According to a study of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”, Muslims in Europe have a more positive view of the European Union (EU) compared to all other groups of the European population. “On average, Muslims have a higher level of trust in EU institutions than members of other religious or non-religious groups such as Christians and those unaffiliated with any religion,” says Prof. Dr. Bernd Schlipphak, political scientist at the Cluster of Excellence. “Of all the groups analysed from 16 European countries, Muslims are the only ones who, for example, rate their trust in the European Parliament higher than 5, on a scale from 1 to 10. Currently, there is a lot of discussion about the lack of acceptance of the EU among many sections of the population – yet the majority of the Muslim immigrants from the first and second generation do not belong to this group of critics.” At the same time, the results are in contrast to EU attitudes of Muslims in Arab countries: “We were able to demonstrate in earlier studies that only a minority of the Arab population has a positive opinion of the EU.”