Q&A / DALIA MOGAHED, author: Polls look at views of Muslims, West

Many Muslim beliefs are compatible with Western values. Terrorists do not have widespread support from the Muslim world.

Those were some of the surprising findings in a survey of tens of thousands of Muslims in 40 countries. The Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, a division of the U.S. polling firm, also talked to Americans and Europeans.

Dalia Mogahed, the center’s director, helped guide the polling. She co-wrote a book published this year about the research, “Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think,” and she’ll speak in Atlanta today at the Building Bridges Award Dinner, sponsored by the Islamic Speakers Bureau (Atlanta).

The Journal-Constitution spoke with Mogahed about some surprising findings.

Q: What were some of the common denominators you found between Westerners and Muslims?

A: Some of the commonalities that we found were, interestingly, in the way that people viewed what was right about the West. Americans said the thing they most admired about the West as a culture, as a civilization, was technology and liberty and democracy. And these were also things that we found Muslims admired most about the West.

Interestingly, what is wrong with the West is also something we have in common with Muslims. Muslims said it was the breakdown of moral values, moral decay, and those were the responses of Americans as well. Americans said they were concerned about the moral decay of society.

What was strikingly different is how American and Muslim societies viewed the Muslim world. Americans found little to admire, but Muslims feel their greatest asset and their society’s greatest asset is their faith and the values that are derived from religion as well as their family values.

Q: Don’t religious Americans think this also about themselves?

A: Religious Americans are most concerned about the lack of traditional values in the West and would look more like the Muslim opinion of the West. So religious Americans have more in common with Muslims on social morality than they do with fellow Christian Europeans. [Mogahed cited a poll question about the morality of extramarital affairs: A majority of the French said it was OK; less than 5 percent of Americans said it was.]

Q: Did other things surprise you?

A: Another common denominator I thought was interesting and surprising is the degree to which there is a similarity in the view in regard to what Muslims need to do to improve relations with the West. [Muslims’] most frequent response was to help control extremism and fanaticism and help modernize for progress. [The polling showed about 7 percent of Muslims thought the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were completely justified.]

Q: Do the differences make you despair of ever reaching some sort of equilibrium between the two sides?

A: I don’t believe that is the case. I think that much of the problem is of one not knowing the other. We do have tools now, finally, where we can make what people really think available in an accurate and representative way. We can let the mainstream majority speak for itself on both sides rather than have the conversation monopolized by a vocal fringe.

Read more on Gallup’s results: www.gallup.com. Click on More Topics in the top bar, then Muslim World.