Muslims Remain Loyal and Hopeful

A vast majority of Muslim Americans say they are loyal to the United States and remain optimistic about the future according to a recently published Gallup poll. While Muslim Americans are among the most likely of religious groups to experience discrimination, nine out of ten said their co-religionists in the U.S. were not in any way sympathetic to Al Qaeda or other extremist groups. The poll conducted by phone from Feb. 10 to March 11, 2010 and from Oct. 1 to 21, 2010 by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center shows contradictions to the stereotype of Muslim Americans, as a people who are alienated and a discontented religious minority. The New York Times (click here for the article) who interviewed the senior analyst and an author of the study, Mohamed Younis said that "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." 

Additionally the poll found Muslim Americans were the most likely of any religious group to express confidence in the fairness of elections. This may be because of their high levels of support of President Obama, a president who pledged to repair relationships with the Muslim world the researchers speculated. 

These are pretty impressive findings given that almost half of Muslim Americans also said that they had experienced some form of racial or religious discrimination in the past year alone. Which is a far higher tendency than what Mormons, Jews, Catholics, and Protestants said they experience. Something also very interesting is American Jews believe most among any other religious group, other than Muslims, that American Muslims are loyal to the United States. 

Maybe it is true that there are still prejudices towards these religious groups, but what is also true is that what we have been seen as to become the stereotype is not realistic. That maybe, our best allies in reducing extremism in the Middle East, specifically talking of the form of Islamic (note that terrorists, extremists, and those who are our enemies is something not unique to the Muslim world) and bridging the gap between a century old culture is treat these people with respect and to not assume them as anything different than what other Americans are. Of course people will disagree over religious beliefs, as has been the case since the dawn of time, but this can be a first step in bringing peace to a region as well as back home.