Anon

Negative Perception Of Islam Increasing
Poll Numbers in U.S. Higher Than in 2001

By Claudia Deane and Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 9, 2006; A01

As the war in Iraq grinds into its fourth year, a growing proportion of Americans are expressing unfavorable views of Islam, and a majority now say that Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.


The poll found that nearly half of Americans -- 46 percent -- have a negative view of Islam, seven percentage points higher than in the tense months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when Muslims were often targeted for violence.

The survey comes at a time of increasing tension; the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq show little sign of ending, and members of Congress are seeking to block the Bush administration's attempt to hire an Arab company to manage operations at six of the nation's ports. Also, Americans are reading news of deadly protests by Muslims over Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.

Conservative and liberal experts said Americans' attitudes about Islam are fueled in part by political statements and media reports that focus almost solely on the actions of Muslim extremists.

According to the poll, the proportion of Americans who believe that Islam helps to stoke violence against non-Muslims has more than doubled since the attacks, from 14 percent in January 2002 to 33 percent today.

The survey also found that one in three Americans have heard prejudiced comments about Muslims lately. In a separate question, slightly more (43 percent) reported having heard negative remarks about Arabs. One in four Americans admitted to harboring prejudice toward Muslims, the same proportion that expressed some personal bias against Arabs.

Though the two groups are often linked in popular discourse, most of the world's Muslims are not of Arab descent. For example, the country with the largest Muslim population is Indonesia.

As a school bus driver in Chicago, Gary McCord, 65, dealt with many children of Arab descent. "Some of the best families I've ever had were some of my Muslim families," he said in a follow-up interview. "They were so nice to me." He now works for a Palestinian Christian family, whose members he says are "really marvelous."

But his good feelings do not extend to Islam. "I don't mean to sound harsh or anything, but I don't like what the Muslim people believe in, according to the Koran. Because I think they preach hate," he said.

As for the controversial cartoons of Muhammad, he said Arabs seem hypersensitive about religion. "I think it's been blown out of proportion," he said.

Frederick Cole, a welder in Roosevelt, Utah, acknowledged: "As far as being prejudiced against them, I'd have to say maybe a little bit. If I were to go through an airport and I saw one out of the corner of my eye, I'd say, 'I wonder what he's thinking.' " Still, Cole, 30, said, "I don't think the religion is based on just wanting to terrorize people."

A total of 1,000 randomly selected Americans were interviewed March 2-5 for this Post-ABC News poll. The margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus three percentage points.

Americans who said they understood Islam were more likely to see the religion overall as peaceful and respectful. But they were no less likely to say it harbors harmful extremists, and they were also no less likely to have prejudiced feelings against Muslims.

In Gadsden, Ala., Ron Hardy, an auto parts supplier, said Arabs own a lot of stores in his area and "they're okay." But, Hardy, 41, said "I do think" Islam has been "hijacked by some militant-like guys."

Edward Rios, 31, an engineer in McHenry, Ill., said he feels that Islam "is as good a religion as any other" yet vengeance seems to be "built into their own set of beliefs: If someone attacks our people, it is your duty to defend them. . . . I don't think Christianity has anything like that."

James J. Zogby, president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute, said he is not surprised by the poll's results. Politicians, authors and media commentators have demonized the Arab world since 2001, he said.

"The intensity has not abated and remains a vein that's very near the surface, ready to be tapped at any moment," Zogby said. "Members of Congress have been exploiting this over the ports issue. Radio commentators have been talking about it nonstop."

Juan Cole, a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan, agreed, saying Americans "have been given the message to respond this way by the American political elite, mass media and by select special interests."

Cole said he was shocked when a radio talk show host asked him if Islamic extremists would set off a nuclear bomb in the United States in the next six months. "It was ridiculous. I think anti-Arab racism and profiling has become respectable," he said.

Ronald Stockton, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan at Dearborn who helped conduct a study of Arabs in the Detroit area and on views of them held by non-Arabs, said an exceptionally high percentage of non-Muslims feels the media depicts Arabs unfairly, yet still holds negative opinions.

"You're getting a constant drumbeat of negative information about Islam," he said.

Michael Franc, vice president of government relations for the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that the survey responses "seems to me to be a real backlash against Islam" and that congressional leaders do not help the problem by sometimes using language that links all Muslims with extremists.

Polling director Richard Morin contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...802221_pf.html

Bulgaroctonus

As many people here know, I have prejudice against Islam. Furthermore, I don't think any special interests were involved, at least not obviously. My prejudice against Islam was born along with my anger on September 11 2001. It is simple, I was outraged at the attacks. Not only did Muslims commit the attacks, but the Arab world celebrated the attacks. I hope everyone remembers the newsreels of Palestinians cheering in the streets as the towers fell.

According to Thomas Friedman, humiliation is the single most underestimated factor in international relations9/11 was an attempt to humiliate and enrage the United States - an attack committed by Muslims.

I do not contend that all Muslims are terrorists. However, there are pervasive elements in the Koran and in Muslim (especially Arab) culture that are directly responsible for the deaths of Americans, Israelis, and Europeans.

Professor Cole's theory is also hard to support mathematically. Could the special interests of a few create such a vastly negative image of Islam? Perhaps during the Red Scare such tactics were possible, but I do not think that mass-delusion about Islam has occurred today. There are actual incidents that fuel American rage against Islam. A simple glance at the newspaper (New York Times, Washington Post, etc. will elucidate these outrages. For example, the recent beheading of Christian charity worker Tom Fox by the terrorist group Swords of Righteousness.

There are deserving targets of our mercy, and Islam is not one of them.

Shek

Professor Cole is an idiot. He is one of the apologist mouthpieces who is a fifth columnist IMO.

__________________
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

Anon

I agree that the authors conclusions are full of crap. Zogbys comments likewise are full of crap.

People are antimuslim cause they cant go 5 minutes without beheading some aid worker or blowing themselves up.

Our perception will get worse and worse until we get sick of it(almost certainly after another huge attack), and then they'll get what they've had coming to them since as long as i can remember.

We shoulda put an stop to this crap once and for all when the Iranians went nuts in 1979.

-----------------------------------

"Nations do not survive by setting examples for other nations. Nations survive by making examples of other nations".
~Stuart Slade.

gunnut

Any relations to the Zogby poll?

Shek

Yes. One and the same.

troung

It can also be viewed as an attempt to create a hold war of sorts by getting the USA to start blowing **** up to push people in the Islamic World towards radicalism. I have heard that idea floated as well.

I owuld not call that going nuts... just having a revolution...

gunnut

That explains the bogus poll on American military personnel based in Iraq.

dalem

That's funny, I could swear I was given the message by spastic and psychopathic Muslims on the one hand, and rationalizing and excusing Muslims on the other.

Cole is a wang of the first order.

-dale

-{SpoonmaN}-

I'll bet a lot of Muslims dont trust Americans either. It really is a two-way street, like everything. If Americans were less ignorant of Islam, they'd know it's not the religion that's at fault for Al-Qaeda's treachery, and indeed that most Muslims dont like the base a whole lot (they have killed a hell of a lot of Muslims, in fact probably a lot more than Americans during their so-called 'jihad'), since they are simply self-proclaimed holy-warriors who use the religion as a recruiting tool for their own political ends. And of course, if Muslims were less ingorant of Americans, they'd know that they're not all arrogant, morally bankrupt crusaders trying to destroy Islam so they can get their claws on the Middle East's oil. Like I always say, ignorance is a *****, cause it's easy to live in and hard to kill.
And seriously, while it's bad that sectarian predjudice is spreading in the USA, is anyone actually shocked by this?

dalem

And I'll bet that a lot of cats like eating moths.

See? I can do non sequiturs too.

Streets aren't desirous or accepting of sawing my head off while I scream.

I'll see you my apparent ignorance of Islam and raise you your apparent ignorance of arithmetic. Compare the numbers of non-Muslims who take to the streets every month and call for the murder of infidels (i.e. me) and the number of Muslims who do the same. Then compare the numbers of non-Muslims who are appalled by such calls for murder against the number of Muslims who are appalled by such.

You have 5 minutes. Show your work. Go!

Whoah whoah! Are you saying that there are indeed some American "arrogant, morally bankrupt crusaders trying to destroy Islam so they can get their claws on the Middle East's oil."? And that such people, if they exist, justify the sawing off living heads in the name of Allah?

Some prejudice is common sense.

-dale

-{SpoonmaN}-

Oh please do some math of your own:
There are well over a billion Muslims on Earth.

How many people have had their heads sawn off by Muslims?
Hundreds?
Try to figure out the proportions.

How many people took to the streets over say, the Prophet Mohammed Cartoons thing?

Maybe hundreds of thousands.
Do the math on that one.

How many people have died in direct Muslim terrorist attacks on the USA?
A bit over 3000.

How many Muslims have died in terrorist attacks by Muslim terrorists?
A hell of a lot more than 3000.

Now here, this is the clincher, I dont know what your opinion on other religions is, but Christianity is by no means held soley by innocents:

How many Muslims have been killed in terrorist attacks by Christians? Here's the very worst two I can think of.

Srebrenica: 7000+

Sabrah and Shatilla: 1500+ (Many of them were raped, tortured and mutilated first).

Islam itself is not to blame, ignorant, violent thugs are. And they permiate every religion. Just because it wasn't unfolding live in front of the world doesn't mean it didn't happen. But I bet you don't care. I make one final point: Have you ever bothered to learn anything about what the Koran really teaches? Do you know that 'Allah' is in fact the very same God worshipped by Christians and Jews?

dalem

Problem is that it's a very violent and extreme subset that is tacitly supported by the vast majority of those billion.

Actually the clincher is that we are not talking about Xnty. But please continue to sail right past my point. And theirs.

And the spastics use the term "infidel" to mean anyone who isn't practicing their particular brand of Islam - could be a Xn, could be a Buddhist, could be a Shiite or Sunni, etc.

Again, no group is innocent but it's followers of Islam that are the most consistantly offensive in this category, and in the name OF Islam to boot.

For instance, the Catholics and Protestants still trying to blow each other up in Ireland over the last 100 years were divided along religious lines but their struggle was a political struggle. Paddy tried to kill His Royal Highness, or whatever, in the name of Ireland, not Jesus.

In fact I do know that. Which is what makes their barbaric antics even more startling in this day and age.

And of course Islam is to blame. What's behind every embassy burning, bomb-belt, SUV-driving into crowds, and boxcutter slicing across a stewardesses' throat? Some yahoo waving a Koran. Wake up.

-dale

Ray

__________________


"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

Ray