Image of Muslims Improves in Europe: Poll
“There has been no backlash against Muslims in French public opinion,” said the author of the research, Richard Wike, France 24 reported on Saturday, June 6.
According to a Pew Research Center survey, positive views of Muslims have steadily increased over the past year.
Remaining unchanged after Charlie Hebdo attacks, favorable views of French Muslims have increased by 4% points higher than 2014, with 76% of French saying they have a positive view of Muslims.
Moreover, very favorable view of Muslims has increased from 14% last year to 25% among French over the past five months.
Based on telephone interviews of adults with a sample size of 1,001 people, the Pew survey found that positive views of Muslims are higher among France's political left than the right.
The author of the research believes that the widespread calls for national unity after Paris attacks, besides official statements that aimed to disassociate Islam from terror attacks, have contributed in improving the image of Muslims in the country.
Main stream French media may have also helped in shaping positive view of Muslims by criticizing stereotyping and bias, according to the author.
France is home to a Muslim minority of seven million, Europe’s largest.
The situation for French Muslims has been deteriorating recently, especially after Paris attacks killed 17 civilians.
Following the attacks, the National Observatory Against Islamophobia said over 100 incidents have been reported to the police since the Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 7-9.
The rise in attacks over the last two weeks represents an increase of 110% over the whole of January 2014, the organization said.
The observatory also noted that more than 222 separate acts of anti-Muslim behavior were recorded in the first month after the January attacks.
Britain too
A similar rise in the pro-Muslim views among Britons was shown by the survey.
Positive views of Muslims have increased from 64% in 2014 to 72% in 2015, according to a survey by Pew Research Center.
Favorable views of Jews have also increased by 3% in the UK.
Across Europe, bigoted and xenophobic views have actually decreased over the past year, the poll found.
On the other hand, Italy and Poland remained the countries with most negative views of Muslims and Jews.
"The 2015 Pew Research Center survey was conducted after the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the simultaneous attack on a Jewish grocery store, perpetrated by radical Islamists in Paris,” Bruce Stokes, Pew’s director of Global Economic Attitudes, told The Independent.
“But, in the wake of these events, there is no evidence that the atrocity sparked new public antipathy toward Muslims in any of the six European Union nations surveyed.”
Seeing the Charlie Hebdo attack as a betrayal of Islamic faith, leaders from Muslim countries and organizations have joined worldwide condemnation of the attack, saying the attackers should not associate their actions with Islam.
Later on, French Muslims called for criminalizing insulting religions amid increasing anger around the Muslim world over Charlie Hebdo’s decision to publish new cartoons of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
Source: On Islam
