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Doha: "The majority of a billion Muslims worldwide cling to religious values and long for Western freedoms, but they reject clerics running the state and are critical of Western politics rather culture or religions." These are some of the findings of the largest ever world poll on Muslim public opinion to be released next month in a book titled 'Who Speaks for Islam, What a Billion Muslims Think'.
Authors John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed presented an advance copy of the book on the sidelines of the fifth US-Islamic World Forum that concluded in Doha on Monday.
Based on the results of the Gallup’s World Poll, the book aims to portray the opinions of what authors describe as the "silent majority" of the 1.3 billion Muslims, who find little space in the Western media coverage of the Islamic world.
"There are some key findings in this world poll that we have summarised in the book that go against the conventional thinking about Muslims’ opinions," said John Esposito, a leading expert on the Muslim world and founder of Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding, in his presentation.
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