tiny, tiny fraction of the more than 1 billion people in the Islamic faith community. Further, in answer to a question from an audience member regarding why he heard no widespread condemnation of the attacks of 9/11 in the Muslim community, Ms. Mogahed pointed out that the leaders of virtually all major Muslim organizations around the world were quick to condemn the attacks, but clearly that did not get through to the public via the media.
Why I am encouraged: The mainstream media is losing its undeserved role as a gatekeeper of the flow of information. We have more opportunities than ever today to fact check the mainstream media and bypass it altogether in favor of primary sources. Pretty much anyone can disseminate information via the internet, and government is much less able to control and spin it. As an insomniac kid seriously worried about nuclear war, I would secretly stay awake late and eavesdrop from my bedroom while my parents watched Nightline because that was the only time it was on, and it was one of a very few sources of information available to me. That is no longer the case, and that has much improved prospects for the possibility of accurate information coming to light. More and more of us have an opportunity to make ourselves heard and to seek out others speaking on their own behalf. I think the gate has been opened, will continue to open even wider, and will be damned hard to shut at this point.
4. I want to briefly touch on a few points Ms. Mogahed made regarding the topic of the rights and status of women in the Muslim world. The gender gap in higher education varies dramatically in predominanty Muslim countries from one to another. It is virtually non-existant in Iran, for example, yet dramatically large in Pakistan. The overwhelming majority of Muslim women throughout predominantly Muslim countries believe they should be able to work at any job they are qualified for, vote without influence and enjoy the same legal rights as men. A smaller majority of Muslim men also share these beliefs. What is interesting here is that broken down by country, the gender gap again varies widely. Very small to no gender gaps were found in Turkey and Lebanon whereas relatively large gender gaps were found in Morocco.
Why I am encouraged: The wide variation in the size of the gender gaps from country to country illustrates that second class citizenship for women is not a fundamental element of Islam. Rather it is driven by some other force such as politics, culture, economics, etc. or some combination, and that can change quickly. Ms. Mogahed pointed out that some perversion of Islam may be the tool used to oppress women, but as women are gaining in literacy in some of the more oppressed areas and actually reading the Koran for themselves, they are able to use their interpretation of their scripture to fight for their own rights. For example, Ms. Mogahed stated that selling young daughters into involuntary marriages is specifically prohibited in the Koran. And as Ms. Mogahed further pointed out, interracial marriage between blacks and whites was approved by only 4% of Americans in 1958 compared with 80% in 2007. In just a generation this completely turned around. Change for the better can happen relatively quickly.
There was so much, much more I got out of this talk though it lasted only a little more than an hour including questions from the audience. These are only a few of the more memorable highlights for me, and I hope they pique someone else’s interest as they have done mine. I really hope all of us will educate ourselves where we believe we are lacking in knowledge about the Muslim world, and further, will re-examine what we think we know from our limited experiences and really try to get a better handle on the big picture. I believe better understanding of the Muslim world is an important tool for pro-freedom individuals to use to push back against government’s pursuit of anti-liberty ends via exploition of ignorance.
Summer in Montana and the Pacific Northwest? I mean how can you beat that???
Also, there will probably be a bunch of pictures coming down the pipeline at some point.
