Obviously.
(CNSNews.com) – Why do they hate us? Confronting a question that many Americans have asked about Muslims since 9/11, two political scientists have come up with a theory they believe may hold part of the answer.
Anti-American sentiment, they said, is not primarily due to inherent Muslim aversion to aspects of U.S. culture, or even a reaction to U.S. foreign policy – but a phenomenon found to be worse in societies where there is greater competition between Islamist and secular-nationalist political factions.
In such societies, political elites in both the Islamist and secular-nationalist camps use anti-Americanism as an effective tool to win public support, argued Lisa Blaydes of Stanford University’s department of political science, and Drew Linzer of Emory University’s department of political science.
The new study, published in Cambridge University Press’ American Political Science Review and released Wednesday, used data from a 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project survey of nearly 13,000 Muslim respondents in 21 widely-differing predominantly Muslim countries.
“Analysis of a huge amount of survey data collected from 13,000 Muslims in 21 countries showed that those countries where people expressed the most anti-American views were also those where two powerful political elites (one Islamist and one secular) were competing fiercely with each other for supporters,” the study found. “In countries where this did not apply, the amount of anti-Americanism expressed was significantly lower.”