Updated: Americans more likely to approve of terrorism than those in the Muslim world.

Posted by Joshua Holland at 10:23 AM on February 27, 2007.

This is interesting:

Those who think that Muslim countries and pro-terrorist attitudes go hand-in-hand might be shocked by new polling research: Americans are more approving of terrorist attacks against civilians than any major Muslim country except for Nigeria.

And that barely makes the cut for a "Muslim country"; Nigerians are 50% Muslim, 40% Christian and 10% Animist.

The survey, conducted in December 2006 by the University of Maryland's prestigious Program on International Public Attitudes, shows that only 46 percent of Americans think that "bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians" are "never justified," while 24 percent believe these attacks are "often or sometimes justified."

Contrast those numbers with 2006 polling results from the world's most-populous Muslim countries - Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. Terror Free Tomorrow ... found that 74 percent of respondents in Indonesia agreed that terrorist attacks are "never justified"; in Pakistan, that figure was 86 percent; in Bangladesh, 81 percent.

Do these findings mean that Americans are closet terrorist sympathizers? Hardly. Yet, far too often, Americans and other Westerners seem willing to draw that conclusion about Muslims. Public opinion surveys in the United States and Europe show that nearly half of Westerners associate Islam with violence and Muslims with terrorists. Given the many radicals who commit violence in the name of Islam around the world, that's an understandable polling result.

But these stereotypes, affirmed by simplistic media coverage and many radicals themselves, are not supported by the facts - and they are detrimental to the war on terror. When the West wrongly attributes radical views to all of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims, it perpetuates a myth that has the very real effect of marginalizing critical allies in the war on terror.

There's some methodological questions here around the definition of terrorism - there always are - but the basic point is important. It speaks to just how deranged much of our political culture has become since 9/11.

As I've pointed out in the past, the popular refrain that "not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims" is as wrong, and purely racist, as saying that while not all African-Americans smoke crack, all crack-heads are African-American.

U.S. government statistics show that, aside from Iraq, the country with the most terror fatalities in 2005 was India. Some were inflicted by Muslims, but more were perpetrated by secessionist groups from the Northern provinces, the Communist Party of India and various Hindu extremists (see update, below). Next up was Colombia, a country with a population that's over 90 percent Roman Catholic. Following in fifth place -- after the mess in Afghanistan -- were the victims of secular Maoist terror groups in Nepal. The University of Chicago's Robert Pape, who has studied terrorists exhaustively, found that the group that led the world in suicide attacks between 1980 and 2004 was the Tamil Tigers, a secular group that draws its adherents from Sri Lanka's predominantly Hindu population.

Terrorism isn't a result of some deep flaw within Islam, it's a tactic that the militarily weak use against more powerful forces.

UPDATE: Reader AM cautions me to be careful when I write about the Communist Party of India:

"Left wing terrorism in India is practised by the Communist party of India (Maoist), which is an illegal terrorist organization. However, there are two other Communist parties: The Communist Party of India, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). It is confusing, I agree, but that is because India itself is confusing. In any case, it is very important to make that distinction because when you just say 'Communist Party of India', it is usually understood to mean the legitimate political parties, one of which is actually part of the current government. The Communist Party of India (Maoist) does not have any connection AT ALL to the Communist Party of India, or the Communist Party of India (Marxist)."

AM also cites statistics from a different source that suggests that in terms of terrorist deaths in India, it's a toss-up which religious/political group killed the most people. Either way, it's not just Muslims.

Tagged as: terrorism, islamophobia

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.