Focus Article: What do a billion Muslims think?
By Sara Reef and Zeeshan Suhail (Common Ground News)
Despite widespread media coverage of global terrorism by various self-proclaimed “Islamic” groups from America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, little is known about what the majority of the world’s Muslims really think and feel. What do Muslims have to say about violence and terrorist attacks, democracy, women’s rights and their countries’ relations with the West? What are their values, goals and religious beliefs?
This month, Washington, DC and New York movie audiences were able to learn some answers to this question when they watched Inside Islam, a groundbreaking film based on the 2008 book, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, co-authored by Georgetown University professor John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. The film premiered in Washington, DC this summer and has been touring the country since.
The film is based on many years of innovative research. Between 2001 and 2006, Esposito worked with Mogahed at Gallup, a research and public opinion organisation, to complete the largest study of Muslim populations worldwide. Their results challenged the conventional wisdom and the inevitability of a “clash of civilisations” even as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continued. Read More…
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