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November 2, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 10
Attitudes to religion and minorities in Eastern Europe largely unreformed after 25 years of democracy
Ben Aris in Berlin
Nearly a quarter of a century after the fall of
the Soviet Union and the end of the communist experiment, most of emerging Europe has yet to embrace the liberal values of Western Europe, found a survey by the Pew Research Centre released on October 30.
“The Iron Curtain that once divided Europe may be long gone, but the continent today is split by stark differences in public attitudes toward re- ligion, minorities and social issues such as gay marriage and legal abortion. Compared with Western Europeans, fewer Central and Eastern Europeans would welcome Muslims or Jews into their families or neighbourhoods, extend the right of marriage to gay or lesbian couples or broaden the definition of national identity to include people born outside their country,” Pew said in its report, the result of surveys conducted by the research centre between 2015 and 2017 among nearly
56,000 adults (aged 18 and older) in 34 Western, Central and Eastern European countries.
Despite the relatively multicultural make up
of the eastern block that is home to hundreds of nationalities and major religious minority groups, Eastern Europe remains a nationalistic, xenophobic, homophobic and in some cases outright racist place. The liberal values that are inculcated in the populations of Western Europe have still had too little time to become part of the political DNA of these countries.
The first finding is that families in emerging Europe say they are resistant to accepting
a Muslim into their family by marriage. For most of the Warsaw pact countries, which are predominately Orthodox Christian, on average only 30% of respondents said they would accept a Muslim as a family member.