Survey finds chasm between Muslims, Westerners

WASHINGTON, June 23 (Reuters) A global rift in attitudes between Muslims and Westerners is growing wider as Muslims grow increasingly bitter toward the West and its people, according to a major survey covering 13 countries.

The survey released yesterday by the independent Pew Global Attitudes Project showed that each side blamed the other for deteriorating relations, a tendency highlighted by the uproar over cartoon depictions of the Prophet Mohammad.

But the 14,030 interviews from March 31 to May 14 also highlighted positive trends, including waning support for terrorism in some Muslim nations and majorities in France, Britain and America with favorable opinions about Muslims.

''For the most part, Muslim publics feel more embittered toward the West and its people than vice versa,'' said the report on the survey by the Washington-based Pew project.

''Muslim opinions about the West and its people have worsened over the past year and by overwhelming margins, Muslims blame Westerners for the strained relationship between the two sides.'' The survey found that large percentages of the population of nearly every Muslim country saw Westerners as violent, immoral and greedy but that solid majorities of Indonesians, Jordanians and Nigerian Muslims had favorable views of Christians.

Muslims living in Western Europe were more likely to see Westerners as being generous and honest, but more than half those surveyed in four European countries saw them as selfish.

''We see them coming here occupying our countries, taking the oil. Muslim countries are rich in natural resources, enjoy the best weather. That is why Western governments want to control us and take over our wealth,'' Abeer Ali Muhammad, a 38-year-old fitness trainer in Egypt, was quoted as saying.

BLAMING EACH OTHER The survey found Western attitudes towards Muslims were more diverse. Some 83 per cent of Spaniards and 78 per cent of Germans associated Muslims with fanaticism, but only half of French respondents and 43 per cent of Americans shared that view.

Highlighting the lack of common ground, most people in Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia and Turkey blamed the Mohammad cartoon controversy on Western nations' disrespect for Islam. But majorities of Americans and Western Europeans who had heard of the controversy saw it as a result of Muslim intolerance.

The survey cited a dramatic fall in Jordan in support for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as one sign of faltering support for terrorism in Muslim countries.

Less than one percent of respondents in the country, which was hit by triple hotel bombings that killed 60 people in Amman last November, expressed much confidence in bin Laden, down from a quarter in last year's survey.

Confidence in bin Laden also fell in Pakistan, where 38 per cent of people expressed some confidence in him, down from 51 per cent in May 2005. But 61 per cent of Nigerian Muslims had at least some confidence in the al Qaeda leader, a sharp rise from 44 per cent in May 2003.

Support for bin Laden remained much lower among European Muslims. Just one in 20 Muslims in Germany and France expressed any confidence in him, although that figure rose to 14 per cent in Britain and 16 per cent in Spain.

REUTERS SRS KP1746