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November 2, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 11
Armenia is the least tolerant with only 7% saying they would accept a Muslim and 28% saying they would accept a Jew as a family member. Croatia is the most tolerant with 57% and
67% respectively, putting it ahead of Italy, UK, Germany and Austria.
From the other significant countries in the re- gion Russia (34%, 40%) and Poland (33%, 57%) stand out as amongst the most tolerant, where- as Ukraine (25%, 43%) has failed to adopt the EU values it says it aspires to. The biggest surprise is probably that Czechia (12%, 51%), Lithuania (16%, 41%) and Latvia (19%, 53%) are amongst the most intolerant of Muslims in particular in the entire region, despite having wholeheartedly thrown themselves into the EU family.
“In nearly every Central and Eastern European country polled, fewer than half of adults say they would be willing to accept Muslims into their family; in nearly every Western European country surveyed, more than half say they would accept a Muslim into their family. A similar divide emerges between Central/Eastern Europe and Western Europe with regard to accepting Jews into one’s family,” Pew found.
Religion was effectively banned by the former system, but today it has become an integral part of national identity and has been used by the governments in the region for political ends. In Russia the anti-corruption blogger and opposi- tion activist Alexei Navalny can get at best a few thousand protestors onto the street, however,
a saint’s relics displayed in Moscow will draw crowds that run into the hundreds of thousands.
The situation is precisely the reverse in the west where religion plays little role in shaping the ideas of national identity.
Cultural chauvinism also plays a much bigger role in the east than in the west. As the map shows almost all the countries in the Warsaw
pact countries believe their cultures are superior, with the trend being especially strong in Russia and the Balkans.
Same-sex marriage is probably the most divisive issue in emerging Europe. Events like images from the annual St Christopher Street Gay Pride parade in Berlin often feature in anti-western right-wing propaganda where the west is por- trayed as decadent and immoral. Attempts to hold gay pride marches in places like Ukraine and Georgia need a heavy police presence and often end in violence. Russia has yet to hold a gay pride march, as these are routinely blocked by the authorities.
“None of the Central and Eastern European countries surveyed allow same-sex marriages,” says Pew. “In some cases, these views are almost universally held. Fully nine-in-ten Russians, for instance, oppose legal same-sex marriage, while similarly lopsided majorities
in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden favour allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally.”
Most surprisingly is that young people in CEE are more conservative than their older peers in western Europe. “For example, 61% of younger Estonians (ages 18 to 34) oppose legal gay mar- riage in their country, compared with 75% of those 35 and older. By this measure, young Es- tonian adults are still six times as likely as older adults in Denmark (10%) to oppose same-sex marriage. This pattern holds across the region; young adults in nearly every Central and Eastern European country are much more conservative on this issue compared with both younger and older Western Europeans,” found Pew.
This is also true of young people’s attitude to mixed religion marriage: when it comes to views about Muslims and Jews, young adults in most countries in Central and Eastern Europe are no more accepting than their elders.