44% of French people consider Islam “a threat”: Poll

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Thursday 30 Jul 2015 - 10:54 Makkah mean time-14-10-1436 Paris (IINA) – Forty-four percent of French people believe the Muslim community is a "threat" to the country’s national identity, according to the results of a recent opinion poll carried out by Ifop polling institute and published by the French news site Atlantico. "This poll, conducted in mid-July, demonstrates that one out of two French people holds negative perception of Islam and Muslims at the moment," said Ifop’s Jerome Fourquet. He explained that the survey allowed respondents to choose one answer from among three possibilities to see whether the Muslim community is a "threat to the country", "cultural enrichment factor", or "neither one nor the other". The survey results revealed that only 19 percent of respondents see the presence of a Muslim community in France a factor of cultural diversity, and 37 percent said it was neither a threat to the country’s national identity nor of benefit to its culture. Fourquet affirmed that supporters of the French Far-Right Party participating in the opinion poll showed more negative views of Muslim community, given the fact that 90 percent of them confirmed that Muslims are a threat to the country’s identity, compared to only 2 percent who believed that they were a factor of cultural enrichment, whilst eight percent did not agree to either answers. AB/IINA