Christian Science Monitor: The myth of Muslim support for terror

[deadparrot]

WASHINGTON - Those who think that Muslim countries and pro-terrorist attitudes go hand-in-hand might be shocked by new polling research: Americans are more approving of terrorist attacks against civilians than any major Muslim country except for Nigeria.

The survey, conducted in December 2006 by the University of Maryland's prestigious Program on International Public Attitudes, shows that only 46 percent of Americans think that "bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians" are "never justified," while 24 percent believe these attacks are "often or sometimes justified."

Contrast those numbers with 2006 polling results from the world's most-populous Muslim countries – Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. Terror Free Tomorrow, the organization I lead, found that 74 percent of respondents in Indonesia agreed that terrorist attacks are "never justified"; in Pakistan, that figure was 86 percent; in Bangladesh, 81 percent.

Do these findings mean that Americans are closet terrorist sympathizers?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0223/p09s01-coop.html

[redqueen]

1. Not so surprising. n/t

[PLF]

2. Shock and awe was the biggest terrorist operation in history.

Well, maybe not in history but in the last 10 years anyway.

[Kagemusha]

3. No it means Americans don't consider air attacks to be 'terror'

because they're more noble than that somehow. I guess. Whatever.

[Igel]

4. I want to see the questions.

I take "bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians" to be a close synonym of "terrorism."

However, I also consider people at market and out of uniform to be civilians. Even if they're Israelis or their ethnos is at war with my group. The Tamil Tigers, Hamas, and Hezbollah would disagree with me. So Hamas can celebrate a "martyr" (or "murderer) who kills a Jewish family, and Hezbollah can consider a child killer to be a hero ... and both be against "terrorism".

Merely asking the question isn't enough. You have to know how the question is understood. This article doesn't deal with this issue, therefore the data is uninterpretable. Now, perhaps the pollsters *did* deal with the issue; CSM, in that case, is negligent.

edited to clean up syntax.