Public Opinion in the Islamic World on Terrorism, al Qaeda, and US Policies

To deal with the threat posed by groups that use terrorist methods against Americans, in particular al Qaeda, the US is faced by more than the problem of the groups themselves. These groups operate in a larger society that provides them with some degree of support—enough to allow them to persist. The purpose of this study is to understand more deeply the nature and extent of this support, and also to determine how it is evolving. This points to a range of issues. To operate, groups that use terrorism must be viewed as legitimate by some sector of society. For decades the United States has had an increased military presence in numerous Muslim countries. Attitudes toward US military forces are, of course, embedded in a broader set of perceptions of US goals in relat ion to the Muslim world. These perceptions of US goals are in turn embedded in broader attitudes about the US government and how it operates in the world. Once the complex attitudes about America’s role and the methods that are used by groups like al Qaeda against America are understood, we can turn to the question of how people in Muslim countries feel about al Qaeda and groups that attack Americans. A central goal of al Qaeda is to make Muslim societies more ‘Islamist’, i.e., more aligned with traditional interpretations of Islam and Shari’a law. Finally, there is probably no more central front in the conflict between al Qaeda and the US than the status of governments in the Muslim world that are supported by the US: namely Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan. To answer these and other questions WorldPublicOpinion.org conducted an in-depth survey of public opinion in Egypt, Pakistan, and Indonesia. This is the second wave of surveys and was conducted between July 28 and September 6, 2008: the first was conducted in late 2006 and early 2007. The research was primarily supported by the START Consortium at the University of Maryland. Other scholars of the START Consortium participated in the development of the questionnaire for both waves.