SUICIDE BOMBING….The Pew Research Center has released its latest survey of international attitudes toward terrorism, and as usual it contains some interesting results. Most dramatically, as shown on the right, is the fact that support for both suicide bombing and Osama bin Laden are generally down in the Muslim world.
The most interesting result, though, comes in the details. Take a look at the three Muslim countries that have been hit with major al-Qaeda bombing attacks since 2002 ? Morocco, Indonesia, and Turkey. Support for suicide bombing is down to 15% or less in all three countries and, even more dramatically, confidence in Osama bin Laden has been cut nearly in half. Attacking Muslim countries appears to have backfired badly on al-Qaeda.
On a less cheery note, the populations of Jordan and ? more worryingly ? Pakistan both have more confidence in Osama bin Laden than they did two years ago. Given the difficulty of conducting these polls, the results are probably within the margin of error, but at a minimum you can probably say that things haven’t gotten any better in those two countries.
On the other hand, Lebanon appears to be a big success story. Support for Osama is negligible, and support for suicide bombing, though still high, has nearly halved.
There are lots of other interesting results in the full report. The press release is here.
