By Richard Morin Sunday, April 28, 2002; Page B05
Forget what you've heard about how much Muslim societies hate democracy and reject Western political values.
Or at least hold that thought while you consider the finding of a new study, which suggests just the opposite is true. Many of the Muslims surveyed in nine predominantly Islamic countries are huge fans of democracy -- and may even be slightly more gung-ho about democratic values than citizens of Western countries, claim political scientists Pippa Norris of Harvard University and Ron Inglehart of the University of Michigan....
...Norris and Inglehart concluded that issues of gender and sexuality are the real dividing line -- specifically, views of marriage and divorce, women's rights and opinions about homosexuality. The researchers also found that these gaps have widened over time, as the younger generations in the West have become progressively "more liberal on these issues while the attitudes of the younger generation in Islamic societies are not changing at all," Norris said.
The researchers examined data from more than 100,000 interviews conducted between 1995 and 2001 in 72 countries on six continents as part of the World Values Study. This ongoing project, which began in the early 1980s, is directed by Inglehart in collaboration with a network of social scientists in this country and abroad.
The survey included eight questions that measured attitudes toward democracy and democratic ideals. Respondents were asked, for example, whether they approved of having a democratic political system, whether they approved of "having experts, not government, make decisions," and whether they thought it was better to have "a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections." Respondents also were asked questions about various social and cultural issues, including attitudes toward divorce, homosexuality and abortion.
Norris and Inglehart grouped the countries into nine major "contemporary civilizations" based on the predominant religious legacy in each society and taking into account other factors as well. Their groupings included Christian, Islamic, Russian and Greek Orthodox, Latin American (predominantly Catholic), Sinic/Confucian (South China, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam), Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist and Sub-Saharan African....
...Islamic societies actually ranked higher than Westerners on a scale measuring attitudes toward democratic ideals, though the difference was slight. (A caveat: Some Islamic countries, notably Saudi Arabia, did not participate in the study.)
Norris and Inglehart's findings seemed to directly challenge the thesis of Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, who became semi-famous a few years ago when he proposed his "clash of civilizations" to explain the chasm in thought between Islam and Western societies. Huntington argued, among other things, that the singular difference was their deeply divergent attitudes toward democracy.
But the similarities between societies vanished when Norris and Inglehart turned to more intimate personal issues. Citizens of Western countries were on average four times more likely to be tolerant of homosexuality than those living in Muslim countries, and nearly twice as likely to approve of abortion and divorce. (Residents of the other seven "civilizations" were generally far closer to the West on most measures than to Islamic societies, suggesting that it's not only from the West that Muslims are isolated on these issues.)
"Huntington is mistaken in assuming that the core clash between the West and Islamic worlds concerns democracy. The evidence suggests striking similarities in the political values held in these societies," these social scientists concluded.
"The cultural gulf separating Islam from the West involves Eros far more than Demos."...
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A58006-2002Apr27¬Found=true> -- Yoshie
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