A few years ago Dalia Mogahed and John Esposito co-authored the book “What a Billion Muslims Really Think.” It relied on quite thorough polling and survey data and was received very well. It also happened to dispel a great many myths and distortions regarding the Muslim majority nations.(h/t: Benjamin Taghiov)

Thought provoking study from Gallup and Dalia Mogahed.

Muslims worldwide say respect is key to better relations with U.S., West

ADELLE M. BANKS, Religion News Service

WASHINGTON — About half of Muslims surveyed worldwide believe the West does not respect them, according to a new Gallup report, and many say not desecrating the Quran and portraying more “accurate” Muslim movie characters could improve a strained relationship.

The findings are part of a report on “Measuring the State of Muslim-West Relations,” released Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2010, at Gallup’s Washington headquarters.

“We also found that this concept of respect … now includes perceptions of fairness in policies, not just culturally sensitive language,” said Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.

Fifty-four percent of Muslims said being treated fairly in policies that directly affect them would be a very meaningful demonstration of respect.
Mogahed said the “policies” were not defined in the new report, but past Gallup studies have found that respondents were particularly concerned about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nearly three-quarters of Muslims polled said increased respect for the Quran and other religious symbols would be helpful. About half want to see Muslims portrayed more accurately by Hollywood.

Researchers found people across the globe — from the United States to sub-Saharan Africa — believe the tensions between Muslim countries and the West are mostly avoidable.

“This was especially true among people who saw the conflict as political in nature,” Mogahed said, “rather than caused by religious differences.”

In most of the countries surveyed, people said greater interaction between Muslims and the West is a benefit rather than a threat. In the U.S., 76 percent of individuals saw such interaction as beneficial, compared to 63 percent of Iranians.

Gallup researchers classified individuals as being “ready” or “not ready” for Muslim-Western engagement based on their attitudes about commitment to such relations, as well as perceptions of respect and of future conflict.
Researchers said religion plays a key role in readiness.

“For ‘Not Ready’ individuals, irrespective of whether they live in majority-Muslim or Western societies, religion is the factor most likely to be cited as being at the root of Muslim-Western tensions,” the report stated in its executive summary.

The report detected a religious paradox between the two sides: people in majority-Muslim societies who were considered “ready,” and those in the West who were “not ready,” were both more likely to have attended religious services in the past week.

The findings are based on interviews with more than 100,000 in more than 55 countries between March 2008 and May 2010.

Douglas Farah

In a blog entry titled, “The MB Inroads Into the Obama Administration,” Douglas Farah, yet another so-called “investigative” consultant, sets out to link American Muslim organizations to planet Zorbex, that global superpower which is able to operate in perfect coordination yet secrecy toward “sneaking in” an evil empire in the United States — Zorbex is also known as the Muslim Brotherhood, or affectionately as MB.

Douglas Farah throws a few punches around at the usual American Muslim organizations, but hones his venom in this piece at Prof. John “the architect” Esposito, and Dalia “the insider” Mogahed.

Let’s start with Esposito:

Farah: “The architect is Dr. John Esposito, a long time defender of the MB and the head of the Saudi-financed Georgetown University Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Walsh School of Foreign Service.”

Why is Douglas Farah threatened by the concept of Muslim-Christian Understanding?

Because it actually gets people talking to each other, rather than secluding from each other and retiring to wild speculation and demagoguery about one another. The latter is what the Douglas Farah’s, Daniel Pipes’, and Steven Emerson’s of the world desperately need in order to stay in business.

For most people, universities, especially well-established and credible top institutions like Georgetown University are a service to society. Not so to the conspiracy loons like Douglas Farah. He is willing to argue that Georgetown with all of its gargantuan bureaucracy and what that may include in checks and balances is but one sweeping front for the Muslim Brotherhood. In a similar vein, all of the national American Muslim organizations (Farah’s blog piece mentions CAIR, MPAC, and CSID by name) are but one sweeping secretive front for that same ominous superpower, that struggling Egyptian party, the Muslim Brotherhood.

But hey, Douglas Farah is no dummy. He is sure to provide proof for his arguments. You ready? Georgetown, presumably like those orgs, is….. “Saudi-financed!”

Who is he talking about? Well, Prince Al Waleed bin Talal. Who is Prince Al Waleed bin Talal, that prince of darkness and anti-Americanism? Well, we’ll get to that in the last of three points that explain the major problems with Douglas Farah’s argument:

1. The much larger picture. Has he ever heard of philanthropy? That thing that tends to be a long and strong legacy in the United States. How does he think most US private institutions receive a good chunk of their assets? There are hundreds of examples of wealthy financiers of US academic institutions both American and foreign. Does he pin an agenda on each depending on where they were born or the faith they espouse? For example, does he look at a Jewish Hungarian philanthropist who donates to an Ivy league school and scream “Zionist agenda?” Not only does he not do so, but if others did, he would be blogging about anti-Semitism. Good, but then why does he engage in the reverse?

 

2. The slightly larger picture. Georgetown is Saudi-financed? As in Georgetown exclusively? How about the United States is Saudi-financed? Try on the order of $860 billion in Saudi investments to the U.S. economy. Now one may legitimately have an issue with that. It’s a good debate to have. But Douglas Farah is being hypocritical when he cherry picks Georgetown for criticism on that point.

 

3. The full picture. Much has been made about Prince Al Waleed bin Talal’s donations to Georgetown and American Muslim organizations. The donations are made out to be some sort of dubious evil secretive Wahhabi endeavor. But again, anyone familiar with reality can see through the bull. The conspiracy theorists happen to neglect a few small facts that may give an entirely different picture. Georgetown and these American Muslim organizations are in the same league with AOL, Apple Inc., Worldcom, Motorola, News Corporation Ltd, the Four Seasons hotel chain and the Plaza Hotel in New York, London’s Savoy Hotel, Monaco’s Monte Carlo Grand Hotel, Euro Disney SCA, Fairmont Hotels – and yes, President George H. W. Bush. Al-Waleed who is a major investor in all of these companies donated $500,000 to the George Herbert Walker Bush Scholarship Fund, established by Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, to honor the former President.Or how about the epitome of Western intelligensia: Harvard University. Al-Waleed donated $20 million to Harvard, one of its 25 largest donations. Al-Waleed donated $10 million to Cornell University to study complex genomic and cellular systems as they relate to medicine and biology by using mathematical models, physics and high-speed computing. Al-Waleed donated $20 million to the Louvre Museum in Paris, the World’s top temple of art, its largest gift ever.Now if Al-Waleed is part of an undercover Wahhabi front to establish a caliphate in the West, he is one dumb bastard. I mean that would be one heck of an expensive route with way too much irreversible contradictions on the way. Here’s a whopping $30 million in financing for “Western” halmarks like liberalism, art, and genomes — oh but then here’s a tiny fraction of that amount given to the evil Muslim organizations that will trump all of that – and some – with their impending anti-Western Caliphate. It’s fool proof. Ingenious! Nihohaha.

Next is Dalia Mogahed:

There is no need to even get into Doug’s off-point hate there. Hussein Ibish hit it on the head in a comment on the same blog:

OK, so let’s review, then, the case against Dalia Mogahed:

1. Born in Egypt
2. Worked for Gallup
3. Wrote a book with a Georgetown professor
4. Had a co-worker who used to work for MPAC
5. Used to work for a mosque in which one person lost a security clearance and another person has immigration issues
6. Father is associated with a different mosque, whose website links to American Muslim organizations
7. That mosque was headed by a guy who now has a job with one of those groups.

Egypt, Gallup, Georgetown, a former coworker, some guy’s immigration problems, a mosque’s website, some other guy’s new job. Wow. Case closed. She is definitely an operative of the Muslim Brotherhood. Another brilliant piece of reporting, Doug!

— Hussein Ibish Apr 14, 03:27 #

As you seem to not know, the MB is a web of relationships, including and particularly Georgetown and Esposito. Sorry that was lost on you.

— Douglas Farah Apr 14, 09:07 #

oooh. Doug got you there Hussein! How can the web be lost on you? How can anyone with a name like Hussein be trusted to get it right anyway…

The serious question though is, why does Douglas Farah, an investigative consultant (whatever that means) fail to “investigate” and disclose the full facts to his readers? Why does he do the sloppy cut-and-paste thing, giving a tiny portion of the facts, and then filling in the rest with conspiracy theories?

Because that is the modus operandi of the Loons. And that’s why there’s a loonwatch.

Like Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes, Farah is not interested in uncovering the real terrorist threat, he is committed to a different agenda: delegitimizing credible and mainstream Muslims, under the guise of fighting terror while taking advantage of everyone else’s genuine concerns about real terror.

While these “investigative” loons are busy with their politicization and keeping others busy with them, real terrorists will slip by as they have in the past.