Culture

US Muslims' Views Typically Very Different from Global Counterparts

According to recent polling

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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.