From Washington Post
by Rachel Gillum
Religious fundamentalism among Muslim immigrants in Western Europe is dramatically greater than that among Christian Europeans, according to a recent study by Ruud Koopmans from the Wissenschaftszentrum in Berlin discussed on the Monkey Cage last Friday. On the surface, these findings legitimize concerns surrounding the incompatibility of Western and Islamic values.
Like Europeans, Americans express fear over Muslim integration and Islamic fundamentalism, although very little is known about beliefs among Muslims living in the U.S. A recent nationwide survey of U.S. Muslims, which I designed, provides some insight — the Muslim-American National Opinion Survey (MANOS) reveals that levels of religious fundamentalism among Muslims and Christians in the U.S. are nearly identical.
As one of the few nationally representative surveys available of Muslim Americans, MANOS provides insight into the degree Muslim Americans hold fundamentalist views, as defined by Koopmans. Data from existing surveys of the general American population allow me to assess where Muslims stand relative to other Americans in believing that religious rules are more important than the laws of the country and the degree individuals hold literal interpretations of holy scriptures.
Results from MANOS and the General Social Surveys reveal that the general American population holds nearly identical levels of fundamentalist beliefs as Muslims, if not slightly more. Just over 57 percent of the general American population believes that “right and wrong in U.S. law should be based on God’s laws,” compared to 49.3 percent of U.S.-born Muslims and 45.6 of foreign-born Muslims. About a third of each group believes that society should not be the one to determine right and wrong in U.S. law. Such numbers reveal that the general American population is more fundamentalist than the average European, and that Muslim Americans are less fundamentalist than European Muslims, according to theKoopmans study.
