Poll confirms Muslim Americans’ positive view of US

Henry J. Reske

“Gallup poll: Most Muslim Americans loyal to US” Courtesy of Newsmax.com. August 2, 2011.

With the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks approaching, 93 percent of Muslim Americans say they are loyal to the United States. The view of Muslim loyalty is shared by a majority of the major religious groups in the United States, a new poll examining Muslim attitudes has found.

The poll, conducted by a Gallup-affiliated research group, found that 80 percent of Jews believed Muslim Americans were loyal, a view shared by 59 percent of Catholics and 56 percent of Protestants. It also found that Muslim and Jewish Americans had similar views on the Mideast and Al Qaeda.

“Muslim Americans and Jewish Americans—the two major US religious groups with the biggest stake in the decades-long Middle East conflict—have similar views about how that conflict might be resolved,” a summary of the report said. “A substantial majority of Muslim Americans (81 percent) and Jewish Americans (78 percent) support a future in which an independent Palestinian state would coexist alongside of Israel.

“Jewish Americans are also among the least likely religious groups to believe that Muslim Americans sympathize with Al Qaeda. Seventy percent of Jewish Americans say they do not believe Muslim Americans feel this way. The only religious group more certain that Muslim Americans do not sympathize with Al Qaeda is Muslim Americans themselves, at 92 percent.”

The poll, “Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom, and the Future,” examined US Muslims’ political, social and spiritual views ten years after September 11. The poll was conducted by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center and interviewed 2,482 adults in February, March, and October 2010.

“It’s not a completely rosy picture,” Mohamed Younis, a main author of the study told The New York Times. “The prejudice and discrimination are definitely there, and that’s something we have consistently seen in the data.

“But at the same time many of the people in the Muslim-American community seem to be doing relatively well, and part of their doing well is being able to be full-fledged Americans, to participate in the American experience.”

Henry J. Reske

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