What Americans Think about Muslims

[Lady Macbeth]

Engagement over IsolationSharing the results of a recent poll examining Americans' surprising attitudes toward Muslims, Dalia Mogahed, author and Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, demonstrates the importance of perceptions, and what can be done to change them


A "new way forward" with Muslims: Barack Obama during a fast breaking ceremony at the end of ramadan in the White House

The American people and their openness to Muslim communities will in many ways determine the success of US President Barack Obama's global engagement initiative, which he launched on his inauguration day a year ago by calling for a "new way forward" with Muslims. Change will depend in large part on how Americans think, and it is therefore crucial to understand American perceptions of Muslims and Islam.

How much do Americans know about Islam and Muslims? What characteristics define Muslims in most Americans' minds? And, perhaps most importantly, what factors make prejudice or tolerance more likely?

A new study released recently by the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies sheds light on these questions and many more. The following is what we discovered when we interviewed a thousand representative Americans on their perceptions of several faith communities, with in-depth analysis of their perceptions of Muslims and Islam.

Prejudice against Muslims, and Jews

Americans are more likely to admit harbouring prejudice toward Muslims than any other faith community that Gallup studied. Forty-three percent of Americans admit to having at least some prejudice toward Muslims. This is more than twice the number that expresses some prejudice toward Jews, Buddhists or Christians.


"The American people and their openness to Muslim communities will in many ways determine the success of US President Barack Obama's global engagement initiative," writes Dalia Mogahed

We also discovered that being prejudiced toward Jews makes a person more likely to express prejudice toward Muslims than any other factor studied. Of all the variables we looked at, from age to education to perceptions, the factor that was most strongly associated with anti-Muslim prejudice is not level of education, whether or not one knows a Muslim, or even one's opinion of Islam-it is anti-Jewish prejudice.

These results suggest that anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment are related phenomena, and that organisations fighting these social ills must work more closely together since they appear to be fighting for a common goal.

Muslims and gender equality

Frequent religious service attendance makes Americans half as likely to express extreme prejudice toward Muslims. For example, frequent church attendance makes someone less, not more likely to express prejudice toward Muslims.


Dalia Mogahed, American Muslim scholar of Egyptian origin. She was selected as an advisor by U.S. President Barack Obama on the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships


The survey also revealed that prejudice, or the lack thereof, is more strongly associated with one's opinion of Islam than with whether or not someone personally knows a Muslim. If someone does not know a Muslim personally, it does make him or her more likely to express extreme prejudice toward the group. But, perhaps surprisingly, knowing a Muslim does not increase the likelihood of a person expressing no prejudice.

What these results suggest is that knowing a Muslim may help soften extreme prejudice, but it is not enough to eliminate it.

Our survey results also tell us that American perceptions of what Muslims think are sometimes significantly different from what Muslims really do think. Roughly eight in ten Americans (81 per cent) believe that most Muslims do not value gender equality. However, according to Gallup research in Muslim-majority societies around the world, the majority of Muslims, including 85 per cent of Saudi Arabians and 89 per cent of Iranians, do believe that men and women should have equal legal rights.

Greater interaction more of a benefit than a threat

Despite what may seem like negative results, the polls indicate that Americans' views of Muslims and Islam have generally improved over the past two years. Moreover, roughly seven out of ten Americans also say that greater interaction between the West and Muslim communities is more of a benefit than a threat. The majority of Egyptians, Saudis and Indonesians share this view. In fact, overall, Muslim approval of the United States and its leadership is on the rise.

Ultimately, this study demonstrates that perceptions are not permanent, which is promising. But the public needs to be educated about Muslim beliefs. For example, Americans who believe that most Muslims support equal rights between men and women are twice as likely to express no prejudice toward them, indicating that we require a greater awareness of the fact that most Muslims worldwide support gender equality.

We also know from the results of the study that prejudice is not isolated to one group, creating an opportunity for greater interfaith partnership to help address this issue.

The majority of both Americans and the world's Muslims want engagement over isolation, a process that starts at home – through greater understanding of our own perceptions.

Qantara.de - Engagement over Isolation

[Neo]

Has anyone seen the movie Crossing Over starring Harrison Ford?
Thats a good reflection of how American society sees muslims; "they're all terrorists"!

[vinod2070]

I am sure people regaling in genocides of their own ancestors and other human beings by Muslims contribute in no mean measure to this perception.

[Adux]

Its quite easy since most muslim posters have turned the Internet into some Global Caliphate.

[Solid Beast]

Muslims living in the west get a bad rep for very little reason. It's the crazy bassturds back home that give everyone a bad name. Nobody is whipping their wives or beheading people in America or Europe. These misconceptions are being fueled by what people see extremists doing on TV, unchecked by the government with massive ideological support of the local populations. In fact my perceptions are not so rosy either. It seems that in one way or another, some "Islamic" government is always the culprit for demonizing Islam and opening it up for logical criticism if not open attack.

[Adux]

Solid Beast,

There are couple of Pakistani Defense websites, heck even some members over here, who spread hate and vile on other people purely on the basis that they are not muslims, further if you go to a famous Pakistani Defense website, you will be quite preplexed in seeing that muslims especially pakistani's from UK and even other parts of Europe, but mostly UK are nut crazy to the point of being traitorous to the country they live in.

[Mast Qalandar]

Islam goin to flourish everywheres, no boms or laws going stop us. People will accepting through their own will. War on Islam will back fire.

[vinod2070]

^^ Don't you think you have to present a better example for that to happen!

Are Taliban and AQ going to do it for you?

[Adux]

Originally Posted by Mast Qalandar

Islam goin to flourish everywheres, no boms or laws going stop us. People will accepting through their own will. War on Islam will back fire.

You are challenging people's way of life and what they have been brought up in. It is quite similar to Hitler calling out that he will conquer the world. Such threats, as it will be taken as a threat will not be taken be kindly by the rest of the world. The only reasons muslims survive even though they have provoked and carried out the henious of crimes , is because the rest of world is decent which is why though muslims dont have the capacity to carry out their threats, they get away with their threats. Otherwise, the Middle east would have been a glassbowl on Sept 12 2001 at the flick of a switch. This call for Global Caliphate, is really pissing of people! Me included.

[Al-Zakir]

Muslims in America seek understanding
published on Monday, February 22, 2010 8:24 PM MST

By GAIL SCHONTZLER Chronicle Staff Writer



Nine years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, many Americans still fear Muslims and ask the question, “Why do they hate us?”


Hussam Ayloush, 40, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Los Angeles, dealt with the question Monday at Montana State University as keynote speaker a day-long conference, Islam in America, sponsored by the MSU Muslim Students Association.

Former President George Bush’s answer n that terrorists hate us because of “our freedoms” n is obviously wrong, Ayloush said during a panel discussion. The reason Muslims around the world have problems with the United States is because of our policies, not our values, he said. Their No. 1 grievance is the plight of the Palestinian people, as the 9/11 Commission concluded.

Most people deal with grievances in legitimate ways, like lobbying or sending relief supplies, Ayloush said. Unfortunately, a few “deviant” Muslims, like Al Qaeda terrorists, have embraced violence and misinterpret Islam to justify it.

Ayloush argued it makes no more sense to fear and condemn all Muslims for the “tragic” 9/11 attacks by a few terrorists than to fear and condemn all Christians because a few fundamentalists have killed abortion doctors. Lots of people dislike the IRS, but most don’t fly planes into buildings and kill innocent people, as just happened in Texas, he added.


Today there are up to 8 million Muslims living in the United States, including immigrants from many nations, their American children, foreign students, engineers, auto workers and African-Americans. There are two Muslims in Congress, and 10,000 in the U.S. military. Muslims in American probably enjoy more rights to practice their religion here than anywhere else, he said.

An immigrant himself, Ayloush left Lebanon as a teenager for America, studied engineering and became a U.S. citizen. He said he believes America has “the best man-designed political system on earth,” which lets people debate and dissent.

“It’s worth fighting for, defending and celebrating,” he said.

But many American Muslims, he added, feel “like second-class citizens,” who are demonized on TV as “the enemy.”

About a quarter of the world’s people, 1.6 billion, are Muslims, and they are very diverse. Only about 18 percent are Arabs and fit the stereotype many Americans hold.

The world’s Muslims don’t fit our stereotype of hating America either. In every Muslim country’s capital, people line up at 2 a.m. to get visas to come to America, he said. They proudly display the diplomas they’ve earned at American universities in their homes or offices.

Since the 9/11 attacks and 2006 London subway bombings, CAIR has collected on its Web site messages of condemnation by hundreds of Muslim leaders and scholars from all over the world.

“We need to emphasize humanizing one another,” Ayloush said. “We need to insist again and again to reject hate-mongering.”

American attitudes may be slowly changing, said panel member David Grimland, a retired U.S. Information Agency spokesman who worked in U.S. embassies from Turkey to Bangladesh and now lives in Montana.

Grimland cited a Pew poll that in 2007 found 58 percent of Americans thought Islam was more likely to encourage violence than other faiths. By 2009, that had fallen to 38 percent.

Still, there are e-mail messages all over the Internet that spread a “twisted, aggressive, hateful, phobic” view of Islam, Grimland said.

“They take one or two spoonfuls of truth, a few cups of innuendo,” add it to “outright lies and disinformation” and end up with the fearful message that “this is a religious war against America,” Grimland said.

It’s vital that Americans learn to understand, not fear, Islam, he said.

Panel member Tim Spring, Lutheran pastor at Christus Collegium, said Christianity and Islam share common values of caring for the poor, the hungry and powerless.

MSU electrical engineering student Monther Abusultan, a Palestinian and head of the Muslim Students Association, said the two goals of the annual conference are to help Montanans feel comfortable with Islam, and to help Muslims not feel afraid to feel accepted. In general, he said, people in Bozeman accept difference cultures.

“They’re friendly,” he said.

Muslims in America seek understanding - Daily Chronicle