27% of UK young people don’t trust Muslims, 12% don’t trust Christians.

I’ve been looking over a BBC/ComRes survey on the attitudes of young people (aged 18-24) relating to prejudice and discrimination. Of course, the survey doesn’t actually measure discrimination, but attitudes toward several different groups, particularly ethnic and religious. Check out the BBC Newsbeat for a write-up, and of course the survey results in cross-tab format (480 page PDF) if you’re so inclined.

The “big number” is that “over a quarter” of UK young people don’t trust Muslims, and that 28% think that the country would be better off with fewer Muslims. This is of course notable and worrying. But interestingly, 12% don’t trust Christians and 17% think the country would be better of with fewer Christians. Between 13-16% don’t trust Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jews, and a rather consistent 14% think the country would be better off with fewer people of each of those groups. So while the rates of distrust of Muslims might be high, the rates of distrust for each other religion are higher than I would have expected.

Atheists were not asked about, and I’d like to know why. It seems like a relevant group, when 36.7% of Scots identified themselves with ‘no religion’ on the most recent census. Are Athiests (or ‘no religionists’) universally trusted such that we don’t need to ask about how people feel about them?

Here are some of the statistics that I’ve pulled out from the data. Scots seem to be more trusting and have higher opinions of the groups across the board. One could also take a look at how LGBTQ people, educated, uneducated, etc. view various groups.

Q.9 Now thinking specifically about religious groups and immigrants, would you say that you generally trust or do not trust each of the following groups?