22 May, 2007

Headlines and hate

Compare these headlines:
Some US Muslims Justify Suicide Attacks
or
Muslims 'well integrated' in US
or
Poll: 1 in 4 young U.S. Muslims support suicide bombings
or
Most U.S. Muslims reject suicide bombings

Each of these headlines refers to the same story, a recently-completed Pew Research Center survey of Muslim Americans, the first of its kind ever undertaken. Here is the result in a nutshell, according to Pew:
"The first-ever, nationwide, random sample survey of Muslim Americans finds them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world."

You can download the complete report and view the results here.

People will report the Pew study they way they want to, as is the nature of statistics. You can chose to highlight that a strong majority of Muslim Americans do not see a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society, believe newcomers should adapt and integrate into society, and reject extremism and terrorism, or you can highlight the 5% that expressed favorable views of Al-Qaeda. I am not saying ignore the 5% or any of the other parts of the survey, but please put them in context.

One result that everybody in the U.S. should pay attention to:
53% of those polled report it has gotten to be more difficult to be Muslim in the U.S. since September 11, 2001. With incidents like this, or this, or this, or this, or maybe if you ask Alia Ansari...it's not hard to see why those respondents feel this way.

Salaam.


1 comment:

Philistini said...
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