It was long before the Tsarnaev brothers detonated explosives in Boston that condemnation of Islam received derision as “islamophobia,” and the more ridiculous term “racism.” In the weeks following the Boston attack, just as in the weeks following Sept. 11, we heard renewed bellows defending Islam as a “religion of peace,” with the cliché itself standing as evidence. More interesting than insult slinging is polling data on what Muslims in Islamic nations believe, leaving the “religion of peace” designation dependent upon where you live and how you define “peace.” In practice, American Islam and Middle Eastern Islam are separate religions. Polling from Gallup in 2011 shows American Muslims oppose military and terrorist attacks against civilians more so than Christians, Jews or atheists. U.S. Muslims garner attention for terrorism, but in America, it’s hard to describe Muslims as anything but peaceful.
When our gaze shifts to the Middle East, Islam strikes a more sinister pose.
Not that this should surprise anyone. We’ve since learned the Sept. 11, 2012 protest in Benghazi, Libya, that claimed four Americans was not an organic uprising. That doesn’t stop the protests in more than 50 other nations, with 38 targeting American embassies or consulates, from being a tragic overreaction to an amateur YouTube film. Tragic if you believe the appropriate response to an offensive movie is killing 75 and injuring almost 700 across those 50 plus nations.
The 2011 uprisings in Afghanistan, prompted by Florida pastor Terry Jones burning a few Korans, feel age old. These gave us the same restraint we’ve grown to expect from Middle Eastern Muslims — 30 killed and 150 hurt. The related killing of two American soldiers by an Afghani police officer, inspired by anger towards the film, resulted in mosques named in his honor.
It would be simple to dismiss these as a few — if you call more than 50 just a few — acts of extremists if not for polling data in Islamic nations. There’s predictable variance from country to country, yet the support for suicide bombings, death penalty to apostates and honor killings is too high to be dismissed the way liberal America wants it to be.
A Pew Research poll published in 2012 found 40 percent of Pakistani Muslims believe suicide bombings to protect Islam are often or sometimes justified. The same poll found 88 percent of Egyptians, 83 percent of Jordanians, 62 percent in Palestinian territories and 41 percent of Iraqis approve of the death penalty for apostates.
Honor killings, the murder of women over premarital sex or adultery to preserve the family’s “honor,” have 60 percent support in Afghanistan and Iraq, and 41 percent in Pakistan. Stoning adulterers has 81 percent backing by Palestinians, 80 by Egyptians and 57 by Iraqis.
Disgusting as those figures are, the belief that Islam worldwide has negative feelings toward the United States is not unfounded. A World Polling Organization poll found 21 percent of Egyptians support al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. civilians, and a stunning 18 percent didn’t know where they stood on the issue. In Pakistan, 16 percent support those same attacks with an unfathomable 47 percent not knowing how they felt.
What do we call people who support terrorism and murdering apostates? Not peaceful. Nor can we write this off as the work of “extremists.” The practice of the average Egyptian Muslim makes Jefferson Davis look like a 21 century progressive. You’ll notice this data neglects the Muslim-on-Muslim violence we’ve seen in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan or any of the other uncountable conflicts driven so often by Sunni-Shia hatred, whose casualties dwarf the number of civilians killed in terrorist strikes.
This leaves us with essentially two religions. Islam on our side of the Atlantic earns the term “religion of peace” through its works. When referencing the barbarians of our time in the Middle East, words other than “peace” come to mind.
Brian Marceau can be reached at [email protected]