US Muslims' Views Typically Very Different from Global Counterparts

According to recent polling

Muslims in the United States have views on religion that are different, in many ways, from the views of Muslims in other nations.

Consider some intriguing contrasts, contained in a poll released this week by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life:

• Some 48 percent of Muslims in America say most or all of their close friends are Muslim, compared with a 95 percent global median level, among 39 nations encompassed by the Pew Forum's survey.

• Nearly two-thirds of US Muslims, 63 percent, say there is no inherent tension between being devout and living in a modern society. A nearly identical proportion of American Christians, 64 percent, feel that way. But fewer Muslims around the world share that view (the median in the Pew survey was 54 percent) – even though the US is more "modern" in many ways than other nations in the survey, which span from Nigeria to Indonesia.