Face-Off with Iran: Muslim and Non-Muslim Publics Take Sides

By Alvin Richman

In the October issue of Public Opinion Pros, Al Richman took a comprehensive look at American attitudes toward Iran. In this month's POP, he continues his exploration of opinion regarding Iran and related issues with a comparison of views held by Muslim-majority, Muslim-minority, and non-Muslim publics in several regions of the world.

The Pew Research Center’s fifteen-country survey in March-May 2006 reveals sharp contrasts in how different foreign publics view the United States and U.S. foreign policies, Iran and its acquisition of nuclear weapons, and Islamic extremism. The Pew survey offers a rare simultaneous examination of views on these issues from several important groups of foreign publics (including Muslim-majority, Muslim-minority, and non-Muslim publics in several regions), as well as the U.S. public. In this article, we bring together and examine four sets of findings from the survey:  

• The polarization of Muslim attitudes toward Iran and the United States, and the contrasting pro-U.S. tilt among most non-Muslim publics surveyed;

• Distinctions foreign publics make in their images of U.S. foreign policies and the American people, and the recent erosion of the U.S. image in Spain and Turkey;

• Muslim and non-Muslim opinion on Iran’s nuclear program and Islamic extremism; and

• The American public as an outlier among the fifteen publics surveyed by the Pew Center.     

Each of the five Muslim-majority and four Muslim-minority publics surveyed by Pew viewed Iran much more favorably than the United States, averaging about a 60 percent to 30 percent majority favorable toward Iran and about a 70 percent to 25 percent majority unfavorable toward the United States. As Figure 1a and 1b show, the contrast between Muslim views of Iran and the United States were sharpest in Indonesia and among the Muslim minorities in Britain and Spain, where majorities of two-thirds or more were positive toward Iran, and similar majorities were negative toward the United States.

The reverse was true to a lesser extent for most of the nine non-Muslim publics surveyed (excluding the United States) and shown in Figure 2.

Seven of these publics clearly viewed the United States more favorably than Iran, but only in Japan was there a majority positive toward the United States and a majority negative toward Iran. About four-fifths of the French and German publics had negative views of Iran, but three-fifths were negative also toward the United States. Spain and Russia showed hardly any difference in how positively the publics viewed the two countries. For the nine non-Muslim publics as a whole, about a two to one majority had an unfavorable opinion of Iran—a reverse of the two to one favorable views of Iran among the Muslim publics. On average, opinions of the United States were evenly divided among the nine non-Muslim publics.

The Pew Center has regularly asked about several components of the U.S. image and found that foreign publics generally distinguish how favorably they rate each one. As shown in Table 1, for the fourteen foreign countries as a whole in 2006, the image of the American people (average of 50 percent positive) was much more favorable than opinion of U.S. counterterrorism policies (34 percent) or of the Iraq war (19 percent).

Previous Pew surveys have shown that most foreign publics can be assigned to one of four major groups or tiers along a scale defined by their publics’ predominant responses on these three components of opinion of the United States. As the table indicates, in 2006, the countries ranged from predominantly positive on all three of these measures (Tier 1: India and Nigeria) to predominantly negative on all three measures (Tier 4: Spain and the five Muslim-majority countries surveyed—Indonesia, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan. Tier 2 is comprised of two publics who were positive toward Americans and U.S. antiterrorist policies, but negative regarding the Iraq war—Russia and Britain. In Tier 3 are four publics who were positive toward Americans, but negative regarding U.S. antiterrorist actions as well as the Iraq war—France, Germany, Japan, and China).

Muslim and non-Muslim publics differed more sharply in how they viewed the American people (and presumably other aspects of American society) than in how they perceived U.S. foreign policies. For example, the difference between foreign non-Muslim publics’ views of Americans (average of 61 percent positive) and Muslim-majority views (31 percent positive) is thirty points, compared to a difference of nineteen points between the two groups in appraising U.S.-led counterterrorism efforts, and only ten points in evaluating the Iraq war.

Non-Muslim publics varied considerably in their support of U.S. foreign policies, but all except the Spanish public had a predominantly favorable opinion of Americans. In contrast, every Muslim-majority public had a negative view of the American people as well as of U.S. foreign policies. These findings cast some doubt on the oft-stated assumption that Muslim hostility toward the United States is driven simply by differences in views on foreign policy issues.    

The most dramatic changes since 2003 in Pew’s polls have been the marked declines in positive opinions of Americans and U.S. foreign policies recorded in Spain and Turkey. Since 2003, the Spanish public has moved from predominantly positive to predominantly negative in rating both U.S. antiterrorism efforts and the American people. The Turkish public’s views of the United States have eroded on all dimensions, leaving it with the lowest or next to lowest rating on every measure in 2006.

The division between Muslim-majority publics and most non-Muslim publics on opinion of Iran extends to the issue of Iran’s possible acquisition of nuclear weapons (see Figure 3). About three-fifths of the Muslim majority publics in the Pew surveys believed Iran would likely use nuclear weapons for “defense purposes only.” On a separate question, only one-fifth (20 percent average) thought Iran would be likely to “provide nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations. In contrast, a majority in the United States and most of the other foreign publics believed Iran would likely provide these weapons to terrorists.

A majority of every non-Muslim public opposed Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Opposition ranged from a slight majority in China (52 percent) to large majorities of 80 percent or more in Germany, France, Britain, Russia, Japan, and the United States. Muslim-majority publics, however, were divided on the whole. Majorities in Turkey (61 percent) and Indonesia (59 percent) opposed Iran’s acquisition of nuclear arms, but a slim majority in Pakistan (52 percent) approved it. Among Muslim-minority publics, large majorities of French (71 percent) and German Muslims (78 percent) opposed Iran’s acquiring nuclear weapons, while British Muslims were closely divided on this issue. 

The Pew Center obtained small Muslim samples of about 400 in each of four West European countries—Britain, France, Germany, and Spain. These Muslim-minority publics were, on the whole, somewhat less inclined than the Muslim-majority publics to believe terrorist attacks in the abstract are at least sometimes justifiable (see Figure 4).

Previous surveys have indicated that the proportion of the Muslim-minority publics in Western Europe who support real-world terrorist attacks in their region, such as the Madrid train bombings in 2005, is considerably less (around one-tenth) than the number who believe terrorist attacks can be “justified” in the abstract as a way to achieve political goals. 

When asked their opinion on whether various political leaders would “do the right thing” in world affairs, larger proportions of Muslim-majority publics also expressed greater confidence in Osama bin Laden. (The Turkish public is an anomaly among the Muslim-majority publics surveyed, in that only 4 percent of Turks expressed confidence in bin Laden.) No more than 2 percent of any of the four West European general publics expressed confidence in bin Laden.

Pew trend data show declines during the past year of about ten percentage points in Pakistan and thirty points in Jordan in the number who believed terrorist actions can sometimes be justified and also in the number who had confidence in bin Laden. 

The American public was an outlier on a number of issues covered by the Pew survey, including being least trustful of Iran, most sympathetic to Israel, least worried about global warming, and most supportive of U.S. counterterrorism actions and the war in Iraq. While only a slim majority was positive in assessing the Iraq War on Pew’s question, Americans still were considerably more positive about it than any of the fourteen foreign publics surveyed. As Table 1 has shown, much larger majorities of the U.S. public had positive views of U.S. counterterrorism efforts, as well as of Americans themselves. Not surprisingly, Americans rated themselves, their country, and its foreign policies higher than did other countries.

Regarding Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, the U.S. public was among those most adamantly opposed (92 percent). Americans were the most inclined to believe that Iran—if it possessed nuclear weapons—would furnish them to terrorist organizations (80 percent of Americans said this would be likely) and among the least inclined to believe Iran would use such weapons for defensive purposes only.  

Americans were outliers also on two other issues covered by the Pew survey: They were the public most sympathetic to Israel in the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians (48 percent sympathized more with Israel versus 13 percent more with the Palestinians, compared to an average of 16 percent pro-Israel versus 46 percent pro-Palestinian sympathy among the fourteen other publics). Also, Americans were closely divided in their concern about global warming, which placed them at odds with every other public surveyed. About one-fifth of Americans (19 percent) said they worried a great deal about global warming, while a similar number (21 percent) reported they worried not at all about it. No other public surveyed by Pew worried nearly so little about this issue, with the average for other publics being 38 percent worry a great deal versus only 5 percent worry not at all.   

The Pew Center’s decision to include in its fifteen-country survey Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority publics and countries ranging widely from often critical to usually supportive of U.S. policies provides a good opportunity to explore various contrasts in foreign attitudes toward the United States and other countries. One of these contrasts involves how the United States, U.S. policies, and the American people are viewed abroad. Attitudes toward Americans, which have been more positive than other measures, range from two-thirds or more positive in most West European countries, Japan, and India to nearly two-thirds negative in most of the Muslim-majority countries.

The Turkish public’s attitudes toward the United States have eroded considerably during the past two years. Despite its allied relationship with the United States, Turkey ranks last or next to last among the fourteen foreign countries, including the four other Muslim countries, on all measures of opinion toward the United States and U.S. foreign policies, as well as opinion of Americans. Also striking has been the recent increased negativity of Spanish attitudes toward the U.S. The Spanish public’s current views of the United States and its several component measures approximate the negative attitudes toward the United States shown by the Muslim-majority publics. Spain is the only non-Muslim country to fall into the bottom tier of attitudes toward the nited States—predominantly negative toward Americans as well as U.S. foreign policies. 

The erosion of pro-American sentiment in Spain and Turkey makes it more difficult to gain their countries’ cooperation on foreign policy issues. However, it does not mean that these two publics have “tipped” to opposing the United States by, for example, supporting Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons or sympathizing with terrorist movements or tactics.

Attitudes toward Iran offer a very different contrast, one in which the positions of Muslim and non-Muslim countries are generally reversed from the views they have of the United States. A roughly two-to-one majority of the Muslim-majority publics on average has a positive image of Iran, trust that it wants to acquire nuclear arms for defensive purposes, and are closely divided on the whole about Iran acquiring nuclear arms. On the other hand, non-Muslim publics—by a similar two-to-one margin—have a negative view of Iran, suspect it wants to provide nuclear weapons to terrorists, and overwhelmingly oppose Iran getting these weapons.

Recent events in Lebanon illustrate that it is much easier to sustain a U.S. policy that is consistent with our public’s attitudes than one that runs counter to them. Thus, the American public’s relatively high support for U.S. counterterrorism actions, pro-Israel stance, and high distrust of Iran helped sustain U.S. government support for Israel’s lengthy military response to Hezbollah’s attacks.  

Alvin Richman writes and consults on public attitudes toward foreign affairs. He served for thirty-six years analyzing American and foreign public opinion in the Office of Research at the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Information Agency.

The Pew Research Center Fifteen-Country Survey

The Pew Research Center survey was conducted in fifteen countries in March through May of 2006. Sample sizes were about 1,000 for the United States and six foreign countries (Russia, Nigeria, Turkey, Indonesia, Jordan and Egypt), 500 for the general publics in Japan, Britain, France, Germany and Spain, more than 1,000 in Pakistan (1,277), India (2,029) and China (2,180), and about 400 for each of the four Muslim-minority publics in Western Europe.  

Pew notes in its methodological appendix that the 95 percent confidence interval (“margin of error”) for both the general public and Muslim-minority samples in West Europe is four to six percentage points.