In particular, British Muslims stand apart from their coreligionists elsewhere in Europe. On our RCN measure, they receive the highest score, indicating more negative attitudes. In fact, the RCN score for British Muslims is closer to those for Muslims in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa than to those for France, Germany, or Spain. Muslims in Britain differ from those elsewhere in Europe on other measures as well. They are more inclined to see a conflict between Islam and modernity, more likely to identify primarily with their religion rather than their nationality, and more deeply concerned about the future of Muslims in their country—80 percent said they were very or somewhat concerned. Of course, the British Muslim community has been a major focus of attention from writers, policymakers, and religious leaders since the July 2005 London bombings.  

The French and Spanish Muslim populations, on the other hand, were the least negative Muslim publics in the survey. The findings regarding France may be surprising to some, especially in the United States, where the dominant images of the French Muslim community probably stem from the autumn 2005 rioting by Muslim and other youths in banlieues of Paris and throughout the country. However, in their study of Islam in France, Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse argue that these riots were mainly about economics rather than religion or culture, and they suggest that in many ways the French model of integration and assimilation has been more successful than many presume. Similarly, Stephanie Giry notes that most French sociologists “agree that the integration of Muslims into French society has proceeded fairly well.” After reviewing the Pew data, Jodie Allen concludes that “despite their problems—prime among them joblessness among youth generally, not just Muslim youth—the French need take no integrationist lessons from their European neighbors.”

Among non-Muslim publics included in the study, Indians tended to be the most negative. Of course, at points over the last few years, India has experienced considerable tensions between its Hindu majority and Muslim minority, including clashes in 2002 that left as many as 2,000 dead in the western Indian state of Gujarat. Opinions were also relatively negative in Russia, which has also experienced tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims, punctuated by attacks by Chechen separatists in Moscow and Beslan. A 2006 Council on Foreign Relations report calls xenophobia in Russia a major “social ill” and notes that “violent and organized xenophobia has gone beyond the garden-variety ‘skinhead-ism’ encountered in many European societies.” Nigeria, which is the third most negative non-Muslim public on our index, has also suffered violence as a result of religious and ethnic conflict, resulting in as many as 15,000 deaths since 1999, according to a recent article by Jean Herskovits.

On the whole, the five Western nations associated the fewest negative characteristics with Muslims, although there were important differences among these countries. The Spanish had the most negative views, ironically despite Muslims in Spain having the least negative views of Westerners among the populations surveyed. This finding on the non-Muslim Spanish public is part of a broader pattern in the 2006 survey results; favorability ratings for Muslims, Jews, and Arabs, as well as for Americans, were lower in Spain than in any other Western country. Research has often demonstrated that negative views toward one outgroup can be a part of a broader set of ethnocentric attitudes, and future research on Spain should explore the extent to which negative opinions of various groups are linked.

The United States and Germany occupied something of a middle ground on the RCN. In the former, views in the survey differed by age and party identification, with younger Americans holding somewhat less negative opinions, and independents voicing fewer negative opinions than Democrats or Republicans. Meanwhile, the British and French held the least negative views, despite high-profile tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in both countries over the past few years, including the 2005 bombings and subsequent concerns about “homegrown” terrorist cells in Britain, as well the 2005 riots in France. Interestingly, Britain and France emerged as the two countries with the least negative views, despite having very different approaches to dealing with their Muslim communities. As the Pew Forum’s David Masci has noted, Britain “aims not to change immigrants into Englishmen, but to get them to accept Britain’s core institutions and to learn English,” while France pursues “a vigorous policy of assimilation through its educational and other institutions.” It is also worth noting that Muslims in Britain have more negative views of Westerners than non-Muslims in Britain have of Muslims—a trend opposite to that found in Spain.

Just as negative attitudes held by Muslims about Westerners may be due in part to perceptions of threat, other research we have done suggests that threat perceptions related to security concerns are important drivers of Western views toward Muslims. In particular, concerns about the threat posed by Islamic extremism in Western countries and the perception that large numbers of Muslims in the West support al Qaeda are associated with a greater likelihood of assigning negative traits to Muslims.

The 2006 Pew survey revealed that throughout Muslim societies, Western societies, and elsewhere there are considerable variations in how Muslims and non-Muslims view one another. Future work should focus on developing other measures to examine these attitudes. As Brian Grim and Roger Finke, as well as other authors, have noted, negative public sentiment toward religious outgroups is tied to violence along religious lines, making this a topic of ongoing importance for public opinion researchers.

Richard Wike is senior researcher, Pew Global Attitudes Project, and Brian J. Grim is senior research fellow, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.