Western European Religion

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Clive D. Field

There is no real consensus of public opinion in matters of religion, according to a new multinational poll from YouGov@Cambridge, published in connection with a symposium on the future of Europe, held at the British Academy on 15 March 2012.  

Fieldwork was conducted online among representative samples of around 1,500 adults in each of seven Western European nations (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark) between 24 February and 6 March 2012. Topline data are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/6xufjlailj/Eurozone%20Crisis%20-%20Cross-Country%20Report_06-Mar-2012_F.pdf

The religion-related questions amounted to something of a pot-pourri, certainly in relation to the more systematic questions about membership of the European Union and the European economic crisis, but are nevertheless not without interest.

Of the seven countries Italy generally emerged as the most ‘religious’ nation and Sweden as the least. Britain’s position fluctuated, with one-quarter or more of its citizens sitting on the fence on religious issues and others holding seemingly inconsistent views.

The three matters on which an absolute majority of Britons agreed were all rather negative: that organized religion is in terminal decline, that Christians and the Church should not be permitted to have more influence over domestic politics, and that Muslims are poorly integrated into mainstream society. Here are the headlines:

  • 24% of Britons agreed that there are some things in life which only religion can explain (France 21%, Germany 24%, Italy 36%, Norway 22%, Sweden 18%, Denmark 18%), but 49% disagreed and 23% were undecided 
  • 30% of Britons believed in a personal God (France 22%, Germany 34%, Italy 55%, Norway 28%, Sweden 19%, Denmark 26%) and a further 10% in a higher spiritual power, with 21% disbelieving, 17% agnostic and 22% uncertain 
  • 39% of Britons felt that it is good for children to be brought up within a religion (France 46%, Germany 44%, Italy 59%, Norway 27%, Sweden 19%, Denmark 31%), more than who said the opposite (23%) or who expressed no opinion (34%) 
  • 55% of Britons agreed that organized religion is in terminal decline in their country (France 38%, Germany 26%, Italy 54%, Norway 33%, Sweden 49%, Denmark 33%), with only 13% disagreeing and 26% uncertain 
  • 35% of Britons contended that the decline of organized religion has made or would make the country a worse place (France 24%, Germany 20%, Italy 32%, Norway 22%, Sweden 17%, Denmark 15%), against 32% who disagreed and 27% who did not know 
  • 25% of Britons thought that some religions are better than others (France 20%, Germany 19%, Italy 21%, Norway 37%, Sweden 29%, Denmark 29%), compared with 39% who disagreed and 31% undecided 
  • 15% of Britons wanted Christians and the Church to have more influence over domestic politics (France 14%, Germany 13%, Italy 16%, Norway 11%, Sweden 9%, Denmark 5%), but 58% disagreed and 23% were neutral 
  • 19% of Britons thought that most Muslims were integrated with national customs and way of life (France 24%, Germany 12%, Italy 19%, Norway 14%, Sweden 18%, Denmark 19%), while 56% disagreed and 19% were unsure

 

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Far Right Britons

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Clive D. Field

The negativity of far right political parties, and particularly the British National Party (BNP), towards Islam and Muslims has been reaffirmed in a new report by academics at Nottingham and Salford Universities which was launched at Chatham House on 8 March 2012. Distributed by Searchlight Educational Trust, it is available online at:

http://www.channel4.com/media/c4-news/images/voting-to-violence%20(7).pdf

The research for Matthew Goodwin and Jocelyn Evans, From Voting to Violence? Far Right Extremism in Britain was funded by the British Academy. It is based on online interviews with 2,152 supporters of far right parties pre-screened from YouGov’s panel of 350,000 adults aged 18 and over. Fieldwork was presumably conducted in 2011.

Supporters exhibited a range of attachments to their parties: members, former members, identifiers, voters, and prospective voters. There were 485 supporters of the BNP (formed in 1982) in the sample, 1,505 of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP, 1993), and 210 of the English Defence League (EDL, 2009). Some support overlapped.

74% of BNP supporters and 46% of UKIP supporters cited immigration or Muslims as the most important issue facing Britain today, and a minority (22% and 8% respectively) even suggested that the position of Muslims already in British society was the most significant challenge faced by the country.

88% of BNP and 85% of UKIP supporters disagreed with the statement that Islam did not pose a serious danger to Western civilization; just 7% and 9% agreed. In the case of the BNP, core supporters (members and identifiers) felt more strongly about this than those on the periphery (voters or potential voters), but the distinction did not hold true for UKIP.

92% of BNP and 84% of UKIP followers said that they would be bothered by the prospect of a mosque being built in their community, considerably more than the 55% recorded by the British Social Attitudes Survey in 2008. Again, BNP’s core supporters were especially concerned.

Perhaps the most worrying finding of all was that 92% of BNP and 75% of UKIP supporters felt that violence between different ethnic, racial or religious groups in Britain is largely inevitable, with the core of both parties most likely to agree with this forecast.

Although far right parties often try to galvanize public hostility towards minorities by emphasizing Christian themes, respondents to this poll were not unduly religious relative to the population as a whole. The proportion professing no religion was 46% for BNP, 42% for EDL, and 39% for UKIP supporters. However, there were fewer non-Christians in the sample than the norm.

The number of EDL interviewees in this survey was small. Therefore, BRIN readers might like to be reminded of our coverage of another investigation of EDL supporters at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2011/inside-the-english-defence-league/

 

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Faith on the Move

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Clive D. Field

Faith on the Move: The Religious Affiliation of International Migrants is an ambitious new study from the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation.

Prepared by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, it was published on 8 March 2012 in the form of a full report, sortable data tables and an interactive map. These can all be accessed from:

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2214/religion-religious-migrants-christians-muslims-jews?src=prc-newsletter

The study focused on the estimated 214 million people, equivalent to about 3% of the world’s population, who had migrated across international borders as of 2010 and were alive at that date. It thus deals with cumulative stocks of migrants, not with annual flows.

The research involved the compilation, largely through the efforts of Pew Forum research associate Dr Phillip Connor, of a global religion and migration database for 2010, from the perspective of both migrants’ country of origin and country of destination.

Data derived from a combination of censuses, surveys and proxy measures, mostly gathered in countries of destination (from which emigrant information had to be backwardly imputed).

For example, in the case of the UK as a country of origin, use was made of the official Annual Population Survey for 2010, the 2001 census, and the World Religion Database (co-published by Brill and Boston University).

Spatial statistics are provided at global and regional levels and for 231 individual countries, including the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man (albeit the numbers for these two units are naturally very small). The UK results for 2010 are as follows:

UK AS COUNTRY OF ORIGIN

Christian emigrants

3,680,000

73.5%
Muslim emigrants

100,000

2.0%
Hindu emigrants

60,000

1.2%
Buddhist emigrants

30,000

0.6%
Jewish emigrants

120,000

2.4%
Other religious emigrants

90,000

1.8%
Religiously unaffiliated emigrants

930,000

18.6%
All emigrants

5,010,000

 

In terms of absolute numbers, the UK appeared in the top ten of all countries for the following groups of emigrants: Christians (fourth position), Hindus (tenth), Jews (ninth), and religiously unaffiliated (fourth).

UK AS COUNTRY OF DESTINATION 

Christian immigrants

3,500,000

54.3%
Muslim immigrants

1,420,000

22.0%
Hindu immigrants

390,000

6.0%
Buddhist immigrants

190,000

2.9%
Jewish immigrants

40,000

0.6%
Other religious immigrants

380,000

5.9%
Religiously unaffiliated immigrants

530,000

8.2%
All immigrants

6,450,000

 

In terms of absolute numbers, the UK appeared in the top ten of all countries for the following groups of immigrants: Christians (seventh position), Hindus (eighth), Jews (fifth), all other religions except Buddhism and Islam (fifth), and religiously unaffiliated (seventh). Perhaps surprisingly for some, the UK did not feature in the top ten countries for Muslim immigration.

NET MIGRATION TO THE UK 

Christians

– 180,000
Muslims

+ 1,320,000
Hindus

+ 330,000
Buddhists

+ 160,000
Jews

– 80,000
Other religions

+ 290,000
Religiously unaffiliated

– 400,000
All

+ 1,440,000

Assuming that these Pew estimates are broadly accurate (and it is conceded that some of the data in the report are ‘fuzzy’), then international migration had added 1,440,000 to the population living in the UK in 2010.

Net immigration particularly contributed to the growth of non-Christian faiths other than Judaism, and notably to the increase in UK Muslims. For Christians, Jews and people of no faith emigration took away more than immigration brought into the UK.

 

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Islamophobia in the West

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Clive D. Field

Islamophobia in the West: Measuring and Explaining Individual Attitudes, edited by Marc Helbling (of the Social Science Research Centre, Berlin) was published by Routledge on 16 February 2012 (ISBN 978-0-415-59444-8, hardback, £80). The book comprises 13 essays exploring the views of ordinary citizens toward Islam and Muslims as revealed by survey evidence.

Following an introduction by the editor (chapter 1), including discussion of the complex definitional issues, there are case studies of Islamophobia in the United States (chapters 2 and 12), Great Britain (3, 11 and 13 – each summarized below), Norway (4), Sweden (5), Spain (6), Switzerland (7), and The Netherlands (8, 9 and 10). The full contents table can be viewed at:

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415594448/

Chapter 3 (pp. 39-55): Erik Bleich and Rahsaan Maxwell, ‘Assessing Islamophobia in Britain: where do Muslims really stand?’

This is a study not merely of national attitudes to Muslims but also of Muslim attitudes toward British society. The principal source is the Government’s Citizenship Surveys from 2001 to 2009, with some subsidiary use of the Pew Global Attitudes Surveys and Eurobarometers. The authors conclude that ‘Islamophobia may be a real challenge and an obstacle to intergroup harmony but is not yet the most significant cleavage defining the nature of group divisions in British society’. They likewise highlight that ‘despite the tense atmosphere in contemporary British society, Muslims have remarkably high levels of positive national identification and political trust’.

Chapter 11 (pp. 147-61): Clive Field, ‘Revisiting Islamophobia in contemporary Britain, 2007-10’

The attitudes of ordinary Britons towards Muslims and Islam are reviewed through 64 opinion polls conducted in 2007-10. Comparisons are also drawn with 2001-06 (the subject of an earlier article by the author). Islamophobia is shown to be multi-layered, affecting one-fifth to three-quarters of adults, the actual level depending on topic. It is said to be undoubtedly increasing, albeit still less pervasive than other western European countries, and is by far the commonest form of religious prejudice in Britain. Muslims are seen as slow to integrate, to have a qualified patriotism and, sometimes, to be drawn to extremism. Negativity is found to be disproportionately concentrated among men, the elderly, the lowest social groups and Conservative voters.

Chapter 13 (pp. 179-89): Marco Cinnirella, ‘Think “terrorist”, think “Muslim”? Social-psychological mechanisms explaining anti-Islamic prejudice’

The author ‘draws upon an eclectic mix of different theoretical traditions from social psychology’, in particular social representations theory, terror management theory, social identity theory, self-categorization theory, and intergroup threat theory. Their aggregate applicability to Islamophobia is demonstrated by two small-scale research projects among British students, in 2006 and 2008. The first project revealed that ‘exposure to media social representations of Muslims is likely to be a causal factor in Islamophobia’. The second discovered that perceived cultural threat from Muslims, realistic threat from Islamist terrorism and strength of British national identity were all predictors of Islamophobia.

This post’s inevitable focus on the three chapters affecting Islamophobia in Britain is not to imply that the remainder of the volume should be ignored by BRIN users. Several authors provide invaluable comparative insights, while chapter 2 offers us an Anti-Muslim Prejudice scale developed for the American context. This can be compared and contrasted with the equivalent scales which have been proposed in the UK by Adrian Brockett, Andrew Village and Leslie Francis (the Attitude toward Muslim Proximity Index in 2009 and the Outgroup Prejudice Index in 2010).

 

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Abu Qatada

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Clive D. Field

An overwhelming majority of Britons support the deportation to his native Jordan of Abu Qatada al-Filistini, the radical Muslim cleric implicated in Islamist terrorism, notwithstanding fears expressed by some that he may not receive a fair trial in his homeland.

This is according to a YouGov poll for today’s edition of The Sunday Times. A representative sample of 1,753 adults aged 18 and over was interviewed online on 9 and 10 February 2012. Data tables have been posted at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/ly9ei68uye/YG-Archives-Pol-ST-results-10-120212.pdf

Abu Qatada has been in Britain since 1993, having been given asylum here in 1994 for reasons of religious persecution in Jordan. He has mostly been in British custody since shortly after 7/7 in 2005 but has been fighting deportation on human rights grounds.

Last week a High Court judge in a Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled that Abu Qatada should be released on bail, to the fury of the UK Government and – it now seems – the general public, also.

70% of YouGov’s respondents opted for Abu Qatada’s deportation, regardless of whether he can be guaranteed a fair trial abroad. The over-60s and Conservative voters (82% each) especially clamoured for this.

20% wanted guarantees of a fair trial as a condition of deportation, with 18-24s (37%), Liberal Democrats (35%) and Londoners (30%) most in favour. Only 1% opposed deportation, with 9% unsure.

Confronted with the recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that Abu Qatada should not be deported to Jordan as evidence obtained from torture might be used against him, 54% wanted Britain to ignore the ECHR and deport Abu Qatada. Again, Conservatives (67%) and over-60s (68%) took the strongest line.

A further 33% (including 48% of Liberal Democrats and the 18-24s and 45% of Londoners) considered that Britain ought to abide by the ECHR ruling but seek assurances from Jordan that evidence obtained by torture would not be used against Abu Qatada. In the light of the ECHR judgment, the number opposed to deportation grew to 4%, with 8% uncertain what should be done.

However, the greatest hostility toward Abu Qatada was reserved for the suggestion that, once bailed, he might go back on to state benefits, as he had been before his arrest in 2005.

82% of YouGov’s sample opposed this possibility, rising to 91% of Conservative voters and the over-60s. Just 12% (but 26% of Liberal Democrats, 25% of Londoners and 21% of 18-24s) felt he should be able to claim benefits.

The replies to this last question exemplify, not simply negativity toward radical Islam, but an increasingly hardening public attitude toward recipients of state benefits, which has become very noticeable since the onset of economic recession in 2008.  

 

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Crime and Religion

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Muslims are the faith group most likely to report an experience of religiously-motivated crime during the previous twelve months, but they are less likely to be victims of crime in general than those professing no religion. 

This is according to a new report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), and based on secondary analysis (by researchers at the University of Lancaster) of a merged dataset of the British Crime Survey (BCS) for England and Wales for 2007-08, 2008-09 and 2009-10, comprising 137,907 adults aged 16 and over.

Written by Sue Botcherby, Fiona Glen, Paul Iganski, Karen Jochelson and Spyridoula Lagou, Equality Groups’ Perceptions and Experience of Crime (EHRC, 2011) is available to download from:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/research/bp4.pdf

The proportion reporting being a victim of crime during the year prior to interview was 28% among people of no religion, against 25% of Muslims and 21% of both Christians and Hindus.

However, the number experiencing crime in the previous twelve months and attributing it to a religious motivation was highest for Muslims (8%), almost twenty times more than for Christians who were the subject of crime, albeit lower than the 15% of Asians identifying their experience of crime as caused by ethnic prejudice.

On the other hand, Muslims (2%) were slightly less likely to have encountered deliberate force or violence being used against them over the past year than Christians and Hindus, and much less likely than those without religion (4%).

A similar, but smaller, differential between Muslims and those professing no religion was found in respect of threats to damage property or to use force or violence, causing the victim to become frightened.

At the same time, 45% of Muslims were very or fairly worried about being insulted or pestered by somebody while in a public place, 3% fewer than Hindus but more than Christians (29%) and the irreligious (26%).

Somewhat less actually expected to be harassed or intimidated in a public place during the next year: 34% of Muslims, 29% of Hindus, 23% of persons with no religion, and 19% of Christians.

The Muslim findings are perhaps unsurprising, given the extent of Islamophobia in Britain, and they are consistent with other analyses of BCS data, for example by the Universities’ Police Science Institute at Cardiff University, already featured on BRIN at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2011/british-muslims-and-the-police/ 

The greater exposure of the irreligious to crime in general and to incidents involving violence is interesting but hard to explain solely on the basis of this report, which utilizes bivariate analyses only rather than multivariate techniques.

 

Breakdowns by faith groups other than those mentioned above derived from insufficiently large cell sizes for the statistics to be meaningful.

 

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Muslim Integration

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Concern among Britons about the integration of Muslim immigrants into British society has lessened somewhat over the past year but still remains at quite a high level, according to the fourth report on Transatlantic Trends: Immigration, published in Washington on 15 December 2011 and available at:

http://trends.gmfus.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/TTI2011_Topline_final.pdf
Continue reading →

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A Place for Pride

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Clive D. Field

‘People who are religious are more likely to be patriotic than are those who self-define as atheists or non-believers.’ So claims a report launched today by the think-tank Demos, and based on interviews with a representative sample of 2,086 adult Britons aged 18 and over in May 2011.

Sponsored by the Pears Foundation, A Place for Pride (ISBN 978-1-906693-88-6) is written by Max Wind-Cowie and Thomas Gregory and is available for free download at:

http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Place_for_pride_-_web.pdf?1321618230

The full data tables from the survey do not appear to have been released as yet. So all BRIN can currently offer are a few religion-related snippets extracted from the published report, as follows:

  • Among the population as a whole 79% said that they were proud to be a British citizen, but the proportion rose to 88% of Anglicans and Jews, 84% of Nonconformists, and 83% of Muslims 
  • Asked whether Britain’s best days were behind her, 44% of the entire sample agreed –  Anglicans (50%) were more pessimistic than average, although Muslims (31%) were more inclined to optimism, with secularists (43%) about the norm 
  • Almost four-fifths of respondents believed that people in Britain were less proud of their religion than 50 years ago – just 35% said they took pride in their own faith 
  • 20% of Muslims but 10% of those without religion claimed strongly to take pride in Britain’s treatment of gay people 
  • 14% claimed to have attended a Church of England service in the past six months and 15% another religious service 

A word of warning. Unless they were deliberately oversampled, which seems unlikely, the cell sizes for some faith groups must be fairly small. 

There is a consequent danger in over-egging the results, as The Sunday Times could be said to have done yesterday with its preview of the report under the headline ‘Muslims are Britain’s greatest flag wavers’.  

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Turkey and the European Union

Posted on September 24, 2011 by Clive D. Field

About one-quarter of Britons hold an unfavourable opinion of Turkey and consider that its membership of the European Union (EU) would be a bad thing, perceiving it as a predominantly Muslim country which would be out of place in the EU.

This is one of the findings from Transatlantic Trends, 2011, a partnership between the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Compagnia di San Paolo, with support from four other sponsors, which reported on 14 September. Topline results can be found at:

http://www.gmfus.org/publications_/TT/TTS2011Toplines.pdf

Fieldwork was coordinated by TNS Opinion and took place in the United States and 13 European countries, including the UK. ICM interviewed 1,001 adults aged 18 and over by telephone here between 25 May and 19 June 2011.

In the UK 27% of citizens agreed that, as a mainly Muslim nation, Turkey did not belong in the EU. This was 2% more than in 2005 and the same as in the United States. But the figure was under the European average and notably lower than in Belgium (58%), Slovakia (48%) and Poland (46%), with the remaining European countries ranging from 31% to 38%. 65% of UK respondents disagreed with the proposition, the same as in 2005, with 8% undecided.

Overall British opposition to Turkey’s membership of the EU, in terms of it being regarded as a bad thing, has risen from 9% in 2004 but, at 27%, it remains less than the European average and is greatly exceeded by 45% in France and 40% in Germany. 25% in the UK pronounce it as a good thing, 41% are neutral, and 7% undecided.

Alternative trend data on attitudes to Turkey’s membership of the EU are available from the Eurobarometer studies. See our previous post at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=707

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