I am looking for opinion polls that studied simultaneously antisemitism and Islamophobia (negative attitudes to Muslims/Islam) in North America and Europe. I am particularly interested in (anti-)correlation between the two - that is, how common it is for the same person to dislike both Jews and Muslims, or whether dislike of one group often leads to favorably viewing another.
asked Apr 18 at 7:53
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It's too bad the taxi anectdote got cleaned up. It's a useful reminder. Yes, some overwoke people are indeed eye-rollingly earnest in their watchfulness for all sorts of real or imagined slights. Yes, some intelligent people can be racist (intelligence does not make you "nice"). But a (large?) subset of racists are just mind-numbingly dumb. Wouldn't have hurt the site one bit to keep that comment up, especially in our current context, for this question.– Italian PhilosopherCommented Apr 19 at 21:47
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2 Answers
There is some correlation, but not as high as implied in the other anwer (due to ecological fallacy). Here's e.g. a study in Norway, which still a bit of a potential for that by using brackets for the level of islamophobia and antisemitism, but it's more insightful than country-level correlations.
Table 4.10 presents three versions of the relationship between the two dichotomised summary indices. The left part shows that the likelihood for scoring high on Islamophobia is far greater for people with a high level of antisemitism than for people with low. The difference is 30 percentage points. Correspondingly, the middle part of the table shows that scoring high on Islamophobia increases the likelihood of having antisemitic attitudes. The difference is 8 percentage points.
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A majority of 70.5% of all respondents score low on both indices, while 3% score high on both. Antisemitism alone is found in 2.5% of the sample, while Islamophobia alone is found in 24%.
[...]
This shows that there is a tendency for antisemitism and Islamophobia to occur in combination. They are, in other words, related attitudes rather than opposites. It is clear, however, that they also do occur alone, especially in the case of Islamophobia, since negative attitudes towards Muslims are far more widespread in Norway than antisemitism according to our measures.
The data used in that study is from a 2017 survey.
TBH, such results are probably fairly sensitive to the questionnaire used. The general idea/finding is reflected in an older (2013) study in Italy, but the raw proportions are much higher in this study:
Almost 45% of our sample expresses attitudes against Jews and Muslims, while only 15% is tolerant. Furthermore the 65% of those who show anti-Muslim feelings are at the same time anti-Semitic, while 91% of those who show anti-Semitic attitudes are at the same time anti-Muslim.
Survey data is probably from the same year (2013) in that one, but the paper isn't super clear on that.
answered Apr 18 at 14:40
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7Basically, the key is that it really depends on the group. The far right and white supremacists tend to be very much Christian nationalists, so Jews and Muslims are both bad to them. A Jew, obviously, might well be Islamophobic without being anti-Semitic (and this is true of a bunch of more "moderate" non-Jewish people because of the War on Terror), and a Muslim might well be anti-Semitic without being Islamophobic (and this can be true of a bunch of more "moderate" non-Muslim people because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict).– Obie 2.0Commented Apr 18 at 15:51
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4But one can go further than that, right? Conservative Indian Hindus and Nigerian Christians have historically had a tendency toward being anti-Muslim because of their own political conflicts with Muslims, for instance, but have much less experience with Jews in the first place.– Obie 2.0Commented Apr 18 at 15:53
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5Hey, if you're gonna criticize another study due to some statistical flaw, please clarify the problem in vaguely layman-understandable plain English. Your "ecological fallacy" link does not even contain those terms and instead dumps one into some un-contextualized mathematical gobbledygook under a different term, midway down a page. Upvoted otherwise tho. Commented Apr 18 at 18:26
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2OK, I'll try to quote parts of it ...a paper claiming that chocolate consumption could enhance cognitive function. The basis for this conclusion was that the number of Nobel Prize laureates in each country was strongly correlated with the per capita consumption of chocolate in that country ... (note: the error follows): the authors calculated the correlation coefficient *at the aggregate level (the country), but then erroneously used that value to reach a conclusion about the individual level (eating chocolate enhances cognitive function)* Commented Apr 18 at 20:56
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1In other words, the "enemy of my enemy could be my enemy as well". Commented Apr 18 at 23:58
Yes, there is a positive correlation between antisemitic and islamphobic attitudes.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 15 Western European countries found that negative sentiments toward both groups correlate: if Jews are disliked in some come country, same is about Muslims. If Muslims are disliked, same is about Jews.
People with less education are more likely to take negative positions toward both Muslims and Jews.
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13This could be an ecological fallacy though. It might not be the same individuals who hate both Jews and Muslims. Consider a hypothetical country made of 50% Jews and 50% Muslims who totally hate the other group, but not their own coreligionists. If you have 20 countries like that hypothetical one and do a group-level correlation, it's exactly 1, i.e. perfect correlation, while the individual correlation is zero. The only way to know that is to do a correlation at individual response level, which your link doesn't show. Commented Apr 18 at 13:56
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See e.g. americanscientist.org/article/… for a more real-world example. Or plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-simpson/#NonCateDataLineRegr for more complex example(s) where the correlation at individual level is not just unknown but reverses. Commented Apr 18 at 14:11
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Your hypothetical country would still show 50 % hate rate. Less seems only possible through tolerance that may correlate with education deeper covering both Islam and Holocaust. Commented Apr 18 at 16:13
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They did not really clear that up in the data. But it is alluded to in the discussion (which I know isn't all that satisfactory): Perhaps not surprisingly, we found that Western Europeans ... feelings about minorities and immigrants. Education is also a factor: People with less education are more likely to take negative positions toward Muslims, Jews and immigrants. .... The phrasing used strongly seems to imply that, at least in some cases, this are the same individuals holding negative views for both. Yes, a better drilldown would have been to show when it is both. Commented Apr 18 at 18:25