A majority of Britons regard Muslims as a threat to the UK and over a third of the total population believes that multiculturalism makes the country worse, according to a new poll.
London: The poll, commissioned by the Huffington Post and conducted by YouGov, also showed that more than three quarters of people surveyed — 79 per cent, believe another attack on the scale of 7/7 in Britain is likely.
The poll was conducted as the 10th anniversary of the 7/7 attack in Britain approached. The research found 56 per cent of people think Islam is a “major” or “some” threat to Western liberal democracy — a notable rise from just 46 per cent of people who said the same thing in a poll taken the day after the attacks on London’s transport network on July 7, 2005.
Over a quarter of people (27 per cent) said they saw Islam as a “major threat” to Western liberal democracy, a jump from 19 per cent who said the same in a YouGov poll conducted on the day after the 7/7 bombings.
The suicide attacks on July 7, 2005, killed 52 victims and injured nearly 800 others when four bombs went off at Edgware Road, Aldgate and near Russell Square Tube stations, and on a bus in Tavistock Square.
The figures from the poll show there has been a large decrease in the proportion of people who think multiculturalism benefits Britain.
Just 37 per cent felt that multiculturalism made Britain a better place to live while 38 per cent said it makes the country worse, according to the poll.
This is a marked dip from a 2005 poll by the research company IPSOS Mori, in which 62 per cent people said multiculturalism made Britain a better place.
Taken before the recent beach massacre which killed at least 30 British tourists in Tunisia, the poll showed a marked rise in negative attitudes towards Muslims.
The poll also showed a decrease in proportion of people agreeing that most British Muslims were “peaceful, law- abiding citizens who deplore terror attacks in the name of Islam”.
Just a fifth of people (20 per cent) said this phrase applied to “practically all” Muslims, and 60 per cent said it applied to most Muslims, a decrease from 23 per cent and 64 per cent respectively 10 years ago.
More people — 15 per cent — now agree with the statement that “a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country” and are prepared to “condone or even carry out acts of terrorism”. A decade ago, only 10 per cent of people agreed with this statement.
YouGov polled 1,578 British adults for the daily between June 23 and 24, 2015.
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