Names of Baby Boys in 2009

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Muslim name Mohammed (meaning ‘one who is praiseworthy’) has become the most popular name for newborn boys in England and Wales, according to a reworking in today’s Daily Express and Daily Mail of 2009 data released yesterday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). It moved up from third place in 2008 to supplant Jack, which had topped the list for the past fourteen years.

ONS actually has Mohammed in sixteenth position (up thirteen on 1999), with 3,300 babies given the name in 2009. However, this takes no account of the many different spellings of the name, each of which is ranked separately. By summing all twelve variations of the name in 2009, the newspapers produce a total of 7,549 occurrences of Mohammed, to head the list for the first time ever. This represents a 65% increase on the 1999 figure of 4,579.

In order of popularity, the variant ­spellings used during the year were: Mohammed, Muhammad (2,162 occurrences, in 36th place), Mohammad (1,073, in 62nd place), Muhammed, Mohamed, Mohamad, Muhamed, Mohammod, Mahamed, Muhamad, Mahammed, and Mohmmed.

There are widespread regional variations in the incidence of the name. For example, Mohammed alone (without the variants) came first in the West Midlands, fourth in London, and fifth in Yorkshire and the Humber. At the other end of the spectrum, it ranked 145th in the South-West.

Commenting on these findings, Murtaza Shibli, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said he was not surprised that Mohammed had become the most popular boys’ name. ‘Parents choose it because of their love of the Prophet Mohammed and they believe the name will bring happiness and abundance. Also, there’s a belief they will follow the good example of the Prophet.’

In reality, too much should not perhaps be made of all this. Even including all the variants, Mohammed represented 2% of given names for newborn boys in 2009. It was just one of 26,800 different names used in all.

Also, Mohammed (without the variants) has been around in England and Wales for some considerable time. According to the ONS spreadsheets, it first entered the top one hundred chart for boys’ names as early as 1924, as number 91. It has remained there ever since, being joined from 1954 by Mohammod and Mohamed. 

The most popular Muslim girls’ name in 2009 was Aisha, translating as ‘wife of the Prophet’. This was given to 541 babies, making it 101st on the list, up from 110th position in 2006.

The ONS data are available at:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=15282

The newspaper accounts can be found at:

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/208029/Mohammed-is-top-boys-name

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1324194/Mohammed-popular-baby-boys-ahead-Jack-Harry.html

Posted in Official data | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Muslim Integration in Scotland

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The British Council Scotland has recently released a report on Muslim Integration in Scotland, by Amy Homes, Chris McLean and Lorraine Murray, and based upon quantitative and qualitative research undertaken by Ipsos MORI Scotland. The report, commissioned under the auspices of the Council’s ‘Our Shared Europe’ programme, is available to download at:

http://www.britishcouncil.org/scotland-society-muslims-integration-in-scotland-report.pdf

The focus of the study was an examination of Muslim and non-Muslim perceptions of one another and of the extent of Muslim integration in Scotland. Potential barriers to integration were also explored and ways in which these may be overcome.

The quantitative phase of the research was a series of questions included in the Ipsos MORI Scottish Public Opinion Monitor. Telephone interviews were undertaken with a representative sample of 1,006 Scots aged 18 and over between 18 and 21 February 2010. As there are relatively few Muslims in Scotland, such a random survey is essentially of non-Muslims. Findings from this phase appear on pp. 2-7, 18-27 of the report.

The qualitative phase comprised seven focus groups, three of Muslims and four of non-Muslims, in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee between 9 and 23 March 2010. Muslim groups were composed of Muslims born in Scotland and those born elsewhere but who had lived in Scotland for varying periods of time. Non-Muslim groups were made up of non-Muslims who were white Scottish and Christian or had no religion. Findings from this phase appear on pp. 8-9, 29-41 of the report.

The quantitative research is naturally of principal interest to BRIN. Key findings include the following:

  • 66% of Scots held a favourable opinion of Muslims and 21% an unfavourable one. However, this favourability rating was lower than for all other religious groups, with 85% for Christians, 80% for Jews, 77% for Buddhists, 75% for Hindus, 72% for Sikhs and 71% for atheists.
  • 46% of Scots considered that Muslims living in Scotland were loyal to the country and 33% not. This was a higher loyalty score than for Britain, France and Germany, as recorded in the Gallup Coexist Study of 2008. 
  • 48% of Scots agreed and 41% disagreed that Scotland would begin to lose its identity if more Muslims came to live there. This compared with 50% and 31% respectively in the 2006-07 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey.
  • 59% of Scots agreed and 28% disagreed that most Muslims in Scotland were integrated into everyday Scottish life.
  • 66% agreed and 24% disagreed that the attempted bombing at Glasgow airport in 2007 had made people in Scotland less tolerant of Muslims.
  • Whereas 80% of Scots agreed that Christianity was compatible with life in Scotland, only 42% said the same in relation to Islam (and 37% disagreed).
  • On almost all questions, those living in the least deprived areas of Scotland, people under 55, readers of broadsheet newspapers and Liberal Democrat voters had the most positive views of Muslims and Muslim integration.

So, Islamophobia is clearly becoming something of a problem in Scotland. On the whole, however, as Clive Field’s analyses of British public opinion polls conducted between 2001 and 2010 have shown, it is perhaps still less of a challenge there than in England and Wales.

Posted in Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Angus Reid Public Opinion Round-Up

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Angus Reid Public Opinion (ARPO, formerly Angus Reid Strategies) is the Vancouver-based public affairs practice of Vision Critical and conducts online surveys. It was originally founded in 2006 by Dr Angus Reid, a Canadian sociologist with four decades of experience in market and public opinion research.

Following considerable success in Canada, ARPO established a British adult panel (http://www.springboarduk.com) last autumn and obtained high visibility for its political polling in the run-up to the 2010 general election. But ARPO has also dipped its toes into British religious waters. Relevant questions are summarized below, with further details available at: http://www.visioncritical.com/category/public-opinion/

HALLOWEEN (fieldwork: 28-30 October 2009, n = 2,004)

Only 14% of Britons always celebrate Halloween (compared with 41% of Americans and Canadians), 41% never celebrate it and 45% sometimes do. 55% intended to carry out no Halloween-related activities during the 2009 weekend (against 26% in Canada and 14% in the USA), handing out sweets to trick-or-treaters being the commonest activity.

While 45% of Britons associated Halloween with fun, 35% regarded it as overrated. 30% saw it as harmless, but for 31% it had connotations with paganism and for 40% with witchcraft. Of the various faith alternatives to Halloween, 37% said they had participated in harvest festivals.   

ATTITUDES TO MUSLIMS – MINARETS (fieldwork: 9-12 December 2009, n = 2,002)

Following last November’s Swiss referendum which led to the prohibition on the construction of minarets on Swiss mosques, ARPO sounded out the publics of Britain, Canada and the USA on the issue. 43% of Britons claimed to have followed the story in the media.

Offered a précis of the arguments used in Switzerland, 44% agreed with the proponents of the ban and 28% with the opponents. However, 52% felt that it was unfair for the proponents to have used a poster depicting minarets as missiles.

37% of Britons said they would vote for a similar ban in our country (more than Canadians and Americans, 27% and 21% respectively), with 25% against a ban and 39% abstainers or unsure.

ATTITUDES TO MUSLIMS – RELIGIOUS DRESS (fieldwork: 20-21 January 2010, n = 2,001)

ARPO showed respondents pictures of three items of Muslim women’s dress – the burqa, the niqab and the hijab – and asked whether their use should be forbidden in the UK in public places, at airports and at schools and universities.

Large majorities agreed with banning the burqa in all three situations (ranging from 72% in public places to 87% at airports), and likewise the niqab (from 66% in public places to 85% at airports).

67% considered that garments which conceal a woman’s face are an affront to British values, although, somewhat contradictorily, 58% agreed that the Government should not be allowed to tell individuals what they can and cannot wear.

Far fewer felt it necessary to prohibit wearing of the hijab (from 22% in public places to 34% at airports).

CREATIONISM (fieldwork: 1-9 July 2010, n = 2,011)

Invited to explain the origin and development of human beings on earth, 68% of Britons opted for evolution (almost twice the proportion of Americans), 16% for creationism (one-third the US figure), with 15% unsure.

Creationists were especially plentiful in London (25%, perhaps reflecting the concentration of black-led churches and Muslims there) and thin on the ground in Scotland. Men were more likely to be evolutionists than women, partly because more women registered as unsure.

RESPECT FOR MINISTERS AND PRIESTS (fieldwork: 20-23 July 2010, n = 1,992)

Asked whether they had a great deal or fair amount of respect for each of 25 professional groups, 56% replied affirmatively for ministers and priests, leaving them in sixteenth position in a league table extending from doctors (91%) to car salesmen (12%).

There were no great differences by age and region, but gender was significant: 63% of women against 49% of men had respect for ministers and priests. At the other end of the scale, 39% had little or not much respect for the clergy, rising to 46% among men.

The survey replicated another ARPO poll between 13 and 26 August 2009, which showed respect for ministers and priests running at 57% in Britain, 65% in Canada and 82% in the USA.

Besides polling, the company is also responsible for the Angus Reid Global Monitor, which commenced in 2003. This includes a database summarizing 22,000 polls from around the world and from many different polling agencies. See http://www.angus-reid.com/

Posted in Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Muslims in Britain

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Muslims in Britain: An Introduction is a long-awaited new book by Sophie Gilliat-Ray, Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK, Cardiff University (Cambridge University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-521-53688-2, £19.99 paperback – also available in hardback).

The volume deliberately sets out ‘to rebalance current discourse by focusing on issues that are perhaps much closer to the “ordinary” daily lives of British Muslims’, shifting emphasis away from ‘the political, religious and social consequences of “crisis” events over the past three decades’.

Part I of the book thus covers the historical and religious roots of Islam in Britain, and Part II its contemporary dynamics, including socio-demographic profile; religious nurture and education; religious leadership; mosques; gender, religious identity and youth; and engagement and enterprise.

The contents are essentially a judicious and well-presented synthesis of recent academic research into British Islam, particularly published as monographs or journal articles in the 1990s and 2000s.

An appendix (pp. 266-72) provides a useful overview of the main categories of sources, with cross-references to the bibliography (which, as a single alphabetical listing, is otherwise somewhat difficult to navigate).

Although Islam in Britain has generated few statistics itself, partly because it lacks central structures, the quantitative interest of Muslims in Britain is somewhat greater than the inclusion of only four tables in the volume might suggest.

This is especially (but not solely) the case in chapter 5 (pp. 115-29), which summarizes the socio-demographic profile, mainly based on the 2001 census, drawing upon Serena Hussain’s Muslims on the Map (2008). As Gilliat-Ray acknowledges, this census has probably been overtaken in large part by the very rapid growth in Muslim numbers during the intervening nine years.

The one quantitative source which the author does not really deploy is national sample surveys, with the exception of the Labour Force Survey to a small extent. The Citizenship Surveys are mentioned at one point but not used.

Opinion polls among Muslims are also largely ignored, seemingly rejected (p. 269) because they are ‘crisis-driven publications’ which ‘are rarely underpinned by the normal protocols of scholarly peer review, ethical scrutiny or in-depth social scientific methodological awareness’.

This seems a somewhat extreme position to take, denying the reader the opportunity to gain potentially useful insights into Muslim thinking which are not otherwise available at national level. Some polls embrace ‘ordinary’ and ‘everyday’ matters of faith, not just attitudes to Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorism and so forth. 

Hopefully, one of the exceptions to the rule which Gilliat-Ray would concede is the survey of British Muslims undertaken in February-March 2009 by Ipsos MORI on behalf of Robert Putnam (Harvard University), David Voas (University of Manchester) and David Campbell (University of Notre Dame), with funding from the John Templeton Foundation.

Intended to parallel many of the questions in the British Social Attitudes Survey for 2008, this study has yet to be reported in any detail. But, when it does appear, it will be an essential contribution to the academic literature.

Also out-of-scope for Gilliat-Ray is any substantive discussion of how the majority British population has reacted to the emergence of Islam as a major faith in Britain. For instance, the term Islamophobia gets only three entries in the index.

In these ways, while Muslims in Britain offers an excellent introduction to many aspects of the community, it by no means tells the whole story.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

More Perceptions of Islam

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Islamophobia certainly appears to be a hot topic in 2010. Ten opinion polls have already been undertaken between January and July to gauge the attitudes of adult Britons towards Islam and Muslims.

Now The Guardian of 3 August has noted another, carried out on behalf of the London-based Islamic Education and Research Academy (iERA). iERA was established in 2009 as a global organization committed to presenting Islam to the wider society (a process known in Islamic theology as dawah).

The iERA investigation was conducted among a random sample of 500 English-speaking non-Muslims aged 16 and over interviewed face-to-face on the street in Britain by DJS Research in November 2009. Fieldwork seems to have occurred disproportionately in major British cities. 

The full report on the survey is entitled Perceptions on Islam & Muslims: A Study of the UK Population, with Hamza Andreas Tzortzis as the senior researcher. It can be downloaded (albeit not in a very printer-friendly form) from:   

http://www.iera.org.uk/downloads/iERA_NonMuslimPerceptionsOnIslam_and_Muslims_ResearchReport.pdf

The enquiry covers similar ground, but in rather more detail, as the YouGov poll for the Exploring Islam Foundation which we have already featured on the British Religion in Numbers website (on 8 June).

However, as iERA notes on page 5, the results of the two investigations differ in various ways. iERA attributes this to the methodological inferiority of YouGov’s approach, not least the fact that it uses a panel (deemed by iERA to constitute a self-selecting sample), obtained a low response rate and employed only closed questions.

80% of the iERA sample had no or very little knowledge of Islam, with 17% having basic knowledge and 3% a lot. 40% did not know who Allah is, 36% did not know who the Prophet Mohammed was, and just 20% had come into contact with the Koran (compared with 95% for the Bible).

Only 14% had been taught or actively sought information about Islam, in contrast to the 84% who had not. 76% had never spoken to a Muslim about Islam and 71% had never seen or heard any dawah material. Even when exposed to such material, attitudes were more likely to remain unchanged or to worsen than to improve. 77% had no desire to learn more about Islam.

27% of respondents entertained negative perceptions of Muslims, with 55% neutral and 18% positive. Around three-quarters thought that the contribution of Islam and Muslims to Britain was either non-existent or negative; and disagreed or were neutral when asked whether Muslims positively engaged with society.

For one-third Muslims were seen as the major cause of community tension, 32% being convinced they preached hatred. 24% viewed them as terrorists, with one-fifth denying they were law-abiding and peaceful. 30% were antipathetic to Sharia law and 59% agreed that Islam oppresses women.

The commentary (pages 30-39) records the more significant breaks by demographic sub-groups, although too much significance should not be attached to these disaggregations on account of the relatively small size of the overall sample. In particular, the report inclines to make more than is advisable of replies from those aged 21-24 (of whom there cannot have been more than about 45 interviewed).

The conclusion (page 10) is: ‘The general population has displayed a negative perception concerning religion, Islam and Muslims. The dawah has had limited reach and it has not improved perceptions about Islam. There has also been a consistent trend of apparent neutrality; we believe this indicates apathy and indifference coupled with genuine ignorance about religion and specifically Islam.’ Nineteen recommendations are advanced (pages 39-45) to improve this situation.

Posted in News from religious organisations, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Inspired by Muhammad Campaign

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Existing negative stereotypes of Islam and Muslims in Britain are largely confirmed in an opinion poll released to coincide with the launch on 7 June of the Exploring Islam Foundation’s Inspired by Muhammad advertising campaign.

The campaign is designed to improve the public’s understanding of Islam and Muslims. It showcases Britons demonstrating how the Prophet Muhammad inspires them to contribute to society, with a focus on women’s rights, social justice and the environment.

Advertisements in connection with the campaign will be appearing at selected London tube-stations and bus-stops and on some of the capital’s black cabs. There is also a new website (http://www.inspiredbymuhammad.com) providing online support with information about Islam, Muhammad and British Muslims.

The survey was conducted online by YouGov between 19 and 21 May among a representative sample of 2,152 UK adults aged 18 and over, drawn from its panel of more than 185,000 people who have signed up to participate in YouGov studies.

77% of the sample considered they knew little or nothing about Islam, 20% a fair amount and just 2% a great deal. Most of their information about Islam came from television news (57%) and newspapers (41%), with only 12% citing local Muslims and 3% Muslim organizations. Two-thirds had no interest in finding out more about Islam.

While three-quarters of adults associated the word ‘religious’ with Islam, this would not necessarily have had positive connotations. Large numbers thought of the faith in terms of extremism (58%), terrorism (50%) and violence (33%). Few connected Islam with peace (13%), inclusivity (7%) or justice (6%).

Apart from the Prophet Himself (34%), Osama bin Laden was seen as the individual who best represents Islam (13%). Nobody else scored more than 3%. 49% of the sample identified the Prophet as religious, 24% as peaceful, 19% as misrepresented, 13% as misunderstood and 11% as extremist.

Asked whether ‘on the whole, Muslims have a positive impact on British society’, 19% agreed, 41% disagreed and 40% expressed no clear opinion. 30% agreed and 37% disagreed that Islam is a violent religion, 69% and 8% respectively that it encourages repression of women, 15% and 42% that it is concerned with social justice, and 6% and 29% that it is taking active measures to protect the environment.

The Exploring Islam Foundation’s press pack about the campaign is available at:

http://www.inspiredbymuhammad.com/attach/IBM_PRESS_PACK_WEBVERSION.pdf

The full YouGov data tables, with disaggregations by gender, age, social grade and region, can be downloaded from:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Pol-ApexCommunicationsExploringIslamFoundation-100520.pdf

For earlier opinion polls on Islam and Muslims in Britain, see Clive Field, ‘Islamophobia in Contemporary Britain: The Evidence of the Opinion Polls, 1988-2006’, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Vol. 18, 2007, pp. 447-77 and Erik Bleich, ‘Where do Muslims stand on Ethno-Racial Hierarchies in Britain and France? Evidence from Public Opinion Surveys, 1988-2008’, Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 43, 2009, pp. 379-400. Field is preparing a new essay on the years 2007-10, which will be published next year.

Posted in News from religious organisations, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century by Eric Kaufmann was published by Profile Books on 25 March (xxii + 330pp., ISBN 978 1 84668 144 8, £15.00, but currently available from Amazon for £7.49).

Kaufmann is Reader in Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, whose previous books have included The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America (2004) and The Orange Order (2007).

His newest work is substantially the output of a research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of its Understanding Population Trends and Processes programme. The project website includes a substantial amount of additional background material (including reviews of this book). It can be found at:

http://www.sneps.net/RD/religdem.html

Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? is, in many senses, a contribution to the long-running debate on secularisation. Far from becoming more liberal and secular, Kaufmann’s thesis runs, the facts actually point in an opposite direction.

In particular, he paints a picture of moderate religion being ‘squeezed between the Scylla of secularism and the Charybdis of fundamentalism’, with secularism increasingly losing out to a ‘demographically turbo-charged piety’. This ‘endogenous power’ of fundamentalism is portrayed as set to ‘trump secularisation’.

The key argument of the work is that ‘religious fundamentalists are on course to take over the world through demography’, because, unlike the secularists and many moderate religious, their fertility alone surpasses the replacement level.

This trend, which is reinforced by the high retention rate of fundamentalists (often facilitated by their spatial and social segregation), is seen as a potential challenge to basic liberties and liberal values.

The evidence base is part historical and part contemporary. It spans three of the major religions: Christianity, Islam and Judaism. It is drawn from most parts of the globe, although the four core chapters focus on conservative Protestants in the United States, Europe, the Muslim world and the Jewish world.

Users of British Religion in Numbers will naturally be very interested in Kaufmann’s references to Britain. These are fairly numerous, notably in the chapter on Europe, although many of them are of a fairly general politico-religious nature, rather than directly related to the main thesis, which perhaps seems least persuasive in the British context.

There is an interesting discussion of Muslim fertility (which is falling) in the UK, with a projection of the Muslim population to 2029. The above-average religious observance of non-white immigrants in London is noted. Past differential Protestant/ Catholic fertility in Northern Ireland is also mentioned.

But the most direct evidence connecting fundamentalism and fertility in Britain relates to Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Judaism, where (as several endnotes make clear) the facts remain in dispute.

In Europe as a whole Kaufmann anticipates that a process of desecularisation will occur some time after 2020, linked to the identity-driven religiosity of immigrant populations with a relatively large number of children. Politically, there will be a convergence of moral conservatives among the three Abrahamic faiths.

Kaufmann has a part-summary of his European chapter, with special reference to the Eurabia question, in ‘Europe’s Return to the Faith’, Prospect, No. 169, April 2010, pp. 56-9.

Posted in Religion in public debate | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Attitudes to Muslims: Round-Up of Recent YouGov Polls

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Founded only in 2000, YouGov has rapidly become one of the best-known polling companies in contemporary Britain. It operates mainly via online interviews among a panel of more than 250,000 adults aged 18 and over.

Although YouGov has undertaken relatively few religion-specific surveys, relevant questions often lie buried among some of its more general studies. The following data on attitudes to Islam and Muslims have been taken from the tabulations of recent polls posted at:

http://www.yougov.co.uk/corporate/archives/press-archives-intro.asp

  • Only 13% of all adults feel that most Muslims are integrated into British society, 60% maintaining that many lead completely separate lives and a further 21% that most lead completely separate lives (fieldwork 12-13 November 2009, n= 2,026)
  • 80% of all adults support Government’s recent decision to ban the radical group Islam4UK, which was planning to hold a march through Wootton Bassett in protest at the war in Afghanistan, while 14% disagree, arguing that freedom of speech is more important (fieldwork 14-15 January 2010, n= 2,033)
  • 81% of all adults consider that Anjem Choudary, Islam4UK’s spokesperson, is cynically abusing the benefits system by claiming £25,000 a year in benefits, despite being a qualified lawyer (fieldwork 14-15 January 2010, n= 2,033)
  • 32% of all adults are worried that they and their immediate family might be victims of an attack by Islamic terrorists in Britain, whereas 64% are not concerned (fieldwork 5-7 January 2010, n= 10,344)
  • 62% of all adults are convinced that Islamic terrorism is a slightly or much bigger problem for Britain than other Western countries, with 29% thinking it is no worse a problem (fieldwork 5-7 January 2010, n= 10,344)
  • Of adults believing Islamic terrorism to be a worse problem for Britain, 38% attribute this to Britain’s relationship with the USA, 35% to the failure to punish or expel Islamic radicals who preach violence, and 24% to the number of Muslim immigrants in Britain (fieldwork 5-7 January 2010, n= 10,344)
  • 42% of young people aged 14-25 believe that Muslims often suffer unfair discrimination in Britain, as against 20% thinking this to be true of the Jews, the other religious group enquired about – the numbers feeling they received unfair advantage were 21% and 5% respectively (fieldwork 18-25 November 2009, n= 3,994)
Posted in Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Religion and Politics – A New Opinion Poll

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Since its launch in November 2006 the public theology think tank, Theos, has performed valuable service in a number of ways, not least (in the cause of religious statistics) by commissioning a series of opinion polls to gauge public attitudes on a range of religious and moral issues.

With a general election in the offing, Theos has sponsored ComRes to survey the views of 1,085 British adults of voting age on the subject of religion and politics. Fieldwork was conducted by telephone on 17 and 18 February 2010. These voters and potential voters sub-divided into 674 professed Christians, 71 Muslims, 47 of other faiths and 291 of no religion.

Recall of voting at the 2005 general election showed that Muslims and those of no religion were then somewhat more inclined to support Labour than the Conservatives. Among those likely to vote this year this still remains the case for Muslims, 57 per cent of whom opt for Labour and 18 per cent for the Conservatives.

For all other groups there is a net advantage for the Conservatives over Labour, +10 per cent among Christians, +34 per cent for non-Christians other than Muslims and +8 per cent for those of no religion.

When asked which of the political parties had been most or least friendly towards particular religions during recent years, one-half of respondents were unable to express a view. Of those recording an opinion, the Conservative and Labour parties are seen as equally well-disposed to the Christian faith.

However, Labour is felt to be most empathetic to Islam (by 36 per cent of the sample, against 10 per cent who judged Conservatives as most pro-Muslim). Labour was also regarded as being more predisposed towards faith in general.

Majorities of the population disagree that religious freedoms have been restricted in Britain during the past decade (59 per cent against 32 per cent agreeing), and that the law should prevent people from expressing their religious views in the workplace (63 per cent against 31 per cent).

Most (64 per cent, with 30 per cent disagreeing) consider that the Pope and other religious leaders have a responsibility to speak out on political issues they are concerned about, a topic prompted by Benedict XVI’s recent intervention over the equality bill before the Westminster Parliament.

There is a commentary on the poll by Nick Spencer, Director of Studies at Theos, which aims to trigger an online debate on the question ‘Is Labour the Natural Home for British Muslims?’ This can be accessed at:

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/Is_Labour_the_natural_home_for_British_Muslims.aspx?ArticleID=3850&PageID=11&RefPageID=5

There is also a ComRes press release on the survey, with a link to the full data tables, at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/page190146516.aspx

Posted in Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Should the Burka be Banned in Britain? A New Public Opinion Poll

Posted on February 1, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The debate raging in France and Italy about a possible ban on the wearing of the burka in public has prompted The Independent to test opinion on the subject in Great Britain. 

The newspaper commissioned ComRes to conduct a telephone poll among a representative sample of 1,016 Britons aged 18 and over on 27-28 January 2010.

Four statements were put to respondents:

  • that there should be no legal restrictions on wearing a burka: 43% agreed and 52% disagreed
  • that it should be illegal to wear a burka in places like banks and airports: 64% agreed and 33% disagreed
  • that schools should be allowed to prevent teachers from wearing burkas if they wish: 61% agreed and 35% disagreed
  • that it should be illegal to wear a burka in any public place: 36% agreed and 59% disagreed

A summary of the poll findings appears in an article by Andrew Grice in The Independent for 1 February.

Grice’s headline conclusion was that ‘The British public support some restrictions on wearing the burka in public but oppose an outright ban.’

The article is also available online at:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/poll-shows-britons-back-limited-curbs-on-the-veil-1885163.html

The full computer tabulations, with results disaggregated by gender, age, social grade and region, are available in PDF format at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/page16534040.aspx

The poll is published shortly after the appearance of a book incorporating the latest data from the annual British Social Attitudes survey.

In one of its chapters David Voas and Rodney Ling demonstrated significant negativity towards Muslims in Britain, far more so than towards any other religious group.

Posted in Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments