‘Muslims not globalisation separatists’

WPO polled more than 5,200 respondents over six weeks in January and February this year.

Muslims embrace economic globalisation as long as it doesn’t mean that Western influences will snuff out their cultural identity, the head of a US-based research and polling group said.

“In the process of economic globalization, Muslims are not separatists,” Steven Kull, head of the World Public Opinion (WPO) think-tank and polling organisation, told AFP, commenting on the results of a study published on Wednesday.

“Economic integration with the world, they say, is a positive thing but they don’t want it to undermine their cultural identity,” he said.

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WPO polled more than 5,200 respondents over six weeks in January and February this year in predominantly Muslim Azerbaijan, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, the Palestinian Territories and Turkey.

Nigerian Muslims, who make up around half the population of the west African nation, were also included in the survey.

Large majorities in Nigeria and Egypt said globalisation, ‘especially the increasing connections of our economy with others around the world’, was ‘mostly good’ for their country, the poll showed. Sixty-three per cent of Azerbaijanis, 61 per cent of Iranians and Indonesians and 58 per cent of Palestinians shared that view.

In Turkey, those in favor of globalisation were not in a majority but they still outnumbered opponents of the trend by 39 per cent to 28 per cent.

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Nearly two-thirds of respondents (64 per cent on average for all the countries in the survey) saw international trade as beneficial to their country, the poll showed.