More than over a quarter of Muslim Americans believe that Zionists or Israel were behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, 25 years on from the tragedy, a new study has found.
The study, carried out by the Jerusalem Centre for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA), compared the views of a sample of 416 Muslim Americans with a 513-strong general population sample, as well as an “isolated non-Muslim” cohort made up of the general population group, minus the 24 Muslim individuals that were a part of the control sample.
These 24 people were counted as part of both the general population and Muslim American samples.
The data showed that 27.4 per cent of respondents in the Muslim group supported such a view, compared to 16.7 per cent among the general population and 10.2 per cent among the non-Muslim sample.
Likewise, a majority of non-Muslim respondents, 62.2 per cent, believed that the attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda, but only 23.5 per cent of Muslim respondents held the terror group accountable.
The study also found that among respondents under 30 from across both cohorts, only 40 per cent believed al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks, and 28.5 per cent claimed they were too ‘unsure’ to give a solid answer on who was to blame.
When the data is divided by political alignment, the population who are aligned with the Democrats, again across both cohorts, are more likely to believe Zionists were responsible, with 23 per cent subscribing to that theory, compared to 15.9 per cent of Republicans and 13.6 per cent of Independents.
Similarly, 18.5 per cent of Muslim American respondents shared the belief that the US Government or the CIA had carried out the attacks, compared to 9.3 per cent of the general population and 7.4 per cent of the isolated sample.
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