Who Favors al-Qaeda? Anti-Americanism, Religious Outlooks, and Favorable Attitudes toward Terrorist Organizations

• Author: Becky J. O’Donnell,Sabri Ciftci,Allison Tanner
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912917702498
• Date: 01 September 2017
• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912917702498

Political Research Quarterly

2017, Vol. 70(3) 480 –494

© 2017 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912917702498

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Article

Introduction

Public opinion polls show that an overwhelming majority

of Muslims are very concerned about violent extremism

and that only a tiny fraction support terrorist organiza-

tions that justify their violent acts in the name of Islam

(Esposito and Mogahed 2007; Telhami 2013).1 This arti-

cle explores why ordinary people in the Middle East and

North Africa (MENA) hold favorable views toward al-

Qaeda, the prime example of transnational terrorist orga-

nizations. Examining individual determinants of

favorability toward al-Qaeda in MENA is likely to

improve our understanding of attitudinal and behavioral

support for religiously inspired militant groups in Muslim

majority societies.

Existing scholarship finds that only a minority of

Muslims holding specific religious ideologies support

militant organizations (Fair, Littman, and Nugent 2017;

Wiktorowicz and Kaltner 2003). Rather than Muslim reli-

giosity (Huntington 1993; Lewis 1990), we argue that a

literalist orientation in the legal sphere (i.e., preference

for strict implementation of scriptural teachings in law)

as a politicized religious outlook generates sympathy

toward al-Qaeda. Do other factors carry some weight

once we control for a specific religious outlook resonat-

ing with al-Qaeda’s ideology? We argue that anti-Ameri-

can orientations matter a great deal for understanding the

favorability of groups such as al-Qaeda, but in highly

nuanced ways. Common wisdom assumes a positive rela-

tionship, and sometimes an overlap, between anti-Amer-

icanism and support for terrorist acts against the American

targets.2 In our explanation, we first treat the two sets of

attitudes as conceptually and empirically distinct. Then,

we distinguish between varieties of anti-Americanism

and propose that various types of anti-American senti-

ment will differently inform opinions toward al-Qaeda.

Our explanation also addresses the cross-national varia-

tion in this relationship and moves away from a “one size

fits all” approach.

702498PRQXXX10.1177/1065912917702498Political Research QuarterlyCiftci et al.

research-article2017

1Kansas State University, Manhattan, USA

Corresponding Author:

Sabri Ciftci, Department of Political Science, Kansas State University,

11D Calvin Hall, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA.

Email: ciftci@ksu.edu

Who Favors al-Qaeda?

Anti-Americanism, Religious

Outlooks, and Favorable Attitudes

toward Terrorist Organizations

Sabri Ciftci1, Becky J. O’Donnell1, and Allison Tanner1

Abstract

This study examines why ordinary people sympathize with a terrorist network in the Middle East and North Africa

(MENA). Holding literalist religious outlook resonating with al-Qaeda’s marginal interpretation of Islam constant, it is

maintained that anti-Americanism and its varieties matter a great deal in explaining attitudes toward al-Qaeda. Using

Pew Global Attitudes Surveys conducted in Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, the authors run conditional mixed

process estimations combining seemingly unrelated regressions with selection models to account for the missing

values and endogeneity problems. The analysis reveals significant variation both cross-nationally and in the effects of

varieties of anti-Americanism on favorability of al-Qaeda. While the dislike of certain aspects of American culture

generates sympathy toward al-Qaeda, anti-Americanism as a general attitude does not. More interestingly, dislike of

American democracy, technology, and policy has either negative or no effect on favorable views of al-Qaeda. Literalist

religious outlook generates positive views of al-Qaeda, but religiosity has a negative impact. These findings imply that

we need to draw careful distinctions between politicized Islamic preferences and personal religiosity as well as the

different types of anti-American sentiments in understanding Muslim political attitudes about terrorist groups.

Keywords

anti-Americanism, al-Qaeda, Islam, shari’a, Muslim religiosity