A survey published Friday has found that Muslims in Germany value the country's freedom of religion, but complain that they face discrimination because most of them are not German.

The government-funded survey, conducted in four main cities, concluded 10 per cent of Muslims were hostile to democracy.

Only 5 per cent said they supported the use of force so that Islam would prevail, but nearly half of the 1,000 respondents said force was justified to defend Islam if it was threatened by the West.

The study was conducted by Hamburg-based sociologists Katrin Brettfeld and Peter Wetzels.

Practically all said that they could practice Islam without hindrance in Germany and that this was a positive feature.

But more than half the Muslims complained at discrimination on account of their ethnic origins, with one in five saying they had experienced an incident of racism in the past 12 months.

Bekir Alboga, spokesman for the coordinating council of German Islamic bodies, said in Cologne that the report showed there was practically no difference between the attitudes of young Muslims and young non-Muslims to democracy and the rule of law.

The survey, commissioned by the interior ministry, showed 90 per cent of Muslims in Germany agreed that suicide attacks were cowardly and damaging to the Islamic cause. [Link]

THE number of Scots who hold discriminatory attitudes towards Muslims has increased over the last three years following the terrorist attacks in London, new figures showed yesterday.

As increased immigration from around the world changes the social make-up of Scotland, the latest survey of attitudes showed the majority of people are willing to embrace different cultures.

But despite government campaigns to tackle racism, a hardcore of people continue to believe prejudice is acceptable. And while attitudes to gay people and women have improved, one in five people think civil partnerships are wrong and one in seven think a woman's place is in the home.

In particular, attitudes towards Muslims and ethnic minorities have deteriorated in recent years. Half of those surveyed considered the increasing number of Muslims in the country as a cultural threat and one in five feared ethnic minorities would take their jobs.

Equality groups said such attitudes are unacceptable in the 21st century and called for the "silent majority" to speak out against prejudice....

rof Curtice said the group that appears to have suffered the worse in recent years is Muslims.

He suggested this was because of the ongoing "war on terror" and the attacks on London in 2005.

In 2006, 50 per cent of people said that Scotland would begin to lose its identity if more Muslims came to live here compared to 38 per cent in 2003. Over the same period there was a four-point increase in the proportion who say they would be unhappy about a relative forming a relationship with a Muslim.

Dr Salah Baltagui, of the Muslim Council of Scotland and Scottish Interfaith Council, said prejudice remains a reality.

He said the way to address the problem was to tackle stereotypes and introduce more people to Muslims.

"This is happening and what we have to do is try to help people find out more about Muslims and break down the stereotypes," he said. [Link]

Does familiarity breed contempt? Not according to a new survey of post-9/11 attitudes toward three cultural minorities in Canada, which shows unambiguously that the more people get to know members of the country's Jewish, Muslim and Sikh communities, the more they like them.

"It's very clear that exposure to others breaks down stereotypes," said Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies, which released results of the poll to CanWest News Service on the eve of Tuesday's sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. [Link]