Abu Dhabi Gallup Center The Atlantic U.S. Muslims Say

They're Patriotic and Optimistic About Future

August 2, 2011 By John Hudson

The Brian Lehrer Show

Muslim Americans Ten Years After 9/11

August 2, 2011 By Brian Lehrer

The New York Times Muslims Say They‘re Loyal Americans, Poll Finds

August 2, 2011 By Laurie Goodstein

Politico U.S. Muslims don‘t back terror, according to poll

August 2, 2011 By Elias Groll

Voice of America Muslim Americans‘ Optimism Growing

August 2, 2011

MSNBC More Muslim Americans believe they are thriving, poll says

August 2, 2011 By Wendell Marsh

Reuters More Muslim Americans believe they are thriving, poll says

August 2, 2011 By Wendell Marsh

The Washington Post Poll: U.S. Muslims optimistic about future

August 2, 2011 By Michelle Boorstein

CNN Muslim Americans are most optimistic religious group, study says

August 2, 2011 By Alan Duke

Muslim Matters Insights from the New Gallup Report: Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom and the Future

August 2, 2011 By Abdul-Malik Ryan

New York Magazine American Jews Think Pretty Highly of American Muslims

August 2, 2011 By Dan Amira

Jewish Telegraph Agency

Poll: American Jews and Muslims share common values

August 2, 2011

UPI.com Muslims condemn attacking civilians: Poll

August 2, 2011

NewsMax.com Gallup Poll: Most Muslim-Americans Loyal to US

August 2, 2011 By Henry J. Reske

National Post Muslim community ‗thriving‘ in United States: poll

August 2, 2011 By Wendell Marsh

International Business Times

Muslim Americans Feel Optimistic, Patriotic: Poll

August 2, 2011

TPM Gallup Report: Muslim Americans See Hope In Their Economic Future

August 2, 2011 By Kyle Leighton

Haaretz.com Gallup poll reveals common ground for Jewish and Muslim Americans

August 2, 2011 By Shlomo Shamir

The American Prospect

New Gallup Poll On Religion And Violence

August 2, 2011 By Adam Serwer

The Washington Post Muslims in U.S. optimistic about future, poll finds

August 2, 2011 By Tara Bahrampour and Michelle Boorstein

Yahoo News More Muslim August 2, 2011 By Wendell Marsh

Americans believe they are thriving, poll says

The Atlantic A Fascinating Look at the Political Views of Muslim Americans

August 3, 2011 By Conor Friedersdorf

The Vancouver Sun American Muslims upbeat about life in U.S.: Poll

August 2, 2011 By Daniel Lippman

PBS NewsHour Survey: Muslim-Americans Have Rosier Outlook Than Other Americans

August 2, 2011

AFP US Muslims optimistic, but face discrimination: poll

August 2, 2011

The Jewish Daily Forward

American Jews Not Prejudiced Against Muslims, New Poll Finds

August 3, 2011 By Nathan Burstein

OnIslam American Muslims Loyal, Optimistic: Poll

August 3, 2011

The Christian Science Monitor

Muslim Americans are optimistic despite discrimination, new poll says

August 2, 2011 By Mark Guarino

The Christian Century Poll: American Muslims hopeful about life in the U.S.

August 2, 2011 By Lauren Markoe

First Things Where Muslims Place Their Faith

August 3, 2011 By Matthew Cantirino

Press TV New Report Highlights American Muslim Perceptions

August 3, 2011 By Marjan Asi

Short News In America, Muslims Most Opposed to Violence Against Civilians

August 3, 2011 By Ben Reily

Baptist Joint Committee

Muslim Americans Hopeful for Future

August 2, 2011 By Don Byrd

The National US poll confronts stereotypes of American Muslims

August 3, 2011 By Omar Karmi

Commentary Poll: American Muslims Don’t Care for CAIR

August 2, 2011 By Alana Goodman

Think Progress Gallup Poll: American Muslims Aren’t Anti-Israel And Reject Violence

August 2, 2011 By Eli Clifton

IPS U.S. Muslims More Tolerant, Opposed to Violence than Other Faiths

August 2, 2011 By Jim Lobe

EpostMedia Muslims In The U.S.

Have Faith In Their Country

August 2, 2011 By Julie Mackenzie

Press TV 'Half of US Muslims face prejudice'

August 3, 2011

Boston Globe Muslims in US not disaffected, according to poll

August 3, 2011

The Dallas Morning News

Muslims in America August 3, 2011 By Gabriel Escobar

Daily Mail U.S. Muslims 'happiest and most optimistic major faith group after rapid rise in positivity on 2008'

August 3, 2011 By Daily Mail Reporter

Irish Times Muslims 'thriving' in United States

August 3, 2011 By Reuters

Voice of America Study: American Muslims Identify with US, Islam Equally

August 3, 2011 By Suzanne Presto

Examiner.com Gallup poll reveals CAIR is all bark, but no bite

August 3, 2011 By Jim Kouri

CentreDaily.com Poll: American Muslims upbeat about life in US

August 2, 2011 By Daniel Lippman

Miami Herald Poll: American Muslims upbeat about life in US

August 2, 2011 By Daniel Lippman

Al Jazeera August 2, 2011

BBC News August 2, 2011

CBC News August 2, 2011

AntiWar.com US Muslims More Tolerant, Opposed to Violence Than Other Faiths

August 3, 2011 By Jim Lobe

Turkish Press US Muslims optimistic, but face discrimination: poll

August 3, 2011 By AFP

Macon Telegraph Poll: American Muslims upbeat about life in US

August 2, 2011 Daniel Lippman

Arab Times Muslims Say They’re Thriving In US

August 2, 2011

Care2 Muslim-Americans Are The Most Optimistic Religious Group

August 3, 2011 By Amelia T.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/08/us-muslims-say-theyre-patriotic-and-optimistic-about-future/40717/

U.S. Muslims Say They're Patriotic and

Optimistic About Future

JOHN HUDSON11:44 AM ET220

A Gallup poll released today finds that Americans Muslims say they are loyal to the U.S. and feel more

politically enfranchised "even though they are more likely than other religious groups to say they recently

experienced discrimination," reports The New York Times. 60 percent of Muslims in the survey said they were

"thriving" in the U.S., which is more than any other religious group save for Jewish respondents and a jump of

19 points since 2008. "Muslim Americans are happier and more optimistic today than at the end of 2008," the

director of the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center told Reuters. 89 percent of Muslim Americans said violence against

civilians was never justifiable while only 71 and 79 percent of other religious groups responded the same way.

On many questions, Jews responded similarly to Muslims. In fact, Jews were the second most likely to call

Muslims loyal to the U.S., outnumbered only by Muslims who called Muslims loyal to the U.S. About two-thirds

of Muslims say they personally identify with the United States strongly, which was a similar response to how

strongly they identify with their religion. Still, other religious groups, including Protestants and Catholics,

identified more with the United States than their own religion. "The poll in many ways contradicts the

stereotype of Muslim Americans as an alienated and discontented religious minority," observes The

Times' Laurie Goodstein.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/2011/aug/02/muslim-americans-ten-years-after-911/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/us/03muslims.html?_r=1

Muslims Say They’re Loyal Americans, Poll Finds

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Published: August 2, 2011

A decade after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a Gallup poll released on Tuesday found that the vast majority of

Muslim Americans say they are loyal to the United States and optimistic about the future, even though they are

more likely than other religious groups to say they recently experienced discrimination.

Nine out of 10 Muslim Americans said that their co-religionists in the United States were not sympathetic to Al

Qaeda, the terrorist organization held responsible for the attacks 10 years ago. Majorities in other religious

groups agreed that Muslim Americans did not sympathize with Al Qaeda, although the percentages were much

lower.

The poll in many ways contradicts the stereotype of Muslim Americans as an alienated and discontented

religious minority. It was conducted by telephone from Feb. 10 to March 11, 2010, and Oct. 1 to 21, 2010, by

the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, a Gallup-affiliated research group based in the United Arab Emirates. The poll,

which included interviews with 2,482 adults of whom 475 said they were Muslim, has a margin of sampling

error of plus or minus seven percentage points for Muslims.

―It‘s not a completely rosy picture,‖ said Mohamed Younis, senior analyst with the Gallup Center for Muslim

Studies in Washington and a main author of the study.

―The prejudice and discrimination are definitely there, and that‘s something we have consistently seen in the

data,‖ Mr. Younis said. ―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.‖

The poll found that Muslim Americans were the most likely of any religious group to express confidence in the

fairness of elections. The researchers speculated that this might be because of their high levels of support for

President Obama, who said early in his administration that he would make it a priority to repair relationships

with the Muslim world.

Since the terrorist attacks 10 years ago, Muslim Americans have been the target of intense scrutiny by the

Federal Bureau of Investigation in counterterrorism investigations. Sixty percent of Muslims said in the survey

that they had confidence in the F.B.I. That was fewer than those in other religious groups: about 75 percent of

Americans in other religious groups said they had confidence in the F.B.I.

The sphere in which Muslim Americans were most critical of their country is in foreign policy. They are more

likely than any other religious group to call the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a mistake. Muslims also have the

lowest level of confidence in the United States military of any faith group (70 percent for Muslims compared

with more than 90 percent for all other religious groups, with the exception of atheists, with about 80 percent).

Two-thirds of Muslims who were asked the question said that the reason people in Muslim countries have

unfavorable views of the United States was ―based mostly on what the U.S. has done‖ — and not ―based

mostly on misinformation.‖

Among the most intriguing findings: two-thirds of American Muslims say they identify strongly with the United

States, about the same percentage as those who say they identify strongly with their religion. But other

religious groups identified far more than Muslims with the United States. Protestants, Catholics and Jews said

they identified with the United States far more strongly than they identified with their respective faiths.

Almost half of Muslim Americans said that they had experienced religious or racial discrimination in the last

year. That was far more than the members of any other religious group. About one-third of Mormons said they

had experienced discrimination in the last year, putting them second in that category after Muslims. About one-

fifth of Jews, Catholics and Protestants said they had experienced prejudice.

On many key questions in the poll, it was American Jews whose answers most resembled those of Muslims.

Jews were the most likely of any religious group besides Muslims to say that Muslims are loyal Americans, and

that the war in Iraq was a mistake. Jews were just as likely as Muslims to say that American Muslims face

prejudice.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60529.html

U.S. Muslims don’t back terror, according to poll

A Gallup poll found that U.S. Muslims are not sympathetic to al Qaeda. | AP PhotoClose By ELIAS GROLL | 8/2/11 3:02 PM EDT

The overwhelming majority of American Muslims say they are not sympathetic with terror groups like al Qaeda,

but they identify less strongly with the United States than other religious groups in the country, according to a

new poll on Tuesday.

While 69 percent of American Muslims identify either very strongly or extremely strongly with the U.S., that

compares with about 90 percent of Christians and Jews in the U.S. who hold those views, the Gallup survey

found.

- +

POLITICO 44

A full 91 percent of Protestants, 89 percent of Catholics, 86 percent of Jews and 92 percent of Mormons say

that they identify either very strongly or extremely strongly with the U.S.

American Muslims and Mormons tend to identify with their faith and the U.S. equally, but Catholics, Protestants

and Jews all said that they identified more with their country than with their religion, Gallup said.

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, American Muslims have been in the spotlight for a variety of

reasons, many of them associated with prejudice toward Muslims as supporters of terrorism.

An overwhelming number – 92 percent – of American Muslims said that Muslims in this country are not

sympathetic toward al Qaeda, but that number was significantly lower among other religious groups with 56

percent of Protestants, 63 percent of Catholics and 70 percent of Jews saying that American Muslims do

sympathize with the organization.

And Tuesday‘s poll echoed that experience, with nearly half of American Muslims saying they had experienced

religious or racial discrimination within the past year. About one-third of Mormons said that they had faced

discrimination, compared to only one-fifth of Jews, Catholics and Protestants.

American Muslims also overwhelmingly said that they opposed military attacks on civilians, with 78 percent

saying that such attacks are never justified and 21 percent saying they are sometimes justified. In other

religious groups – except Mormons – the proportion saying such attacks are sometimes justified is twice that.

The poll found that Muslim in the U.S. were broadly critical of American foreign policy, with 83 percent of

American Muslims saying the war in Iraq was a mistake, which, except for Jews and atheists, was about twice

as high a number than other religious groups.

Unlike other religious groups in the U.S., Muslims said that widely unfavorable views of the U.S. in

predominantly Islamic countries was caused by U.S. actions and not misinformation spread by those countries‘

governments. Two-thirds of Muslim Americans said they believed that U.S. actions had tarnished its

reputations, while about 70 percent of Protestants, Catholics and Mormons blamed the unfavorable views on

misinformation.

The poll was carried out by from Feb. 10, 2010 to March 11, 2010 and has a margin of error for Muslim

Americans of 6.6 percent. The margin of error for Protestants was 4.7 percent, for Catholics 6.4 percent, for

Jews 7.3 percent and for Mormons 8.3. percent. The poll surveyed a total of 2, 482 adults, 475 of whom were

Muslims.

http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2011/08/02/muslim-americans-optimism-growing/

Muslim Americans’ Optimism Growing

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011 at 4:35 pm UTC Posted 31 minutes ago

A survey by the Gallup polling organization indicates Muslim Americans feel more optimistic than in recent

years, but are more critical of U.S. foreign policy.

A Dubai-based branch of the Gallup polling centers released results of a two-year survey on Tuesday that

showed some 60 percent of American Muslims say they are ―thriving,‖ an increase of 19 percentage points

since 2008.

Study authors say the change in outlook may be due to improved economic conditions and an 80 percent

approval rating toward U.S. President Barack Obama, a Christian who has reached out to Muslim

communities.

Muslim Americans had less confidence than other religious groups in law enforcement and the military. Just 60

percent said they had confidence in the FBI, compared to 75 percent or more for other groups. And they were

more likely than any other religious group to say the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were mistakes.

Gallup says the data was taken from a sample of 3,883 self-identified Muslim American adults from January

2008 to April 9, 2011. The confidence level in the data is 95 percent.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43990865/ns/us_news-life/

More Muslim Americans believe they are thriving, poll says Gallup study cites their improving economic well-being and greater sense of belonging

Eric Thayer / REUTERS

An American flag hangs on a car outside the American Muslim Society mosque in Detroit on April 5.

By Wendell Marsh

updated 55 minutes ago

WASHINGTON — Muslim Americans are now more optimistic about their lives than any other major American

faith group as their economic well-being improves and they feel more politically enfranchised.

A Gallup study released on Tuesday found 60 percent of Muslim Americans surveyed reported they were

"thriving", slightly higher than for Americans of any other religion except for Jews, who edged them out of the

top spot by one percentage point.

Pollsters noted in particular the rapid surge in positive sentiment among Muslim Americans. The percentage of

Muslims who were "thriving" grew by 19 points since 2008, double that of any other major faith group.

"Muslim Americans are happier and more optimistic today than at the end of 2008," Dalia Mogahed, director of

the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, told Reuters by telephone.

"Muslim Americans today feel a greater sense of belonging in their country," she added. Only three percent of

Muslim Americans said they were suffering, while 37 percent said they were struggling.

Authors of the study said they attributed the change in outlook to improved economic conditions and a sense of

more political enfranchisement since the election of President Barack Obama, a Christian with Muslim family

roots who has reached out to Muslim communities worldwide.

The report said Obama's approval rating among Muslim Americans was 80 percent, and that 46 percent, or a

plurality, of Muslim Americans identified as Democrats, compared to only 9 percent who identified as

Republicans.

"They may see Obama as promoting policies that are more in keeping with their own political views than those

of former President George W. Bush," the report said.

Muslim Americans also felt, to the tune of 64 percent, that their standard of living was getting better, up from 55

percent in 2009 and 46 percent in 2008.

Continuing controversies

The report, which focused on civic and spiritual engagement as well as overall well-being, said the

improvements in Muslim sentiment came despite continuing controversies.

Those included a controversy surrounding a plan to build a Muslim cultural center and mosque near the site of

New York's September 11 al-Qaida attack, and hearings on Islamic extremism called by U.S. Representative

Peter King, which critics viewed as a witch-hunt.

A Christian preacher also caused an uproar last year by threatening to burn the Koran, and put himself back in

the spotlight in March after incinerating Islam's holy book.

"Despite some of these perceived attacks on the community, they are feeling better overall about their lives,

about their country's leadership," Mogahed said.

Some 89 percent of Muslim Americans said that violent attacks on civilians were never justified, compared to

between 71 and 79 percent of other religious groups who felt the same way.

"The finding is surprising because much of the rhetoric has been that the community hasn't been vocal enough

in its rejection of terrorism," Mogahed said.

Jewish Americans had some views in common with Muslim Americans. A majority of Americans from both

faiths agreed on a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Jewish Americans were also the most likely religious groups, besides Muslims themselves, to believe that

Muslim Americans were loyal to the United States. Some 80 percent of Jews said this, compared to 59 percent

of Catholics and 56 percent of Protestants.

"There is an untapped resource, and relationship and a possible coalition between Muslim and Jewish

Americans," Mogahed said.

Muslim Americans continued to have a deep skepticism toward law enforcement and foreign policy. Some 60

percent of Muslim Americans had confidence in the FBI, while 70 percent had confidence in the military, the

lowest of any group.

Gallup said the study was one of the most expansive of Muslim American public opinion to date. Instead of

finding respondents by selecting people with Islamic-sounding names or going to parts of the country with large

Muslim populations, the study is drawn from a random selection of U.S. households.

Gallup said it interviewed 3,883 self-identified Muslim American adults from January 2008 to April 9, 2011. The

margin of error or confidence level in the data is 95 percent, Gallup said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/02/us-usa-muslims-idUSTRE7713FB20110802

More Muslim Americans believe they are thriving, poll says

By Wendell Marsh WASHINGTON | Tue Aug 2, 2011 11:45am EDT

(Reuters) - Muslim Americans are now more optimistic about their lives than any other major American faith group as their economic well-being improves and they feel more politically enfranchised.

A Gallup study released on Tuesday found 60 percent of Muslim Americans surveyed reported they were "thriving", slightly higher than for Americans of any other religion except for Jews, who edged them out of the top spot by one percentage point.

Pollsters noted in particular the rapid surge in positive sentiment among Muslim Americans. The percentage of Muslims who were "thriving" grew by 19 points since 2008, double that of any other major faith group.

"Muslim Americans are happier and more optimistic today than at the end of 2008," Dalia Mogahed, director of the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, told Reuters by telephone.

"Muslim Americans today feel a greater sense of belonging in their country," she added. Only three percent of Muslim Americans said they were suffering, while 37 percent said they were struggling.

Authors of the study said they attributed the change in outlook to improved economic conditions and a sense of more political enfranchisement since the election of President Barack Obama, a Christian with Muslim family roots who has reached out to Muslim communities worldwide.

The report said Obama's approval rating among Muslim Americans was 80 percent, and that 46 percent, or a plurality, of Muslim Americans identified as Democrats, compared to only 9 percent who identified as Republicans.

"They may see Obama as promoting policies that are more in keeping with their own political views than those of former President George W. Bush," the report said.

Muslim Americans also felt, to the tune of 64 percent, that their standard of living was getting better, up from 55 percent in 2009 and 46 percent in 2008.

CHALLENGES

The report, which focused on civic and spiritual engagement as well as overall well-being, said the improvements in Muslim sentiment came despite continuing controversies.

Those included a controversy surrounding a plan to build a Muslim cultural center and mosque near the site of New York's September 11 Al Qaeda attack, and hearings on Islamic extremism called by U.S. Representative Peter King, which critics viewed as a witch-hunt.

A Christian preacher also caused an uproar last year by threatening to burn the Koran, and put himself back in the spotlight in March after incinerating Islam's holy book.

"Despite some of these perceived attacks on the community, they are feeling better overall about their lives, about their country's leadership," Mogahed said.

Some 89 percent of Muslim Americans said that violent attacks on civilians were never justified, compared to between 71 and 79 percent of other religious groups who felt the same way.

"The finding is surprising because much of the rhetoric has been that the community hasn't been vocal enough in its rejection of terrorism," Mogahed said.

Jewish Americans had some views in common with Muslim Americans. A majority of Americans from both faiths agreed on a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Jewish Americans were also the most likely religious groups, besides Muslims themselves, to believe that Muslim Americans were loyal to the United States. Some 80 percent of Jews said this, compared to 59 percent of Catholics and 56 percent of Protestants.

"There is an untapped resource, and relationship and a possible coalition between Muslim and Jewish Americans," Mogahed said.

Muslim Americans continued to have a deep skepticism toward law enforcement and foreign policy. Some 60 percent of Muslim Americans had confidence in the FBI, while 70 percent had confidence in the military, the lowest of any group.

Gallup said the study was one of the most expansive of Muslim American public opinion to date. Instead of finding respondents by selecting people with Islamic-sounding names or going to parts of the country with large Muslim populations, the study is drawn from a random selection of U.S. households.

Gallup said it interviewed 3,883 self-identified Muslim American adults from January 2008 to April 9, 2011. The margin of error or confidence level in the data is 95 percent, Gallup said.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Greg McCune)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/under-god/post/poll-us-muslims-optimistic-about-

future/2011/08/02/gIQAUVLapI_blog.html

Posted at 10:22 AM ET, 08/02/2011

Poll: U.S. Muslims optimistic about future

By Michelle Boorstein

Maryam, 2, plays with her baby sister, Tasneem, 8 months. Ibraham Moiz, their father, is a Muslim American of Indian descent. (Jahi Chikwendiu -

WASHINGTON POST)

American Muslims are younger, more optimistic about their future in this country and less confident in the U.S.

military than members of other major faith groups, a new poll has found.

The report by Gallup, meant to measure American Muslims‘ civic engagement, found the percentage of people who described themselves as ―thriving‖ (compared with ―struggling‖ or ―suffering‖) jumped up nearly 20 percent since the last time Gallup asked the question in 2008. This is also the same period that Muslim leaders say has been the most oppressive for Muslims in this country, with rhetoric against their faith group appearing to rise.

Ibrahim Moiz with his daughters, ages 8 months to 4.

Gallup analysts credited Muslims‘ optimism in good part to the election of President Obama, who has not

appeared at an American mosque since taking office but has often spoke out about the need for Muslim

equality and civil rights. Only 9 percent of American Muslims identify as Republicans, Gallup says.

The results were to be released Tuesday morning and discussed by a high-profile panel at the National Press

Club. Participants include Imam Mohamed Magid, of the prominent Herndon mosque ADAMS; Paul Monteiro,

of the White House Office of Public Engagement; and longtime D.C. faith advocate Rabbi David Saperstein of

the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

The study was done by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, a new branch of Gallup based in Dubai that is meant to

expand polling across the Muslim world. It is a partnership between Gallup and the Crown Prince of Abu

Dhabi.

The poll is one of the largest recent surveys done of Muslim-Americans, who are difficult and expensive to

accurately poll because they are a relatively small group. It reflects the recent increase in funding and interest

in creating hard data about the American Muslim community.

The study shows the complexity of American identity. Compared to other religious groups, Muslims believe

more deeply in the value of elections, but they are the least likely to be registered to vote. They also have the

least confidence in the U.S. military and the FBI – two bodies most associated with the war on terror, which

many American Muslims feel has chipped away at their civil liberties.

Other faith groups questions Muslims‘ loyalty to the United States, with Protestants least likely (56 percent) to

see Muslims as loyal. Sixty-five percent of Muslims say anti-American views in Muslim countries are ―based on

what the U.S. has done,‖ as opposed to being ―based mostly on misinformation provided by the media and

government‖ of those countries.

Muslim Americans are particularly divided in their own community about whether they have more of an

obligation than other Americans to speak out against terrorism.

By Michelle Boorstein | 10:22 AM ET, 08/02/2011

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/02/muslim-americans-are-most-optimistic-religious-group-study-says/

Owla Awada manages a popular bakery in Dearborn, Michigan, one of the largest U.S. Muslim communities.

August 2nd, 2011

10:00 AM ET

Muslim Americans are most optimistic religious group, study says By Alan Duke, CNN

(CNN) - Muslim Americans are more optimistic about their future than members of any other religious group in

the United States, according to a Gallup report released Tuesday.

"They have generally optimistic and positive views about government, its agencies and the future of America,

but they report a significant level of prejudice and discrimination," said Ahmed Younis, an analyst for the Abu

Dhabi Gallup Center.

Nearly half of the Muslim Americans surveyed by Gallup said they have experienced racial or religious

discrimination in the United States, according to the report, which was compiled by the Abu Dhabi Gallup

Center from two years of polling.

"The American Muslim story is the American story in many ways," said Younis.

The report assessed the group's perceptions and attitudes and those of other religious groups toward Muslim

Americans a decade after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Polling of Americans of other religions supported the Muslim American perceptions of prejudice, Younis said.

"The opinion of Americans is still divided and the perception of loyalty of Muslim Americans is still questioned

by a considerable portion of Americans," he said.

They express loyalty to the United States, but face distrust from a significant minority of other citizens, the

report said.

The polling found that 69% identified strongly with the United States while 65% said the same about their faith.

"Muslim Americans are thoroughly American in their allegiance and identity and don't see a conflict between

that and being thoroughly Muslim," Younis said.

Ninety-three percent of U.S. Muslims said they believe other Muslim Americans are loyal to the country, while

significant minorities in other religious groups doubted that loyalty, the report said.

Thirty-seven percent of American Protestants and 35% of Catholics said they didn't agree that Muslims living in

the United States were loyal to the country.

Nearly all Muslim Americans, 92%, said they believed that Muslims living in United States had no sympathy for

al Qaeda, the terror group responsible or the 9/11 attacks.

They are, as a group, critical of counter-terrorism measures imposed since the terror attacks and a large

percentage distrust the FBI, the report said.

There is evidence of "a big friction" between Muslim Americans and federal law enforcement, Younis said.

Just 60% of Muslim Americans said they have confidence in the FBI, compared to 75% or more of Americans

of other major faiths, the report said.

While 81% believe it is not possible to profile a terrorist based on demographic traits, just 49% of other

Americans agree.

"There's a significant percentage of Americans that believe racial profiling is an efficient way of conducting law

enforcement activities," Younis said.

Attitudes about racial profiling are also reflected in what Muslim Americans say about prejudice they face. Sixty

percent of U.S. Muslims say other Americans pre-judge them based on their ethnicity.

"At 48%, Muslim Americans are by far the most likely of major faith groups surveyed to say they have

personally experienced racial or religious discrimination in the past year," the report said. "The next most likely

are Mormon Americans, although less than one-third of U.S. Mormons say this."

Just 63% of Muslim Americans said they feel respected when they practice their religion in public. Eighty-one

percent of all Protestants and Catholics and 85% of Mormon Americans said they felt respected.

"There is still a little bit of hostility in the public square as it relates to Muslim Americans and their place in

society," Younis said.

Muslim Americans generally feel better off and more hopeful in 2011 than they were in 2008, when a similar

Gallup report was produced. While 60% said they were thriving, about the same level as most major religious

groups, they are the most optimistic about their lives in five years.

Americans overall rate their future a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10, but Muslim Americans rate theirs at 8.4, the report

said.

Jewish Americans ranked as second most optimistic at 8.0, following by nonreligious, atheists and agnostic

respondants at 7.9.

Mormans' optimism was rated at 7.8 and Catholics at 7.7, while American Protestants were the least optimistic

about the future with 7.4, the report said.

One explanation for their optimism is that Muslim Americans were hurt more than other major religious groups

by the recession and have experienced more improvement in the recovery, the report said.

The election in 2008 of President Obama, a Christian with Muslim roots, may be one factor in their optimism,

the report said. They give Obama's performance an 80% approval rating, the highest of any religious group.

President Bush's approval rating among Muslim Americans was just 7% near the end of 2008.

With the exception of Jewish Americans, all other religious groups rate Obama below 50%, the report said.

Muslim Americans represent the most racially diverse religious community in the United States, the Gallup

report said.

"For instance, Asian Muslims are easily the most likely in America to be thriving," it said. "Black Muslims report

more financial hardship than do white Muslims, and black Muslims are somewhat less likely than other

Muslims in the U.S. to be satisfied with their standard of living."

One "intriguing finding" of the analysis is the indication that "frequent mosque attendance might lessen stress

and anger," the report said.

"It also takes away from the theory that mosque attendance stokes Muslims' anger and radicalizes them," it

said. "Rather, Muslim Americans are no different from other major U.S. religious communities who appear to

draw peace of mind from their faith."

The Abu Dhabi Gallup Center is a partnership between the opinion research firm Gallup and the Crown Prince

Court of Abu Dhabi.

http://muslimmatters.org/2011/08/02/new-gallup-report-muslim-americans-faith-freedom-and-the-future/

Insights from the New Gallup Report: Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom and the Future Posted by Abdul-Malik Ryan • August 2nd, 2011

The new Gallup report was released earlier today. MuslimMatters had an embargoed copy to prepare this review coinciding with the release. The full report is available in English & Arabic here: Abu Dhabi Gallup Center In early 2009, Gallup released its report ―Muslim Americans: A National Portrait.‖This report, one of the first major attempts to start responding to the pressing need for reliable information about the American Muslim community, emphasized a couple of major points. The report emphasized the findings that the American Muslim community was the most culturally diverse faith community in the United States. It also emphasized that American Muslims in general were highly educated compared to other religious groups. On the other hand, the report also noted that young Muslims in the United States were less likely than young people of other faith groups to report that they were ―thriving‖ and were more likely to report emotions such as anger.

Now, in August of 2011, as we approach the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center have released a new report – Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom and the Future. (As one can see, Gallup consistently uses the term ‗Muslim Americans.‘ Others more commonly use the term ‗American Muslims.‘ Although I prefer the term American Muslims, I will probably switch back and forth in this summary.) Not only does this new report allow us to take a fresh look at attitudes among American Muslims but it also gives a chance to begin to assess some changes in attitudes between 2008 and 2011. While 2008, with the election of Barack Obama, was widely seen as an optimistic time for American Muslims, the three years since have seen continuing economic problems in the United States, continuing and even expanding U.S. wars in Muslim majority countries, and the increasingly vocal and visible Islamophobia campaigns in the United States. These have included the ―Ground Zero Mosque‖ controversy and the ―Anti-Shari‘ah‖ campaigns.

In light of these issues, it is perhaps surprising that this report finds that the percentage of American Muslims considered ―thriving‖ has increased more than that of any other group. The report‘s authors speculate that possible reasons for this positive change may have to do with American Muslims having a more positive view of the economy than they did three years ago, and with what the report found was continued widespread support among American Muslims for the performance of President Obama, with nearly eight in ten approving of Obama‘s job performance - by far the highest of any major religious group.

The report examines the political engagement, social engagement, and spiritual engagement of Muslim Americans. It does not attempt to examine the sticky question of how many Muslims there are in America,

which I think is an important one for us to get a handle on as we seriously attempt to plan for the future of Muslims in this country. It finds that American Muslims, as compared to other faith groups are more likely to have confidence in the honesty of the country‘s elections, although Muslims still lag far behind other religious communities in terms of voter registration. It is not clear how much of this has to do with the percentage of Muslims in America who are not citizens of the country. Muslims also, perhaps unsurprisingly in light of tensions arising out of the ―war on terror‖ report lower levels of confidence in institutions such as the FBI or the U.S. military than do other faith groups. In many, though certainly not all, communities in the U.S., the military and law enforcement are often highly trusted institutions. Along those lines, Muslims in America continue to believe at much higher numbers than other faith groups, that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were mistakes, and that the negative perceptions of the United States in many Muslim majority countries is due to the actions of the U.S. rather than false information spread by those countries‘ leaders.

One of the charges that is sometimes made against national Muslim groups such as CAIR or ISNA is that they are extremist groups which do not represent the mainstream of the community. While most of us who are active in the Muslim community would find the characterization of such groups as extremist to be unfounded, this report does interestingly ask Muslim Americans which national group do they find to represent their interests. While CAIR followed by ISNA and then MPAC come out as the most representative based on the answers to this question, the reports authors conclude that ―no national organization represents a large percentage of American Muslims.‖ CAIR was named as most representative of their interests by a little more than 10 percent of American Muslims. ISNA was named by around 5 percent and MPAC by 6 percent of males but only 1 percent of females. When asked which of a list of national Muslim organizations represented their interests, 55 percent of American Muslim males and 42 percent of females responded that none did.

As further evidence to fight against the idea that Islam itself teaches its followers to embrace violence against innocents, American Muslims, more than any other faith group of Americans, responded that violent attacks by individuals or small groups were never justified (89 percent of American Muslims). American Muslims were also more likely than any other religious group to say that violent attacks by militaries on civilians were never justified (78 percent). A majority of American Catholics, Jews, Protestants, and Mormons all said that violent attacks by the military on civilians were ―sometimes‖ justified.

As mentioned above, one of the most alarming findings of the 2009 report was that only 40 percent of American Muslim youth age 18 to 29 could be classified as thriving. This was significantly lower than the youth of other religious groups and went against the general trend where young people are more likely to be thriving than older members of the same community. This report finds those phenomenon to have disappeared. 65 percent of American Muslim youth age 18 to 29 are now considered thriving, which is on par with other religious groups, and obviously the enormous positive change from 40 to 65 is much more than any other group experienced during this time period. To be honest, I find this remarkable change to be a little puzzling, especially in light of widely perceived increases in the visibility of Islamophobia in the media, and this deserves further examination. The positive numbers are somewhat consistent with other results found in the report which find that in addition to having a generally positive view of President Obama‘s performance, American Muslims have an optimistic outlook on the economy in general and on their own communities, although they still may report significant economic or community problems. I also think, as I mentioned when discussing the results of the 2009 report, that we have to consider the diversity of the community and that the Muslim community in America contains large segments which are economically well off and large segments which are economically struggling. Still, there does seem to be a general optimism among the community which is reflected in these survey results.

Another interesting phenomenon in some of the survey questions is that Jewish Americans in general are less suspicious of American Muslims than are other faith groups. They are less likely to question the loyalty of American Muslims to this country or to believe that American Muslims are sympathetic to Al-Qaeda. This should serve to remind the community that despite the ongoing Israel/Palestine conflict and the noisy role that certain Jewish voices play in Islamophobia campaigns, the majority of American Jews are more likely to relate to American Muslims as a fellow religious minority here in the United States, which is deserving of protection from discrimination and bigotry and support when persecuted or attacked. These numbers back up what has been the experience of so many of us, that while there may be a few Jewish individuals or organizations that

seem to be part of the anti-Muslim noise machine, whenever one looks to see who are our greatest allies in resisting these same voices, invariably one will find that they are disproportionately Jewish.

I encourage readers to dig into the detailed results here and start a discussion regarding the issues I have mentioned above and all the others addressed in the report. The greatest value of these studies is to provide some actual empirical evidence which can move us beyond the realm of mere anecdote or of talking purely based on our own subjective experience about what American Muslims (and other groups) think and believe. However, no one or two reports are going to conclusively answer any questions. Often they can serve as much as anything to open up questions about how they should be interpreted or what else we would like to know. So let the discussion begin.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/08/jewish-americans_are_pretty_su.html

American Jews Think Pretty Highly of American Muslims 8/2/11 at 2:25 PM

Christians are kind of "eh" on the Muslim loyalty question.Photo: Abu Dhabi Gallup Center

There's a lot of bad blood between Jews and Muslims around the world, but according to anew report by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, American Jews hold fewer prejudices against American Muslims than most other religious groups. Take the above chart, for example. Jews are far more likely than any Christian denomination to believe that American Muslims are loyal to the United States.

Jews are also more inclined to think that Muslims face prejudice by other Americans. Jews even seem to be more sensitive to such prejudice than Muslims are themselves.

Abu Dhabi Gallup Center

And Jews are less likely than other religious groups to believe that American Muslims are sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Abu Dhabi Gallup Center

Jews, Muslims: You guys should hang out more often.

Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom, and the Future [Abu Dhabi Gallup Center]

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/08/02/3088821/poll-finds-american-jews-and-muslims-share-common-values

Poll: American Jews and Muslims share common values

August 2, 2011

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Muslim and Jewish Americans share common values on key questions, according to a

Gallup poll.

The poll, released Tuesday, found that the Muslim Americans exceeded Jewish belief in religious pluralism and

in the fairness of elections, and also in support of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- 81

percent for Muslims, 78 percent for Jews.

Jews and Muslims also were the only religious groups surveyed in which a majority backed President Obama.

Jews were the least likely group, besides Muslims, to question the loyalty of Muslims, with 70 percent of

Jewish Americans denying that Muslim Americans sympathize with the al-Qaeda terrorist group and 80

percent agreeing that Muslims are loyal to the United States. They disagreed, however, on whether Muslims

spoke out enough against terrorism, with 28 percent of Muslims and 65 percent of Jews saying that Muslims

were not vocal enough. The 65 percent put Jews in the middle of the religious groups surveyed.

Interestingly, Jewish respondents were slightly more likely than Muslims to believe that Muslims face prejudice

in American society.

The poll included results from the Gallup Heathways Well-being index conducted from Jan. 1, 2010 to April 9,

2011, as well as two independent studies of the Muslim-American population conducted from Feb. 10 to

March 11, 2010 and Oct. 1-21, 2010, by a Gallup-affiliated research group based in the United Arab Emirates.

According to researchers, the poll had a margin of error of 6.6 percent for Muslims and 7.3 percent for Jews.

The study also found that Muslims were the least likely religious group to agree that there is ever justification

for individuals or small groups to attack civilians, that the generation that came of age post-9/11 are more likely

to report feelings of anger than their peers, but that anger is reported less among those that regularly attend

religious services.

―As children of Abraham, Jews and Muslims recognize that we don‘t just share a common faith but also a

single fate,‖ Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, an organization

devoted to outreach between the Jewish community and other ethnic groups, said in an interview with JTA.

"People will be overwhelmed by these findings. The perception is that the Muslim Jewish relationship in the

U.S. is one of conflict, not of cooperation. This is just the opposite of what we‘ve found in the field.‖

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/08/02/Muslims-condemn-attacking-civilians-Poll/UPI-18021312315503/

World News

Muslims condemn attacking civilians: Poll Published: Aug. 2, 2011 at 4:05 PM

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- Muslim Americans are the strongest opponents of attacking civilians, by either the military or small armed groups, Gallup polls released Tuesday show.

The findings come from a report by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, "Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom, and the Future," based on 2010 Gallup surveys.

Asked if it is ever justified "for the military to target and kill civilians," 78 percent of Muslims and 56 percent with no religion said no. But majorities of Christians and Jews said it was sometimes justified.

Large majorities in all religious groups said attacks on civilians by "an individual person or a small group of persons" was never justified, but Muslims registered the highest disapproval at 89 percent.

Asked if U.S. Muslims sympathize with al-Qaida, 92 percent of Muslims, 75 percent of the irreligious, 70 percent of Jews, 63 percent of Catholics, 57 percent of Mormons and 56 percent of Protestants said they do not.

The two polls, taken in February to March and October of last year, yielded a total sample of 2,482 adults, of whom 475 identified themselves as Muslims. The margins of error for various groups ranged from 4.7 to 8.3 percentage points.

http://www.newsmax.com/US/gallup-muslim-americans-poll/2011/08/02/id/405835

Gallup Poll: Most Muslim-Americans Loyal to US Tuesday, 02 Aug 2011 04:10 PM

By Henry J. Reske

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 U.S. 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%) and Jewish Americans (78%) 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-Qaida. 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-Qaida is

Muslim Americans themselves, at 92%.‖

The poll, Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom, and the Future, examined U.S. Muslims‘ political, social and

spiritual views 10 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.‖

Other findings include:

--Muslim Americans are least likely of the major religious groups to be registered to vote, with just 65 percent

compared to 91 percent of Protestants and Jewish Americans.

--While many Americans of all major religious groups see the Iraq war as a mistake, 83 percent of Muslim

Americans hold that view and 47 percent believe it was a mistake to send troops to Afghanistan.

--Muslim Americans are also the least likely major religious group to say there is ever a justification for

individuals or small groups to attack civilians. Roughly 1 in 10 Muslim Americans say such attacks are

sometimes justified. ―In every other major religious group except Mormons, the proportion of people who say

such attacks are sometimes justified is at least twice that.‖

--Muslim Americans, by 81 percent, say that terrorist ―profiling‖ does not work while just 49 percent of Jews, 46

percent of Catholics, and 44 percent of Protestants agree.

--48 percent of Muslims report racial or religious discrimination in the past year compared to 31 percent of

Mormons, 25 percent of atheists or agnostics, 21 percent of Jews, 20 percent of Catholics and 18 percent of

Protestants.

http://life.nationalpost.com/2011/08/02/muslim-community-%E2%80%98thriving%E2%80%99-in-united-states-poll/

Muslim community ‘thriving’ in United States: poll

Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

Children break their fast at King Fahad Mosque in Los Angeles on Aug. 1, 2011, the first day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Reuters Aug 2, 2011 – 3:00 PM ET | Last Updated: Aug 2, 2011 1:53 PM ET

By Wendell Marsh

WASHINGTON – Muslim Americans have felt a surge in their sense of well-being, with the percentage of

Muslims saying they were ―thriving‖ in the United States up 19% since 2008, according to a poll released on

Tuesday.

A Gallup study, conducted by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center based in United Arab Emirates, found 60% of

Muslim Americans surveyed reported they were thriving, slightly higher than for Americans of any other religion

except for Jews, who edged them out of the top spot by one percentage point.

Pollsters noted in particular the rapid surge in positive sentiment among Muslim Americans, with the 19-point

increase since 2008 double that of any other major faith group.

―Muslim Americans today feel a greater sense of belonging in their country,‖ Dalia Mogahed, director of the

Center, told Reuters by telephone.

Only 3% of Muslim Americans said they were suffering, while 37% said they were struggling.

Download the full report (PDF)

Authors of the study said they attributed the change in outlook to improved economic conditions and a sense of

more political enfranchisement since the election of President Barack Obama, a Christian with Muslim family

roots who has reached out to Muslim communities worldwide.

The report said the approval rating for Obama, a Democrat, among Muslim Americans was 80%, and that 46%

of Muslim Americans identified as Democrats, compared to only 9% who identified as Republicans.

―They may see Obama as promoting policies that are more in keeping with their own political views than those

of former President George W. Bush,‖ a Republican, the report said.

Muslim Americans also felt, to the tune of 64%, that their standard of living was getting better, up from 55% in

2009 and 46% in 2008.

Jewish Americans had some views in common with Muslim Americans. A majority of Americans from both

faiths agreed on a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Jewish Americans were also the most likely religious groups, besides Muslims themselves, to believe that

Muslim Americans were loyal to the United States. Some 80% of Jews said this, compared to 59% of Catholics

and 56% of Protestants.

―There is an untapped resource, and relationship and a possible coalition between Muslim and Jewish

Americans,‖ Mogahed said.

Gallup said the study was one of the most expansive of Muslim American public opinion to date. Instead of

finding respondents by selecting people with Islamic-sounding names or going to parts of the country with large

Muslim populations, the study is drawn from a random selection of U.S. households.

Gallup said it interviewed 3,883 self-identified Muslim American adults from January 2008 to April 9, 2011. The

confidence level in the data is 95%, Gallup said.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/191136/20110802/muslim-american-poll-muslim-american-gallup-muslim-american-patriots-muslim-american-patriotism.htm

Muslim Americans Feel Optimistic, Patriotic: Poll

August 2, 2011 3:11 PM EDT

A Gallup poll revealed that American Muslims generally feel integrated into American culture and confident in

its political institutions, challenging a perception that Muslims feel marginalized or detached from society.

(Photo: Reuters)

Lamis Ali, 29, arrives for afternoon prayers at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn

The findings were tempered by the fact that a significantly higher percentage of Muslims reported experiencing

discrimination than any other group surveyed. But Muslims were the most likely to believe elections would be

fair and 60 percent said they had confidence in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has directed

counterterrorism operations against American Muslims.

"The prejudice and discrimination are definitely there, and that's something we have consistently seen in the

data," said Mohamed Younis, senior analyst with the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and an author of the

study. "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."

Nine out of 10 Muslims surveyed said that their fellow Muslims did not sympathize with Al-Qaeda. They also

exhibited a stronger aversion to violence against civilians than any other group.

They were more critical of U.S. foreign policy than other groups surveyed, calling the wars

inAfghanistan and Iraq a mistake and agreeing that poor perceptions of the U.S. from Muslims abroad were the

result of "what the U.S. has done" rather than "misinformation." They were less trustful of the U.S. military than

other groups.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/gallup-report-muslim-americans-see-hope-in-their-economic-future.php

TPMDC

Gallup Report: Muslim Americans See Hope In Their Economic Future Kyle Leighton | August 2, 2011, 10:25AM

According to a new study by Gallup, there is one religious group of Americans who are more likely to

believe that they will get closer to the best possible life for themselves in the next five years. This same

group is also second most likely to consider themselves "thriving," while second least likely to consider

themselves "struggling," and far and away more apt say that their standard of living is increasing. It's

also the same group of which nearly one in two report experiencing either racial or religious

discrimination.

It is an improving time to be a Muslim American, according to the numbers.

Ten years after 9/11, Gallup started collecting polling data from Muslim Americans about their

experiences in the U.S. The narrative found in the new report, "Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom and

the Future," is about the prospects of developing a place in American society. Muslim Americans see

hope for their economic future at a higher rate than other religious groups, and are increasingly engaged

civically, despite being the least likely faith group to be registered to vote. Where they face challenges is

in the social realm: they are less likely to feel respected when practicing their religion, and nearly half say

they've been the target of discrimination.

The economic numbers are particularly stark: in just three years, Muslim Americans have gone from

46% in 2008 saying their standard of living is increasing, to 64% in 2011. Other religious groups

experienced an uptick in the same perception, except for Mormons, who say they have seen it go down.

Muslim Americans are also more optimistic about achieving their "best possible life" than any other

religious group. When asked what rung out of a ladder of ten they feel their life is at (ten being the

perfect life), American Muslims say they are at an average of seven, and in five years they say they'll be

at an 8.4. Other groups, while also enthusiastic about their future, don't see as big an uptick in their

stead. Muslim Americans were also more positive on the national economic conditions, with large portion

(24%) saying conditions are "excellent/good" and 54% who said they were improving. By contrast, only

12% of Protestant Americans described conditions as "excellent/good" and 32% described them as

getting better.

In an interview with TPM, Mohamed Younis, a Senior Analyst with Gallup who worked on the report, said

that much of the economic positivity on the part of Muslim Americans had to do with an improving social

outlook. "It's important to keep in mind the reference point," he said. "In some ways there [is] more to

gain, not in economics and life in evaluations, but more [in lessening] discrimination and stress. I think

what they see is a complete shift in tone in the discourse on them in the debate. Whether or not that

hopefulness could be delivered is yet to be seen, there's a quick road up and down. Folks can be lifted

quickly and let down just as quickly. Is prejudice and discrimination going to go down?"

In their recommendations based on the data, the report first suggested more measures to lessen

discrimination that Muslim Americans feel, which in turn leads to stress and dissatisfaction. But they also

pointed to the positive influence of faith in Muslim Americans' lives and the role that Mosques and

Community Centers can play. "Islamic centers and mosques have emerged as important institutions in

Muslim Americans' spiritual, social, and political engagement," the report reads. "The Muslim-American

community would do well to invest in building the capacity of these institutions," a point seconded by

Younis: "We found that those who worship were less likely to experience stress and more likely to to be

social engaged. A community center that becomes the jumping off point. In the next ten years, is the

local mosque going to be that essential place?"

There is also improvement especially among Muslim American youth. In a previous 2008 Gallup study,

the percentage of Muslim American youth in the "thriving" category was only 40%, well below members

of other faiths. Now, that number has increased dramatically.

In 2008, Muslim-American youth were the exception to the trend of a "youth bonus" in thriving, where young

populations are typically higher in thriving compared with older populations. In contrast, 2010-2011 data

suggest that Muslim-American youth are now thriving at a proportion similar to their peers -- on par with young

Catholic Americans, Mormon Americans, and people of no religion. And they share the trend of being more

positive about their lives today and in the future than older members of their faith group.

Read the rest of the report here:

MAR Report ADGC en-US 071911 Sa Small

Most of the results come from 1,492 telephone interviews with Muslim Americans from the nightly Gallup

telephone polls conducted from Jan. 1st, 2010 and Apr. 9th, 2011. That sample has a margin of error of

plus or minus three percent. The trended numbers from 2008 to 2011 come from a sample of 3,883

interviews, conducted from Jan. 1st 2008 to Apr. 9th, 2011, and has a margin of error of plus or minus

1.9 percent.

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/gallup-poll-reveals-common-ground-for-jewish-and-muslim-americans-1.376598 Published 17:15 02.08.11 Latest update 17:15 02.08.11

Gallup poll reveals common ground for Jewish and

Muslim Americans A substantial majority of Muslim Americans and Jewish Americans support a future in

which an independent Palestinian state would coexist alongside Israel.

By Shlomo ShamirTags: Jewish World Middle East peace

A recent Gallup poll has revealed that not only do Muslim Americans and Jewish Americans have similar views

regarding how the Palestinian-Israeli conflict might be resolved, but Muslim Americans are significantly more

moderate than often believed.

A substantial majority of Muslim Americans (81%) and Jewish Americans (78%) support a future in which an

independent Palestinian state would coexist alongside Israel.

According to the poll, 89% of Muslim Americans say there is never a justification for attacks on civilians,

compared to 79% of Mormon Americans, 75% of Jewish Americans, and 71% of Protestant and Catholic

Americans. It was also found that the frequency with which Muslim Americans — or any other faith group —

attend religious services has no effect on whether they justify violence against civilians.

Despite this surprisingly high Muslim opposition to attacks against civilians, most Americans of other faiths,

according to the poll, feel Muslim Americans‘ do not speak out often enough against terrorism. Of the

Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Mormon Americans surveyed, no more than about one-third and as few as

one-quarter believe U.S. Muslims are sufficiently vocal in condemning terrorism.

This statistic is in blatant contradiction with the statistic showing that 72% of Muslim Americans believe that

they are, in fact, outspoken in their condemnation of terror.

This mismatch may suggest that U.S. Muslims simply have not found the appropriate outlets to make

themselves heard. These statistics also reflect the frustration Muslim Americans often express that their

repeated condemnations of terrorism seem to go unheard or unnoticed.

Rabbi Marc Schneier, founder and president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, said Tuesday that

―the findings of this up-to-date Gallup poll prove that the projects that we have been running for the past

several years throughout the U.S. geared toward bringing Jews and Muslims together were successful and

achieved their goal.‖

http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/adam_serwer_archive?month=08&year=2011&base_name=new_gallup_poll_on_religion_and_violence

New Gallup Poll On Religion And Violence

BY ADAM SERWER | POSTED 08/02/2011 AT 12:00 PM

Gallup has a new poll out that sheds some light on American religious views on violence, some of which might

be startling. Muslims are by far the least likely among all religious groups to justify targeting civilians, whether

done by the military or by "an individual person or a small group of persons." Seventy-eight percent of Muslims

say that military attacks on civilians are never justified, while the numbers for Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and

atheists hover in the 50s. The only religious denomination that comes close to Muslim disapproval is Mormons

at 64 percent.

The number of Muslims who say attacks on civilians by "an individual person or a small group of persons" are

never justified even higher, at 89 percent, while the other religious denominations fall somewhere in the 70

percent to 80 percent range.

In a nutshell, Muslims are more likely than any other religious group to disapprove of targeting civilians,

whether it's done by the government or by a terrorist group. That means their views are most in line with

international law, which prohibits the deliberate targeting of civilians under any circumstances. The finding is

somewhat intuitive -- whether we're talking drone strikes orsuicide bombings, Muslims are often the most likely

victims.

Asked whether Muslim Americans are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, well there's another broad divergence, with 92

percent of Muslims saying no and atheists/agnostics and Jews largely agreeing:

Since Jews and atheists/agnostics make up a relatively small percentage of Americans, that means a rather

large number of American citizens think American Muslims are sympathetic to al-Qaeda. There's something

ironic about that, given that according to the poll, Muslims are the least likely religious group in the U.S. to

justify violence against civilians.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/muslims-in-us-optimistic-about-future-poll-finds/2011/08/02/gIQAyMRaqI_story.html

Muslims in U.S. optimistic about future, poll finds

View Photo Gallery —  The holy month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast and practice abstinence, began when the new

moon was sighted.

By Tara Bahrampour and Michelle Boorstein, Published: August 2

Ten years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Muslim Americans are more optimistic than other major faith

groups about their future, even as they report greater discrimination and less confidence in the FBI and the

U.S. military, a new poll has found.

In the report by Gallup, which measures American Muslims‘ political, social and spiritual engagement, almost

two in three Muslims said their standard of living is improving, up 18 percentage points from 2008 and higher

than any other faith group surveyed. This is the same period that Muslim leaders say has been the most

oppressive for Muslims in this country, with rhetoric against their faith group appearing to rise.

Gallup analysts credited Muslims‘ optimism in part to the election of President Obama, who has not

appeared at an American mosque since taking office but has often spoken out about the need for Muslim

equality and civil rights. Only 9 percent of American Muslims identify as Republicans, Gallup said. Eighty

percent of Muslims in America said in 2011 that they approve of Obama, vs. 7 percent who expressed

support for President George W. Bush in 2008.

At the same time, Muslim Americans are the religious group least likely to be registered to vote: 65 percent

compared with 91 percent of Protestant Americans and Jewish Americans. The report‘s authors speculated

that this may be because many Muslim Americans are immigrants who have not yet become citizens (the poll

did not ask respondents about citizenship) and because Muslim Americans tend to be younger than people of

other religions, a trait associated with low voter registration levels.

American Muslims were more likely than people of other religions to see the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a

mistake, and they are significantly more likely to blame anti-Americanism in Muslim countries on U.S. policy,

rather than on misinformation spread by those countries‘ leaders and media.

The report was done by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, a Dubai-based partnership between Gallup and the

crown prince of Abu Dhabi that is meant to expand polling across the Muslim world. The study was based on

several polls conducted from 2008 to 2011, including follow-up interviews with 2,482 adults, including 475

Muslims.

The poll is one of the largest and most recent surveys done of Muslim Americans, who are difficult and

expensive to accurately poll because they are a relatively small group, less than 1 percent of the U.S.

population, according to the Pew Research Center.

On Tuesday, the day the poll was released, a panel at the National Press Club discussed the study, including

the finding that Jewish Americans hold similar views to Muslim Americans and the perception of whether U.S.

Muslims sympathize with al-Qaeda. Ninety-two percent of American Muslims and 70 percent of American Jews

did not believe that U.S. Muslims sympathize with the organization — higher percentages than people of other

religions.

Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society called for greater efforts to educate Americans

about Muslims. Unlike some European nations where Muslims live in enclaves and are more socially isolated,

he said, American Muslims are ―more integrated‖ into U.S. society.

The coming decade will be key to deepening that integration, said Mohamed Younis, a senior analyst at the

Abu Dhabi Gallup Center and one of the authors of the report.

―The first 10 years after 9/11 were about reacting to what happened,‖ he said. ―We have to make sure the next

10 years are about strategically having a plan to get communities involved and to strengthen

communities. . . . The next 10 years are going to be crucial for the future of Muslim Americans in the next 50

years.‖

Polling analyst Scott Clement contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/more-muslim-americans-believe-thriving-poll-says-143623509.html

More Muslim Americans believe they are thriving, poll says

By Wendell Marsh | Reuters – Tue, Aug 2, 2011

An American flag hangs on a car outside the American Muslim Society mosque in Detroit, …

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Muslim Americans are now more optimistic about their lives than any other major

American faith group as their economic well-being improves and they feel more politically enfranchised.

A Gallup study released on Tuesday found 60 percent of Muslim Americans surveyed reported they were

"thriving", slightly higher than for Americans of any other religion except for Jews, who edged them out of the

top spot by one percentage point.

Pollsters noted in particular the rapid surge in positive sentiment among Muslim Americans. The percentage

of Muslims who were "thriving" grew by 19 points since 2008, double that of any other major faith group.

"Muslim Americans are happier and more optimistic today than at the end of 2008," Dalia Mogahed, director of

the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, told Reuters by telephone.

"Muslim Americans today feel a greater sense of belonging in their country," she added. Only three percent of

Muslim Americans said they were suffering, while 37 percent said they were struggling.

Authors of the study said they attributed the change in outlook to improved economic conditions and a sense of

more political enfranchisement since the election of President Barack Obama, a Christian with Muslim family

roots who has reached out to Muslim communities worldwide.

The report said Obama's approval rating among Muslim Americans was 80 percent, and that 46 percent, or a

plurality, of Muslim Americans identified as Democrats, compared to only 9 percent who identified as

Republicans.

"They may see Obama as promoting policies that are more in keeping with their own political views than those

of former President George W. Bush," the report said.

Muslim Americans also felt, to the tune of 64 percent, that their standard of living was getting better, up from 55

percent in 2009 and 46 percent in 2008.

CHALLENGES

The report, which focused on civic and spiritual engagement as well as overall well-being, said the

improvements in Muslim sentiment came despite continuing controversies.

Those included a controversy surrounding a plan to build a Muslim cultural center and mosque near the site of

New York's September 11 Al Qaeda attack, and hearings on Islamic extremism called by U.S. Representative

Peter King, which critics viewed as a witch-hunt.

A Christian preacher also caused an uproar last year by threatening to burn the Koran, and put himself back in

the spotlight in March after incinerating Islam's holy book.

"Despite some of these perceived attacks on the community, they are feeling better overall about their lives,

about their country's leadership," Mogahed said.

Some 89 percent of Muslim Americans said that violent attacks on civilians were never justified, compared to

between 71 and 79 percent of other religious groups who felt the same way.

"The finding is surprising because much of the rhetoric has been that the community hasn't been vocal enough

in its rejection of terrorism," Mogahed said.

Jewish Americans had some views in common with Muslim Americans. A majority of Americans from both

faiths agreed on a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Jewish Americans were also the most likely religious groups, besides Muslims themselves, to believe that

Muslim Americans were loyal to the United States. Some 80 percent of Jews said this, compared to 59 percent

of Catholics and 56 percent of Protestants.

"There is an untapped resource, and relationship and a possible coalition between Muslim and Jewish

Americans," Mogahed said.

Muslim Americans continued to have a deep skepticism toward law enforcement and foreign policy. Some 60

percent of Muslim Americans had confidence in the FBI, while 70 percent had confidence in the military, the

lowest of any group.

Gallup said the study was one of the most expansive of Muslim American public opinion to date. Instead of

finding respondents by selecting people with Islamic-sounding names or going to parts of the country with large

Muslim populations, the study is drawn from a random selection of U.S. households.

Gallup said it interviewed 3,883 self-identified Muslim American adults from January 2008 to April 9, 2011. The

margin of error or confidence level in the data is 95 percent, Gallup said.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Greg McCune)

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/08/a-fascinating-look-at-the-political-views-of-muslim-americans/242975/

A Fascinating Look at the Political Views of Muslim Americans AUG 3 2011, 8:00 AM ET2

A new Gallup poll shows that they are more likely than Christians or Jews to object to the targeting and killing

of civilians

An arm of the Gallup organization based in the United Arab Emirates has just published, in partnership with

their U.S. based colleagues, the results of a major polling that compares the attitudes of Muslim Americans to

Americans of other faiths. Its title is "Examining U.S. Muslims' Political, Social, and Spiritual Engagement 10

Years After September 11," and its most attention grabbing finding is the fact that Muslim Americans are more

likely than Christians or Jews to believe that targeting and killing civilians is never justified, whether it is done

by the military or an individual. Put another way, Christians and Jews are more comfortable with civilians being

targeted and killed by a wide margin.

Here is the distribution of opinion when the military is doing the killing:

And the results when an individual or small group of people is targeting and killing civilians:

Am I alone in being horrified by the percentage of Americans who are sometimes okay with efforts to "target

and kill" civilians?

Other fascinating findings abound.

Are Muslims in this country sympathetic to Al Qaeda? 92 percent of Muslims say no, along with 75 percent of

the nonreligious, 70 percent of Jews, 63 percent of Catholics, and 56 percent of Protestants. Muslim

Americans are less likely than other religious groups to have confidence in the military (70 percent have

confidence, 28 percent lack it), and more likely to think that the wars in Iraq (83 percent) and Afghanistan (47

percent) were mistakes. They also most skeptical of federal law enforcement - 60 percent have confidence in

the FBI, whereas among Christians and Jews at least 75 percent have faith in the bureau. And 48 percent say

they've experienced racial or religious discrimination in the last year, compared to 31 percent of Mormons, 25

percent of the nonreligious, 21 percent of Jews, 20 percent of Catholics, and 18 percent of Protestants. (Along

with Jews, Muslims also felt least respected, by a wide margin, when practicing their religion in public.)

With what aspects of their identity do Muslim Americans most strongly identify? It's a question best answered

in visual format:

Muslims were evenly divided on the question of whether their coreligionists were more obligated than other

groups to speak out against terrorism: 49 percent said yes with the same percentage saying no. A majority of

all groups say Muslim Americans are loyal to the United States: 93 percent of Muslim Americans think so,

along with 80 percent of Jews and 69 percent of the nonreligious, but only a disappointing 59 percent of

Catholics and 56 percent of Protestants. Jews were also most likely to agree with Muslims that they face

prejudice in America.

Muslims are least likely to believe that it is possible to profile a terrorist "based on gender, age, ethnicity, or

other demographic traits," despite the fact that terrorists are extremely likely to be male, and very unlikely to be

children or elderly.

Do a majority of Muslim Americans think that any national Muslim organization represents their interests?

Nope:

There is, finally, the question of why people in Muslim countries have an unfavorable view of the United States.

A majority of Muslim Americans say it's based on actions that the U.S. has taken. Everyone else thinks that

people in those countries have been propagandized into disliking us:

Image credit: Reuters

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/American+Muslims+upbeat+about+life+Poll/5195763/story.html

American Muslims upbeat about life in U.S.: Poll

BY DANIEL LIPPMAN, MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS AUGUST 2, 2011

Muslims take part in afternoon prayers at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan, May 6, 2011.

Photograph by: Rebecca Cook, Reuters

WASHINGTON - A Gallup poll released Tuesday found that most Muslim Americans are very optimistic about

their lives in the United States and are loyal to a country that's given them a wealth of economic opportunities,

even though some Americans continue to treat the community with hostility.

But the report also identified one area of concern: how to improve the strained relationship between Muslims

and other Americans.

Experts said the survey findings were important because they could mitigate some of the concerns Americans

have about the susceptibility of American Muslims to extremist causes. The thinking goes that if people are

satisfied with their lives, they're unlikely to get sucked into radical movements, which often prey on

economically vulnerable people.

Asked to rate what their lives would be like in five years, Muslim Americans gave higher ratings than members

of most other religious groups did. On a 1-to-10 scale, Muslims rated their future lives at 8.4, while Americans

of other religious groups give average ratings of 7.4 to 8, Gallup pollsters said.

Mohamed Younis, a senior Gallup analyst, attributed Muslims' positive outlook to a range of reasons, from

political factors to the slowly recovering economy having improved their standard-of-living expectations.

"We definitely see a lot of approval for President Barack Obama and a changed rhetoric around the role of

Muslims in America and Muslim-U.S. relations globally," Younis said. The survey found Obama's job approval

rating at 80 per cent among American Muslims.

The survey, which consisted of two polls conducted from January 2010 to April 2011, comes from the Abu

Dhabi Gallup Center with some financial support from the crown prince of Abu Dhabi. The firm surveyed 1,500

Muslim Americans and thousands of Americans from other faiths, with a margin of error of 0.3 to 6.6

percentage points.

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

With the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaching, some Americans are still

skeptical of the allegiances of Muslims who live in the United States. The poll found that more than a third of

Protestants and Roman Catholics didn't believe that Muslim Americans were loyal to the U.S.

More than nine in 10 Muslims surveyed thought that their community was loyal.

The concerns of some Americans may have been raised by incidents such as the November 2009 shooting

spree that killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, and the attempted bombing of New York's Times Square in

May 2010. U.S. citizens of Muslim extraction have been charged in the first case and have pleaded guilty in the

second.

Panelists who introduced the survey at the National Press Club said those events didn't represent the true face

of Muslims in this country, a group that on average is younger, holds a greater percentage of professional

graduate degrees and earns a higher income than average Americans.

"There are so many American Muslims who (have) served in the Army and in law enforcement. Those stories

have not been told. All that you hear about is the negative view of Islam and Muslims," said Imam Mohamed

Magid, the president of the Islamic Society of North America.

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

Law enforcement agencies remain concerned, however, about certain corners of the American Muslim

community, such as Somali-Americans living in Minnesota. Several dozen young Somali Americans have

traveled in recent years to their East African home country to fight for al-Shabab, a State Department-

designated terrorist group that's currently blocking famine-starved civilians from leaving areas under its control.

The poll also found that many Americans of different religious groups say that Muslims aren't speaking out

enough against terrorism. More than 60 per cent of Protestants, Catholics and Jews say that Muslims should

condemn terrorist attacks more publicly.

Rabbi David Saperstein, the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said interfaith leaders

had been unsuccessful in promoting how well-assimilated most Muslims were in America. This is in contrast to

some European countries, where many Muslims have found integrating into the mainstream culture difficult.

"We really need to change the images of Islam to more accord with the reality. (The survey) gives us a lot to

work with," Saperstein said.

D. Paul Monteiro, the associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, said that one way for

Muslim Americans to increase other Americans' level of trust was to engage person-to-person with people of

other faiths.

"When a person who is a Protestant or any other religion meets a person who is Muslim, the conversation

changes. The perception changes," Monteiro said.

"As long as someone . . . doesn't know personally someone who is Muslim, then they're open and susceptible

to some of this rapidly spreading misinformation that even in some parts of the press presents a not-so-great

picture of Muslims or Islam as a whole."

© Copyright (c) McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion/july-dec11/muslimamerican_08-02.html

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iRBgGNMTcNQaeXhKsIJHUpjLKRWw?docId=CNG.afd2afe06f0a80a6c825347e9cbe811f.d1

US Muslims optimistic, but face discrimination: poll (AFP) – 16 hours ago

WASHINGTON — US Muslims are more optimistic about the future than other faith groups, but while they

overwhelmingly reject terrorism, nearly half report discrimination, a poll found.

The survey was carried out ahead of the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and looked at how well

integrated the 2.6 million Muslims living in the United States are in the wake of the "war on terror" launched by

former president George W. Bush after the deadly plane hijackings.

It found that Muslims tend to be more optimistic about both the economy and politics following the election of

President Barack Obama, who enjoys 80 percent approval among Muslims, higher than from any other major

faith group.

Sixty percent of Muslims said they were "thriving" in the United States, compared to 61 percent of Jews, 54

percent of Catholics and 52 percent of Protestants, according to the poll.

Only 37 percent of Muslims said they were "struggling," less than both Christian groups but a single

percentage point higher than Jews, while just three percent of Muslims said they were "suffering."

Fifty-four percent of Muslims said the US economy was "getting better," a far higher percentage than any other

religious group.

"Muslim Americans are satisfied with their current lives and more optimistic than other faith groups that things

are getting better," said the report, which did not distinguish between different Muslim groups.

However, 48 percent of Muslims surveyed said they had "personally experienced racial or religious

discrimination" in the past year, compared to 31 percent of Mormons, 21 percent of Jews and 20 percent of

Catholics.

Muslims tend to have more negative views of the US military and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the

report said, attributing such feelings to the "war on terror" seen by some as focusing heavily on Muslims.

Muslim Americans are also far more likely than other groups to blame unfavorable views of the United States

in the Muslim world on the US government's actions, rather than "misinformation," the report found.

However, Muslim Americans also led all other groups in opposing attacks on civilians by individuals or groups,

with 89 percent opposing such actions.

The poll by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center -- a Gallup research hub in the United Arab Emirates -- used data

from interviews conducted between January 2008 and April 2011 with 868,264 adults, including 3,883

Muslims.

The other faith groups examined in the poll were Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons and "no

religion/atheist/agnostic."

http://blogs.forward.com/the-shmooze/140839/ August 3, 2011, 11:04am

American Jews Not Prejudiced Against Muslims, New Poll Finds

By Nathan Burstein

For all the distrust that supposedly separates them, American Jews feel a lot of solidarity with their Muslim

counterparts.

That‘s the stereotype-defying implication of a new poll by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, which shows that

American Jews express more understanding for American Muslims than any other U.S. religious group.

Eighty percent of American Jews believe U.S. Muslims are loyal to the country, placing them behind only

Muslims themselves (93%), and far ahead of the next most sympathetic religious group, Catholics, 59% of

whom see American Muslims as loyal.

Jews also topped all other religious groups — except for Muslims themselves — in expressing the belief that

U.S. Muslims don‘t support al Qaeda.

In one case, American Jews actually managed to be more sympathetic to Muslims than Muslims themselves,

with 6% more asserting that U.S. Muslims face prejudice from other Americans.

Gallup‘s accompanying report doesn‘t speculate on the causes of this affinity, but The Shmooze wonders

whether centuries of ―dual loyalty‖ accusations have heightened Jews‘ ability to identify with other minorities.

Even on the most polarizing issue that divides them, American Jews and Muslims share the same general

vision. Eighty-one percent of U.S. Muslims support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a view

held by nearly the same proportion — 78% — of U. S. Jews.

http://www.onislam.net/english/news/americas/453334-american-muslims-loyal-optimistic-poll.html

American Muslims Loyal, Optimistic: Poll

OnIslam & News Agencies

Wednesday, 03 August 2011 12:26

The poll found that the majority of US Muslims are loyal to their country

CAIRO – The majority of US Muslims are patriot and loyal to their country and are optimistic about their future,

a new opinion poll has found.

"Muslim Americans today feel a greater sense of belonging in their country," Dalia Mogahed, director of the

Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, told Reuters.

The "Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom and the Future" report found that 69 percent of American Muslims are

patriotic to their nation.

The survey, which included 2,482 people, also found the same percentage of respondents identify themselves

with their religion.

―These respondents feel equally American and Muslim, attending religious services regularly while strongly

identifying with the US‖ said the report by the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.

The report also found a wider agreement among Jews, who see American Muslims are loyal to their country.

Some 80 percent of Jews said that Muslims are loyal to the United States.

The percentage drops among Catholics and Protestants to 59 percent 56 percent respectively.

"There is an untapped resource, and relationship and a possible coalition between Muslim and Jewish

Americans," Mogahed said.

"The similarities between the Jewish and Muslim respondents might surprise some people, because in the past

couple of years some of the loudest voices in campaigns seen as anti-Muslim have been Jewish Americans."

The survey is one of the most expansive of Muslim American public opinion to date.

It looked at how well integrated the US Muslims, estimated between six to eight million, are in the wake of the

so-called "war on terror" launched by former president George W. Bush.

Optimism

Though nearly half of Muslim respondents reported discrimination, the survey also found that American

Muslims are optimistic about their future.

―Muslim Americans are satisfied with their current lives and more optimistic than other faith groups that things

are getting better," said the report.

Around 60 percent of respondents said that they were "thriving" in the United States, compared to 61 percent

of Jews, 54 percent of Catholics and 52 percent of Protestants.

Only 37 percent of Muslims said they were "struggling‖ while just three percent of Muslims said they were

"suffering."

―The prejudice and discrimination are definitely there, and that‘s something we have consistently seen in the

data,‖ said Mohamed Younis, a senior analyst at the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center and one of the authors of the

report.

―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.‖

The poll also found that American Muslims were more critical of the US foreign policy.

When asked about the reason behind the unfavorable views of the United States in Muslim countries, two-

thirds of Muslim attributed it to ―what the US has done‖ and not ―misinformation‖.

The poll also showed that Muslims tend to have more negative views of the US military, describing the wars in

Iraq and Afghanistan a mistake.

Muslims have the level of confidence in the FBI, with only 60 percent trust the security body, while 70 percent

had confidence in the military.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2011/0802/Muslim-Americans-are-optimistic-despite-discrimination-new-poll-says

Muslim Americans are optimistic despite discrimination, new poll says Muslim Americans are loyal to the US and positive about their future even as they face high levels of discrimination, a Gallup poll finds.

Hani Khan (c.) a former stockroom worker for Abercrombie & Fitch Co. who was fired for refusing to remove her Muslim head scarf, sits with an

attorney of the Legal Aid Society and the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations during a news conference in San

Francisco June 27.

Eric Risberg/AP

By Mark Guarino, Staff writer / August 2, 2011

A poll released Thursday revealed curious contradictions in the Muslim-American community, which is more

enthused about its country and president than any other religious group, yet is the least politically active and

faces the greatest discrimination.

The Gallup poll on American religious groups offers a counterpoint to the stereotype that Muslims in

the USlead isolated lives because they do not feel comfortable fitting in or associating with mainstream

American culture. Moreover, it also offers insights into the Muslim-American experience – from how

dramatically the election of President Obama affected them to how little they trust the activists who work on

their behalf.

In total, the poll paints a picture of a community characterized by optimism but still seeking acceptance among

its fellow citizens.

IN PICTURES: Islam in America

For instance, 93 percent of Muslim Americans say they are loyal to America. They have the highest confidence

in the integrity of US elections (57 percent), and they are the most hopeful about their lives over the next five

years, compared with other groups.

Yet 48 percent of Muslim Americans report they experienced some kind of racial or religious discrimination, a

finding that places them far ahead of Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, and atheists/agnostics.

One reason for the optimistic outlook despite discrimination could be that Muslim Americans see their financial

fortunes improving. Some 64 percent of Muslim Americans in 2011 reported their standard of living got better,

compared with 46 percent in 2008.

But the presidency of Mr. Obama has arguably had an even more powerful affect on Muslim Americans.

Muslim Americans give him the highest approval rating – 80 percent – of any religious group. American Jews

are a distant second, giving Obama a 65 percent approval rating.

The number is even more striking when compared with Muslim American support for George W. Bush in 2008,

which was 7 percent.

The shift in leadership in Washington was ―truly transformational‖ for US Muslims in how they viewed their

loyalties to democratic institutions and the nation at large, says Dalia Mogahed, director and senior analyst of

the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, based in the United Arab Emirates.

After the 9/11 attacks, Muslim Americans faced intense scrutiny, both individually and from federal agencies

such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Obama is credited with helping smooth tensions through his

outreach to the US Muslim community and his effort to end the Iraq war responsibly. The poll shows that 83

percent of Muslim Americans – more than any other religious group – say the war was a ―mistake.‖

Despite the positive signs, ―there are still obstacles‖ for Muslim Americans, Ms. Mogahed says.

―They embrace American values and democratic principles but aren‘t sure if the rest of American embraces

them,‖ she says.

Some 56 percent of Protestants said American Muslims had no sympathy for Al Qaeda, the lowest number of

any faith group. By comparison, 63 percent of Catholics and 70 percent of Jews thought Muslim Americans

had no sympathies for Al Qaeda.

―That‘s certainly a challenge for the [US Muslim] community – to have their loyalty questioned by such a large

number of their fellow Americans,‖ Mogahed says.

Those challenges, however, have not led Muslim Americans to try to affect change at the ballot box. They are

the least likely religious group to vote, with just 65 percent of Muslims in America are registered. One reason is

age: The average age of a Muslim-American is 35, while the average American Protestant is 55. Younger

people tend to be less politically active, Mogahed says.

Another reason is affiliation: Poll findings show that the majority of Muslim Americans say that none of the

leading Muslim organizations in the US, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relationsor the Islamic

Society of North America, represents their interests.

With the 2012 election around the corner, Mogahed says political parties that want to reach out to Muslim-

American voters might be better off establishing partnerships with local mosques than focusing on winning

endorsements from national advocacy organizations. This is especially relevant considering that Muslim

Americans who attend a religious service once a week are two times more likely to be politically active than

those who attend less frequently, the poll found.

―The mosque should be more the mobilization engine‖ for get-out-the-vote drives than it has been in the past,

she says.

The poll surveyed 2,482 adults, 475 of whom were Muslim. For Muslims, there was a margin of sampling error

of plus or minus 7 percentage points.

http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-08/poll-american-muslims-hopeful-about-life-us NEWS

Poll: American Muslims hopeful about life in the U.S. Aug 02, 2011 by Lauren Markoe

(RNS) Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, an extensive new survey of Muslims finds them as optimistic as other

Americans, even as large minorities of Christian Americans question Muslims' loyalty to the United States.

The survey, released Tuesday (Aug. 2) by the Gallup organization's center in the Middle East, presented a

community less than fully assured of its place in the United States, but generally confident in President Obama

and the American economy.

American Muslims' perceptions of their own well-being increased more in the past three years than those of

any other religious group, according to the report, which also surveyed Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons,

atheists and agnostics. Muslims' expectations for their own happiness in five years similarly topped all other

faiths'.

Mohamed Younis, of the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, which is affiliated with the United Arab Emirates'

constitutional monarchy, said the report showed optimistic American Muslims share certain traits.

"Muslims who tend to be thriving seem to be more fully engaged in their religious life, but also strongly identify

with the United States as a place to live," Younis said. "They show a picture of someone with less cognitive

dissonance about being 100 percent Muslim and about being 100 percent American."

The optimism of American Muslims is particularly noteworthy, said the report's authors, considering that much

press about them focuses on terrorism and controversy, including the proposed mosque near Ground Zero in

New York and congressional hearings on the "radicalization" of their faith community.

Though majorities across all groups surveyed said that Muslims are loyal to their country, large minorities of

many religious groups doubted it. Ninety-three percent of Muslims believe Muslims are loyal to their country,

compared to 56 percent of Protestants, 56 percent of Mormons, 59 percent of Catholics and 80 percent of

Jews.

In other instances Jewish Americans showed a trust of Muslims less apparent among other groups, and held

opinions that most closely correlated with Muslims,' a phenomenon the report's authors called "The Children of

Abraham." They invited Rabbi David Saperstein, of the Religious Action Center of Reformed Judaism, to the

survey's rollout to help explain the affinity of views.

"Jews view themselves as the quintessential victims of religious persecution in the history of the world over the

last 3,000 years and therefore often identify with those who are subject to persecution and discrimination,"

Saperstein said.

More Jews (66 percent) than Muslims (60 percent) said that Muslims are discriminated against in the United

States, according to the report.

Among other findings of the report, a compilation of Gallup surveys of Americans' life satisfaction and polls of

Muslim Americans in particular:

-- On average, Muslims rate their expected life satisfaction in five years at 8.4 on a 10-point scale -- higher

than any other religious group.

-- A small fraction of Muslims believe there is a national Muslim organization that represents them, with about

12 percent naming the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was named more frequently than any

other group.

-- Sixty-nine percent of Muslims said they "extremely strongly" or "very strongly" identify with the U.S., as

compared to 91 percent of Protestants, 81 percent of Catholics and 86 percent of Jews.

-- Eight of 10 Muslims expressed support for President Obama, more than any other religious group. More than

any other group surveyed, they are confident that economic conditions are improving.

-- Muslims (57 percent) are more confident in the honesty of American elections than Protestants (44 percent),

Catholics (46 percent) or any other religious group.

-- Muslim Americans (70 percent) have less confidence in the military than Protestants (95 percent), Catholics

(94 percent) or any other religious group.

-- Muslims Americans (83 percent) are more likely to see the Iraq war as a mistake than Jews (74 percent),

Protestants (45 percent) or any other religious group.

-- Muslim Americans (65 percent) are less likely to be registered to vote than Protestants (91 percent), Jews

(91 percent) or any other religious group, a statistic the survey's authors say correlates with the relative youth

of the Muslim-American community.

The report was hailed by Muslim leaders and the White House as a tool for those who want to dispel myths

about Muslim Americans and plot a course for their increased participation in American political life.

"It confirms for us that as we reach out to Muslims, the community will reach back," said D. Paul Montiero,

associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, and part of a panel invited to comment on

the report at its Washington unveiling.

Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America, said the survey shows how far

Muslims have to go to until they are fully accepted members of society, and that 9/11 was a setback for those

who follow Islam in America.

"But the process has started," he said. "And I think it will bear fruit."

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/08/03/where-muslims-place-their-faith/

Where Muslims Place Their Faith

Wednesday, August 3, 2011, 8:31 AM Matthew Cantirino

The New York Times today comments on the results of a new Gallup survey of American Muslims which suggests that, on the whole, followers of that faith are more hesitant to express patriotism and confidence in national institutions than Americans of other religious groups.

Among the most intriguing findings: two-thirds of American Muslims say they identify strongly with the United States, about the same percentage as those who say they identify strongly with their religion. But other religious groups identified far more than Muslims with the United States. Protestants, Catholics and Jews said they identified with the United States far more strongly than they identified with their respective faiths.

Some of the doubts expressed by American Muslims in the poll are understandable in light of the September 11, 2001 attacks and any unjust targeting of their faith that may have occurred in the aftermath. Yet it is impossible not to wonder whether there is more to this story. Namely, whether American Muslims who, it seems, largely take their faith seriously, understand something which has been forgotten by the majority of professing Christians and Jews in this country: that allegiance to political authorities (however just or deserving those authorities are) must ultimately be subordinate to allegiance to God and the exigencies of religion.

The Gallup results suggest that many Americans have allowed patriotism to consume their faith rather than complement it, and the comparisons of American Muslims to other citizens of faith causes one to wonder whether U.S. Muslims will eventually come to value patriotism above all else, as well—that they will identify with the nation first and treat their faith simply as an interesting add-on. Some authorities on the matter, like one quoted in the article, are already enthusiastic about this prospect: the hope is that Muslims can become ―full-fledged Americans.‖

Gallup‘s poll results are also particularly striking in that they suggest members of longer-socially-established American religions (specifically Catholicism and Judaism, no strangers to discrimination either) have come to value patriotism far more than their faith. It would be a loss for public life if the majority of American Muslims began simply to favor a vague, inoffensive civic faith (something on the order of what Will Herberg identified in his memorable essay ―Protestant, Catholic, Jew‖) at the expense of the centrality of their religion.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/192083.html

New Report Highlights American Muslim Perceptions Wed Aug 3, 2011 1:26AM GMT Marjan Asi, Press TV, Washington

As the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks draw near, Gallup has released a survey on the political, social and spiritual views of American Muslims in the past decade. The survey, conducted over three years and consisting of hundreds of thousands of interviews, explores the different facets of the Muslim community in the United States, including its perceptions on discrimination which Muslims and non-Muslims alike believe takes place against Muslims. Although a plurality of American Muslims state they have been discriminated against because of their faith, they also express a generally positive outlook on their lives, in sharp contrast to Muslims living in European countries. According to Jocelyne Cesari of Harvard University, this difference can be attributed in part to American Muslims are not isolated from the larger community. One conclusion the report reached was the rejection of terrorism by American Muslims outweighing all other polled religious groups. Despite the overwhelmingly condemnatory attitude of Muslims on terrorism, many Americans continue to affiliate Muslims as sympathizing with terrorism. American Muslims were also more critical of the U.S. approach to counterterrorism, with high percentages of Muslims against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Researchers hope this report will serve as a stepping stone in understanding American Muslim perceptions and their place in American society, particularly in light of rising Islamophobia in the U.S.

http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=90322

08/03/2011 05:49 AM

In America, Muslims Most Opposed to Violence Against Civilians

Compared to several other categories of religious belief or non-belief, Muslims in America are the staunchest opponents of military violence targeting civilians. 78 percent say it´s never justified, with just 21 percent saying it sometimes is.

56 percent of atheists, agnostics and those claiming no religion agree. Mormons are most likely (64 percent) to say anti-civilian military violence is sometimes justified, followed by Catholics and Protestants (58 percent) and Jews (52 percent).

Most groups agree that attacks against civilians by small groups or individuals are never justified. Muslims lead all groups with 89 percent saying "Never justified". They´re followed by Mormons (76 percent), atheists (76), Jews (75) and Protestants/Catholics (71).

Source: www.gallup.com

WebReporter: Ben_Reilly

http://www.bjconline.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4560&Itemid=134

Muslim Americans Hopeful for Future

Written by Don Byrd Tuesday, 02 August 2011

It's been an interesting couple of years for American Muslims. Mosque construction has been threatened - both in courts and by vandals; growing unfounded fears of Islam's Sharia Law have become an avenue for continued discrimination, misunderstanding, and legal harassment; and at least one presidential candidate has been exploiting anti-Muslim sentiment in a divisive political strategy (thankfully, Herman Cain did apologize).

And yet, according to a new Gallup report, the American religious group that is most optimistic about the future?

Muslim Americans see hope for their economic future at a higher rate than other religious groups, and are increasingly engaged civically, despite being the least likely faith group to be registered to vote. Where they face challenges is in the social realm: they are less likely to feel respected when practicing their religion, and nearly half say they've been the target of discrimination. ... Muslim Americans are also more optimistic about achieving their "best possible life" than any other religious group. When asked what rung out of a ladder of ten they feel their life is at (ten being the perfect life), American Muslims say they are at an average of seven, and in five years they say they'll be at an 8.4. Other groups, while also enthusiastic about their future, don't see as big an uptick in their stead. Muslim Americans were also more positive on the national economic conditions, with large portion (24%) saying conditions are "excellent/good" and 54% who said they were improving. By contrast, only 12% of Protestant Americans described conditions as "excellent/good" and 32% described them as getting better.

One reason for this optimism - though I'm sure there are many - could be the recognition that as a nation of laws we are commited to protecting the rights of all Americans. Efforts to end mosque construction and to implement anti-Sharia legislation have been defeated in courts. Other modes of discrimination have been fought by the Justice Department. Constitutional principles of religious freedom empower and protect the liberty of all Americans!

You can read the report, entitled Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom, Future (pdf) here.

http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/americas/us-poll-confronts-stereotypes-of-american-muslims

US poll confronts stereotypes of American Muslims Omar Karmi

Aug 3, 2011

WASHINGTON // Muslim Americans are more likely than any other religious community in the US to reject violence against civilians, whether it is perpetrated by national armies or militant groups.

Almost 10 years after September 11, they also, along with Jewish Americans, were the least likely to believe that members of their community sympathise with Al Qaeda.

These were among the notable findings of a major study of Muslim Americans by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Centre, titled, "Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom and the Future", that was released yesterday.

Gallup surveyed almost 870,000 adults, over a three-year period from January 1, 2008 to April 9, 2011. Of this number, almost 4,000 self-identified as Muslim Americans. Included in the poll were members of each major religious community in the US - Protestant Christians, Roman Catholic Christians, Mormons and Jews - as well as those who identified as atheist or of no religious affiliation.

Asked whether it was sometimes justified for the military to target and kill civilians, 78 per cent of Muslim Americans said never. Only 21 per cent said it was sometimes justified. That contrasts with all other religious communities, where majorities said it was sometimes justified. Only among atheists and those of no religious affiliation did a majority, 58 per cent, also say it was never justified.

Mormons were the most likely, at 64 per cent, to think that such actions were sometimes justified.

By contrast, majorities in all the groups surveyed said it was never justified for non-state actors - individuals or small groups - to target and kill civilians. But here too Muslim Americans were more unequivocal at 89 per cent.

Perhaps more surprising, Jewish Americans were the least likely religious community, after Muslim Americans themselves, to believe that Muslim Americans were sympathetic to Al Qaeda. While small majorities of each group surveyed did not believe that Muslim Americans were sympathetic to Al Qaeda, Jews were out ahead at 70 per cent.

A massive 92 per cent of Muslim Americans say their community is not sympathetic to Al Qaeda, while among atheists and religiously non-affiliated, 75 per cent said the same thing.

Among Protestants, Mormons and Catholics, however, significant minorities - 44, 43, and 37 per cent, respectively - said they thought American Muslims were sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Jewish Americans were also the most likely religious community after Muslims themselves to view Muslim Americans as loyal US citizens. But while 80 per cent of Jews saw Muslim Americans as loyal citizens, only 56 per cent of Protestants and Mormons and 59 per cent of Catholics felt the same, with significant minorities among each saying the statement that "Muslims living in this country were loyal to this country" does not apply.

"The similarities between the Jewish and Muslim respondents might surprise some people, because in the past couple of years some of the loudest voices in campaigns seen as anti-Muslim have been Jewish Americans," said Dalia Mogahed, the director of the Abu Dhabi Gallup Centre.

But the findings of the survey suggest an "untapped opportunity" for coalition building between the two communities, said Ms Mogahed.

"Jews are even more likely than Muslim Americans to believe that there is prejudice against Muslims, so the sensitivity to the problem is high among Jewish Americans."

The survey was concluded just as Peter King, a US congressman from New York, in March began a much publicised series of congressional hearings into Islamic radicalisation of Muslims in America. The third hearing was held last week and has been criticised by civil rights and Muslim American groups as being a witch-hunt.

The poll finds that respondents were generally divided over whether Americans were prejudiced against Muslims.

Again, Jews were most likely to believe this, followed by Muslims themselves. But Christian respondents hovered at about 50 per cent, and one of the recommendations of the study was that the the US government properly assess the extent of anti-Muslim sentiment in the US.

Significantly more Muslims than any other religious community in the US report feeling they were targets of discrimination, and the study's authors say there was evidence of correlation between Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. Among other recommendations, they urged the US State Department to expand its report on anti-Semitism to include Islamophobia.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/08/02/poll-american-muslims-cair/

Poll: American Muslims Don’t Care for CAIR Alana Goodman08.02.2011 - 1:25 PM

This brand new Gallup poll isn‘t just an interesting read, it also backs up several of the points House Homeland Security Chair Peter King has been trying to make during his radicalization hearings. Out of all religious groups Gallup surveyed, Muslim Americans are the least likely to have confidence in the FBI and military institutions. They also don‘t feel represented by most of the Muslim American organizations currently operating in the U.S., including the controversial Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). King has stressed the tension between Muslim Americans and law enforcement could obstruct or hinder FBI investigations. While the numbers don‘t sound dangerously low, just 60 percent of Muslim Americans say they have confidence in the FBI, compared to 75 percent or more of Americans of other religious backgrounds.

Meanwhile, just 12 percent of Muslim American men and 11 percent of Muslim American women say they feel like CAIR represents their interests. Single digits say their interests are represented by other groups, including the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Circle of North America. A majority of males and a plurality of females say no Muslim American groups represent their interests. This is both a good sign and a bad sign – King has been highly critical of groups like CAIR, arguing they try to create a divide between the Muslim community and law enforcement officials. But it‘s also important Muslim Americans feel there are Islamic organizations working in their best interests. The findings are vital, because, according to the survey, religious groups are more likely to ―thrive‖ when they have high confidence in national security institutions. The same holds true for Muslim Americans:

A regression analysis sheds light on the traits most closely associated with thriving in every major American religious group. Among U.S. Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and Mormons, a college education, a high level of religious observance (attending services at least once a week), and confidence in national security organizations such as the FBI are all predictive of thriving. These same traits plus a few others — including strongly identifying with the U.S. — are also predictive of Muslim Americans‘ likelihood to thrive.

It sounds like King‘s hearings are on the right track–not just in the interest of national security– but also in the interest of helping the Muslim American community thrive both financially and socially.

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/08/02/285734/gallup-poll-american-muslims-arent-anti-israel-reject-violence/

Gallup Poll: American Muslims Aren’t Anti-Israel And Reject Violence By Eli Clifton on Aug 2, 2011 at 2:23 pm

While anti-Muslim advocates like Frank Gaffney, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) and Rep. Peter King (R-NY) have

been outspoken advocates of the theory that radical Islamists are infiltrating the U.S., a poll released today by

the Abu Dhabi Gallup center shows that American Muslims are the religious group in America most likely to

reject violence against civilians.

The poll, an aggregate of Gallup polls conducted between January 1, 2008 and April 9, 2011, finds that 78

percent of Muslim Americans said military attacks against civilians are never justified, compared to 58 percent

of protestants and Catholics, 52 percent of Jewish respondents and 33 percent of Mormons.

By contrast, West, for example, has said that Islam is incompatible with American values:

We already have a 5th column that is already infiltrating into our colleges, into our universities, into our high

schools, into our religious aspect, our cultural aspect, our financial, our political systems in this country.

And that enemy represents something called Islam and Islam is a totalitarian theocratic political

ideology, it is not a religion. It has not been a religion since 622 AD, and we need to have individuals that

stand up and say that.‖

The poll finds:

Muslim Americans are most likely (89 percent) to reject violent attacks by individuals or small groups on

civilians versus any other U.S. religious group.

Nearly all Muslim Americans (92 percent) have no sympathy for al-Qaeda.

Muslim Americans are the most likely (65 percent) to see U.S. actions as causing unfavorable views of

U.S. in Muslim countries versus any other U.S. religious group.

While King‘s hearings on the ―radicalization‖ of American Muslims might indicate that Muslims are less loyal to

the U.S. than other religious groups, the polling data suggests exactly the opposite:

Muslim Americans are as likely as other major faith communities to have confidence in the country‘s

judicial system and the media.

Muslim Americans overwhelmingly (93 percent) believe their co-faithful are loyal to America.

Perhaps most interestingly, the poll found that the political and social views expressed by Muslims are often

closest to Jewish Americans. Including:

Eighty-one-percent of Muslim Americans and 78 percent of Jewish Americans support a future in which

an independent Palestinian state would coexist alongside of Israel.

While anti-Muslim pundits and politicians will continue to insist the Muslims Americans are easily radicalized

against the U.S. and hold animosity toward Israel, the data provided in the Gallup poll suggests that these

positions are simply not grounded in reality.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=56726 WASHINGTON, Aug 2, 2011 (IPS) - Muslims in the United States express greater tolerance for members of other faiths than any other major religious group, according to a major new survey and report released here Thursday by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center. They are also more likely than any other religious group to oppose violent or military attacks against civilians, according to the survey, "Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom, and the Future". Nearly four out of five (78 percent) U.S. Muslims say that military attacks against civilians can never be justified. That compares with less than two of five Protestants (38 percent) and Catholics (39 percent) and just over four out of Jews (43 percent) who take that position, the poll found. Similarly, 89 percent of Muslims said attacks by "an individual person or a small group of individuals to target and kill civilians can never be justified". Between 71 percent and 75 percent of Christian and Jewish respondents agreed. The survey also found that Jewish and Muslim Americans shared many views, including how best to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Eighty-one percent of Muslims and 78 percent of Jews queried by Gallup said they supported a two-state solution. Jewish respondents were also more likely than any other group, including Muslims themselves, to believe that Muslims face prejudice in the U.S. While 60 percent of Muslims agreed with the proposition that "most Americans are prejudiced against Muslim Americans," that was less than the 66 percent of Jews agreed with it. Protestants and Catholics, in contrast, were roughly evenly split on the question. Jewish respondents (80 percent) were also more likely - besides Muslims themselves (93 percent) - to see Muslim Americans as being loyal to the United States, compared to less than 60 percent of Christian respondents. Conversely, more than a third of Protestant and Catholic respondents questioned Muslims' loyalty, as did 19 percent of Jews. The survey, which was based on nearly 2,500 interviews with respondents, 475 of whom said they were Muslim, poses a major challenge to efforts, primarily by right-wing Christian and Jewish groups in the U.S., to depict Muslims - and Islam as a religion - as fundamentally alien, if not actively hostile, to "Judeo-Christian" or "Western" values and U.S. society. Those efforts reached a high point over the past year in the form of a largely successful effort to derail the construction of a Muslim community centre – the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" – two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan and an ongoing state-by-state campaign led by the neo-conservative Center for Security Policy (CSP) to outlaw the application of Sharia, or Islamic law, in U.S. courts. The latter campaign, headed by a former resident of a Jewish settlement on the occupied West Bank, has claimed that Sharia is part of plot by the Muslim Brotherhood to transform the United States into an Islamic, "totalitarian" state. Those campaigns – as well as Congressional hearings chaired by Republican Rep. Peter King this year on threats allegedly posed by Muslim extremism in the U.S. – have affected the public's perceptions of U.S. Muslims. Their perceptions of the U.S. was not addressed by the survey, which is based on interviews

conducted early last year and again last October, according to Mohamed Younis, a senior analyst at the Washington-based Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and main author of the survey analysis. "I really can't speculate on the impact of those events," he told IPS. The survey also didn't break down differences of views - based on ethnicity or other factors - among U.S. Muslims who make up the most racially diverse religious community in the country. Asian Muslims, who comprise about 18 percent of the total Muslim population, enjoy particularly high incomes on average, for example, while African-American Muslims – about 35 percent of the total – are least well off, according to the last major Gallup survey, 'Muslim Americans: A National Portrait,' published in 2009. Overall, Muslim Americans expressed more optimism about their lives, including their economic well-being, than all the other major religious groups, according to the survey. They felt especially positive about President Barack Obama, the first president with Muslim roots. Eighty percent said they approved of his performance, compared to 65 percent of Jews, and only 37 percent of Protestants. On the more-negative side, nearly half of all Muslim respondents (48 percent) said they had experienced discrimination over the past year, compared to an average of 20 percent of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, and 31 percent of Mormons. And while, of all religious groups, Muslim respondents were most likely to express confidence in the honesty of elections (57 percent), they were the least likely be registered to vote (65 percent), and to express confidence in the military (70 percent) and in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (60 percent), no doubt because they have been the target of repeated investigations, especially since 9/11. Four out of five Muslims said they do not believe it is possible to profile a terrorist based on his or her gender, age, ethnicity or other demographic traits. Slightly less than half of the other major religious groups agree with that view. According to a "religious tolerance index" devised by Gallup, in which respondents assess how strongly they identify with other religions, the survey found that Muslims and Mormons were the most accepting or "integrated" – defined as going "beyond a live-and-let- live [or "tolerant"] attitude (to) actively seek to know more about and learn from others of different religious traditions." Forty-four percent of Muslim respondents fit that definition, compared to 34 percent of Catholics, 35 percent of Protestants, and 36 percent of Jews. Asked whether U.S. Muslims were sympathetic to Al-Qaeda, 92 percent of Muslim respondents, 70 percent of Jews, 63 percent of Catholics, and 56 percent of Protestants responded negatively. Nonetheless, about one third of Christian respondents did not dismiss the possibility of Muslim Americans holding some sympathy for Al-Qaeda. On foreign policy in the Muslim world, U.S. Muslims tended to be more sceptical than other religious groups. Eighty-three percent of Muslims said they the Iraq war was a mistake, compared to 74 percent of Jews, and an average of 47 percent of Christian respondents. Muslim Americans (47 percent) were also the most likely to see U.S. military action in Afghanistan as mistaken, compared to about one third of Jews and Catholics and 29 percent of Protestants. While most respondents of all religious groups said the U.S. suffered a negative image in Muslim world, Muslim Americans (65 percent) were the only group that attributed it to "what the U.S. has done", as opposed to "misinformation …about what the U.S. has done". Seventy percent of Catholics, 65 percent of Protestants,

and 55 percent of Jews attributed Washington's negative image to misinformation.

http://epostmedia.com/muslims-in-the-u-s-have-faith-in-their-country/377340/

Muslims In The U.S. Have Faith In Their Country

by JULIE MACKENZIE on AUGUST 2, 2011

And Muslims In The U.S. Are Happy With President Obama

A recent Gallup poll showed that Muslims in the U.S. had more faith in their country than any other religious

group. The same poll showed that Muslims in the U.S. face more discrimination than other religions.

The poll was conducted by telephone by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center based in the United Arab Emirates.

2,482 adults were interviewed between February 10th and March 11th, 2010 and October 1 to 21, 2010, 475 of

them being Muslim.

48 percent of Muslims in the U.S. reported they have been subjected to racial or religious discrimination. This

places them higher than Atheists/Agnostics, Catholics, Jews, Mormons and Protestants.

93 percent of Muslims in the U.S. reported that they were loyal to their country and are happy with President

Obama‘s leadership. The poll gave an 80% approval rate for Obama. In comparison, in 2008, Muslims in the

U.S. gave former president George W. Bush a 7% approval rate.

The reason for the improved or optimistic outlook Muslim Americans have is unknown for sure. However, it is

suggested that their standard of living having improved since 2008 may be one factor. Also, perhaps life is

getting a bit easier and people are beginning to listen to the views of Muslims in the U.S. after the struggles

they faced after 9/11.

The terrorist attacks brought unwarranted investigations to many Muslims in the U.S. by the Federal Bureau of

Investigation after the fact. This has decreased their confidence in the F.B.I. Only 60% of Muslims in the U.S.

have confidence in the organization while 75% of other religious groups in the U.S. have confidence in the

F.B.I.

83% of Muslims in the U.S. believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were a ―mistake.‖ This is a higher

percentage than any other religious group. However, their loyalty to the country is still questioned.

http://www.presstv.com/detail/192096.html

'Half of US Muslims face prejudice' Wed Aug 3, 2011 4:41AM GMT

US Muslims protesting against a planned congressional hearing on the alleged role of Muslims in homegrown terrorism in New York, March 2011

Nearly half of American Muslims say they have experienced racial or religious discrimination over the past year, a new poll has revealed. According to the survey conducted by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, a Gallup research hub in the United Arab Emirates, 48 percent of Muslims in America said they had "personally experienced racial or religious discrimination" in the past year, AFP reported on Tuesday. The poll, which was carried out ahead of the tenth anniversary of the September 11 incidents, shows that American Muslims lead all other faith groups in rejecting terrorism and attacks on civilians. Muslim Americans also tend to have more negative views of the American military and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), attributing such opinions to the so-called ―war on terror‖ which focuses heavily on Muslims, the report added. Based on the survey, following the election of US President Barack Obama, the 2.6 million Muslims in America, tend to be more optimistic about both the economy and politics compared with the other faith groups.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/08/03/muslims_in_us_not_disaffected_according_to_poll/

Muslims in US not disaffected, according to poll New York Times / August 3, 2011

NEW YORK - Nearly a decade after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a Gallup poll released yesterday found that

the vast majority of Muslim Americans say they are loyal to the United States and optimistic about the future,

even though they are more likely than other religious groups to say they recently experienced discrimination.

Nine of 10 Muslim Americans said that their co-religionists in the US were not sympathetic to Al Qaeda, the

terrorist organization held responsible for the attacks 10 years ago. Majorities in other religious groups agreed

that Muslim Americans did not sympathize with Al Qaeda, although the percentages were much lower.

The poll in many ways contradicts the stereotype of Muslim Americans as an alienated and discontented

religious minority. It was conducted by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, a Gallup-affiliated research group based

in the United Arab Emirates. The poll - which included interviews with 2,482 adults, of whom 475 said they

were Muslim - has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 7 percentage points for Muslims.

―It‘s not a completely rosy picture,‘‘ said Mohamed Younis, analyst with the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies in

Washington and an author of the study.

―The prejudice and discrimination are definitely there, and that‘s something we have consistently seen in the

data,‘‘ Younis said. ―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.‘‘

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/08/muslims-in-amer.html

Muslims in America

By

Gabriel Escobar / Editorial Writer

gescobar@dallasnews.com | Bio

2:10 PM on Wed., Aug. 3, 2011 |

A new Gallup poll lists the traits that may contribute to a prevailing sense of optimism among American

Muslims. Those most likely to thrive, the operative term used by the pollsters, are college educated, strongly

identify with the U.S. and attend mosque at least once a week. What may surprise some is that the polling

analysis also flagged confidence in national security agencies, such as the FBI, as a key trait in determining

whether Muslim Americans will perceive themselves as thriving.

Building trust in law enforcement is an ongoing challenge, and certainly not one that should apply only to

Muslim Americans. But for a group whose religion has been tied to terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001, the belief

that law enforcement is both vigilant and fair seems especially relevant. Indeed, the authors of the report

recommend a national strategy to address the challenges in improving relations between Muslim Americans

and local and national law enforcement.

One other finding worth noting: the attitudes of Muslim Americans between 18 and 29 has improved since the

last Gallup poll in 2008. The importance here, of course, is that this is the age group flagged by terrorism

experts who worry about alienated Muslim youths being lured into committing terror acts.

Mustafaa Carroll, the executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations in Texas, said he is not

generally surprised by the findings. His hope, he said, is that these surveys will help convince people that the

very diverse Muslim American population should neither be distrusted nor alienated. Again, the toll of 9/11.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2021798/U-S-Muslims-happier-optimistic-major-faith-group.html U.S. Muslims 'happiest and most optimistic major faith group after rapid rise in positivity on 2008' By DAILY MAIL REPORTER Last updated at 4:22 AM on 3rd August 2011

Muslim Americans are now more optimistic about their lives than any other major American faith group, a poll says. Three in five Muslim Americans reported they were ‗thriving‘, as their economic well-being improves and they feel more politically enfranchised. This was slightly higher than for Americans of any other religion except for Jews, who edged them out of the top spot by one percentage point.

Happier: Muslim Americans are now more optimistic about their lives than any other major American faith group as their economic well-being improves

Gallup pollsters noted the rapid surge in positive sentiment among Muslim Americans. The percentage of Muslims who were ‗thriving‘ grew by 19 points since 2008 - double any other major faith group. ‗Muslim Americans are happier and more optimistic today than at the end of 2008,‘ Dalia Mogahed, director of the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, said. ‗Muslim Americans today feel a greater sense of belonging in their country,‘ she added. Only three per cent of Muslim Americans said they were suffering, while 37 per cent said they were struggling. Authors of the study said they attributed the change in outlook to improved economic conditions and a sense of more political enfranchisement since the election of President Barack Obama. He is a Christian with Muslim family roots who has reached out to Muslim communities worldwide.

The report said Mr Obama's approval rating among Muslim Americans was 80 per cent, and that 46 per cent, or a plurality, of Muslim Americans identified as Democrats, compared to only 9 per cent who identified as Republicans.

‗They may see Mr Obama as promoting policies that are more in keeping with their own political views than those of former President George W. Bush,‘ the report said.

Yes we can: Authors of the study said they attributed the change in outlook to more political enfranchisement since the election of President Barack Obama

Muslim Americans also felt, to the tune of 64 per cent, that their standard of living was getting better, up from 55 per cent in 2009 and 46 per cent in 2008. The report, which focused on civic and spiritual engagement as well as overall well-being, said the improvements in Muslim sentiment came despite continuing controversies. Those included a controversy surrounding a plan to build a Muslim cultural centre and mosque near the site of New York's September 11 Al Qaeda attack. ‘Muslim Americans are happier and more optimistic today than at the end of 2008. Muslim Americans today feel a greater sense of belonging in their country' Dalia Mogahed, director of the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center In addition, hearings on Islamic extremism called by U.S. Representative Peter King were cited, which critics viewed as a witch-hunt. A Christian preacher also caused uproar last year by threatening to burn the Koran, and put himself back in the spotlight in March after incinerating Islam's holy book. ‗Despite some of these perceived attacks on the community, they are feeling better overall about their lives, about their country's leadership,‘ Ms Mogahed said. Some 89 per cent of Muslim Americans said that violent attacks on civilians were never justified, compared to between 71 and 79 per cent of other religious groups who felt the same way. ‗The finding is surprising because much of the rhetoric has been that the community hasn't been vocal enough in its rejection of terrorism,‘ Ms Mogahed said.

Optimism rising: The percentage of Muslims who were 'thriving' grew by 19 points since 2008 - double any other major faith group

Jewish Americans had some views in common with Muslim Americans. A majority of Americans from both faiths agreed on a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Jewish Americans were also the most likely religious groups, besides Muslims themselves, to believe that Muslim Americans were loyal to the United States. ‘Despite some of these perceived attacks on the community, they are feeling better overall about their lives, about their country's leadership. The finding is surprising because much of the rhetoric has been that the community hasn't been vocal enough in its rejection of terrorism' Dalia Mogahed, director of the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center Some 80 per cent of Jews said this, compared to 59 per cent of Catholics and 56 per cent of Protestants. ‗There is an untapped resource, and relationship and a possible coalition between Muslim and Jewish Americans,‘ Ms Mogahed said. Muslim Americans continued to have a deep scepticism toward law enforcement and foreign policy. Some 60 per cent of Muslim Americans had confidence in the FBI, while 70 per cent had confidence in the military, the lowest of any group. Gallup said the study was one of the most expansive of Muslim American public opinion to date. Instead of finding respondents by selecting people with Islamic-sounding names or going to parts of the country with large Muslim populations, the study is drawn from a random selection of U.S. households. Gallup said it interviewed 3,883 self-identified Muslim American adults from January 2008 to April 2011. The margin of error or confidence level in the data is 95 per cent.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0803/1224301774684.html

The Irish Times - Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Muslims 'thriving' in United States WASHINGTON – Muslim Americans have felt a surge in their sense of well-being, with the percentage of

Muslims saying they were ―thriving‖ in the United States up 19 per cent since 2008, according to a poll

released yesterday.

A Gallup study found 60 per cent of Muslim Americans surveyed reported they were thriving, slightly higher

than for Americans of any other religion except for Jews.

Pollsters noted the rapid surge in positive sentiment, with the 19-point increase since 2008 double that of any

other major faith group. The report said the approval rating for US president Barack Obama among Muslim

Americans was 80 per cent, and that 46 per cent of Muslim Americans identified as Democrats, compared to

only 9 per cent who identified as Republicans. – (Reuters)

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Study-American-Muslims-Identify-with-US-Islam-Equally-126717858.html August 03, 2011

Study: American Muslims Identify with US, Islam Equally Suzanne Presto | Washington

A research group has conducted hundreds of thousands of interviews since 2008 with Americans of different faiths, in an attempt to explore the political, social and spiritual engagement of Muslim Americans, as well as gauge attitudes toward them. The study was released Tuesday, and that it contains some interesting findings. Mohamed Younis, senior analyst at the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, summed up the findings of the new report titled "Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom and the Future." "Muslim Americans are just that -- they're Americans. They care a lot about their faith, but they also care a lot about their country," he said. Younis said that a decade after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the study found that a majority of Americans of every faith believe that Muslim Americans are loyal to the United States. He told reporters at a news conference in Washington that this perception came through in Muslim Americans' responses to questions about identity. "What we find are that Muslim Americans identify equally with the United States as they do with their religion," he said. About 7 out of 10 Muslim Americans said they "very strongly" or "extremely strongly" identified with the United States, and a similar number expressed the same about Islam. Researchers found that majorities of each major religious group surveyed said they do not believe that Muslim Americans sympathize with al-Qaida terrorists, but many also said Muslims need to speak out more against terrorism. As for quality of life, Muslim Americans were the most optimistic about the future of all of the groups surveyed. Overall, Younis said, Muslim Americans were about on par with Catholic, Protestant, Mormon and Jewish respondents when asked to define themselves as struggling, suffering or thriving. "Muslim Americans were actually statistically similar to most other major religious groups in the United States in the percent of respondents who fell into that 'thriving' category," he said. Sixty percent of Muslim Americans described themselves as thriving, and only three percent said they were suffering. In both regards, their responses were nearly identical to Jewish Americans. Researcher Mohamed Younis said Muslim Americans often are closest to Jewish Americans in their social and political views. "Now, Jewish Americans are more likely than Catholics, Protestants and Mormons to see Muslims as loyal to the United States. They are also in agreement with Muslim Americans -- and more likely than Catholics, Protestants and Mormons -- to believe that Muslims in the U.S. have no sympathy for the al-Qaida terrorist organization. They're actually more likely than Muslim Americans to say that the Muslims in the U.S. experience a lot of prejudice. And then Jewish and Muslim Americans are two of the most likely religious groups to also say that the Iraq War was a mistake," Younis said.

Panelist Imam Mohamed Magid said he was surprised by the findings. "We work with the Jewish community very closely in many ways, but, for example, the percentage of Jewish Americans who have the same view of the Iraq War and other things like that, I was whispering to David, actually, I said, 'that's very surprising,'" he said. The imam was referring to fellow panelist, Rabbi David Saperstein, who said he believes there are many reasons for the similar perceptions. "Jews view themselves as the quintessential victims of religious persecution in the history of the world over the last 3,000 years, and therefore often identify with those who are subject to religious persecution and discrimination," Saperstein said. Analyst Mohamed Younis recommended that the U.S. government treat Islamaphobia and anti-semitism as related phenomena. The panelists said they hoped the Gallup study would help address misconceptions about Muslim Americans.

http://www.examiner.com/public-safety-in-national/gallup-poll-reveals-cair-is-all-bark-but-no-bite

Gallup poll reveals CAIR is all bark, but no bite

Jim Kouri

August 3, 2011

A new Gallup poll appears to confirm several points House Homeland Security Chair Peter King (R-NY) has

been making during his Muslim-American radicalization series of committee hearings.

Of all religious groups Gallup surveyed, Muslim Americans are the least likely to have confidence in the FBI

and military institutions. They also don‘t feel represented by most of the Muslim American organizations

currently operating in the U.S., including the controversial Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) prodded Rep. Thompson into attempting to discredit Rep.

King's probe and one the Islamic group's top officials released a press statement. "Representative King seems

to believe that he need not offer any evidence or expert testimony to back up his baseless allegations," said

CAIR Legislative Director Corey Saylor.

"One wonders whether Representative King will call witnesses to support his bizarre claim that '85 percent' of

American Muslim community leaders are 'an enemy living amongst us,'" Saylor stated.

Saylor accused Rep. King of having a long history of troubling rhetoric and baseless claims about the Muslim

community, which raise reasonable concerns about the form his hearings may take. In 2007, Rep. King said

"we have too many mosques in this country."

CAIR officials routinely attacks anyone who questions the motives or actions of Muslims in the United States,

according to several law enforcement sources.

According to a report from the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security: "The

Council on American-Islamic Relations and its employees have combined, conspired, and agreed with third

parties, including, but not limited to, the Islamic Association for Palestine, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief

and Development, the Global Relief Foundation, and foreign nationals hostile to the interests of the United

States, to provide material support to known terrorist organizations, to advance the Hamas agenda, and to

propagate radical Islam."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, and certain of its officers, directors, and employees, have acted in

support of, and in furtherance of, this conspiracy, said the Senate report.

GALLUP POLL SHOWS MUSLIMS DON'T CARE MUCH FOR CAIR

King has stressed the tension between Muslim Americans and law enforcement could obstruct or hinder FBI

investigations. While the numbers don‘t sound dangerously low, just 60 percent of Muslim Americans say they

have confidence in the FBI, compared to 75 percent or more of Americans of other religious backgrounds,

according to Gallup.

Meanwhile, just 12 percent of Muslim American men and 11 percent of Muslim American women say they feel

like CAIR represents their interests. Single digits say their interests are represented by other groups, including

the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Circle of North

America.

A majority of males and a plurality of females say no Muslim American groups represent their interests. King

has been highly critical of groups like CAIR, arguing they try to create a divide between the Muslim community

and law enforcement officials. But it‘s also important Muslim Americans feel there are Islamic organizations

working in their best interests.

It seems that CAIR's only source for credibility are news media organizations that afford them more coverage

than they obviously deserve and left-wing, anti-American groups such as ACLU that use them for their own

political purposes.

http://www.centredaily.com/2011/08/02/2866633/poll-american-muslims-upbeat-about.html

Poll: American Muslims upbeat about life in US By DANIEL LIPPMAN — McClatchy Newspapers

Posted: 4:00am on Aug 2, 2011; Modified: 8:04pm on Aug 2, 2011

WASHINGTON — A Gallup poll released Tuesday found that most Muslim Americans are very optimistic about their lives in the United States and are loyal to a country that's given them a wealth of economic opportunities, even though some Americans continue to treat the community with hostility. But the report also identified one area of concern: how to improve the strained relationship between Muslims and other Americans. Experts said the survey findings were important because they could mitigate some of the concerns Americans have about the susceptibility of American Muslims to extremist causes. The thinking goes that if people are satisfied with their lives, they're unlikely to get sucked into radical movements, which often prey on economically vulnerable people. Asked to rate what their lives would be like in five years, Muslim Americans gave higher ratings than members of most other religious groups did. On a 1-to-10 scale, Muslims rated their future lives at 8.4, while Americans of other religious groups give average ratings of 7.4 to 8, Gallup pollsters said. Mohamed Younis, a senior Gallup analyst, attributed Muslims' positive outlook to a range of reasons, from political factors to the slowly recovering economy having improved their standard-of-living expectations. "We definitely see a lot of approval for President Barack Obama and a changed rhetoric around the role of Muslims in America and Muslim-U.S. relations globally," Younis said. The survey found Obama's job approval rating at 80 percent among American Muslims. The survey, which consisted of two polls conducted from January 2010 to April 2011, comes from the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center with some financial support from the crown prince of Abu Dhabi. The firm surveyed 1,500 Muslim Americans and thousands of Americans from other faiths, with a margin of error of 0.3 to 6.6 percentage points. With the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaching, some Americans are still skeptical of the allegiances of Muslims who live in the United States. The poll found that more than a third of Protestants and Roman Catholics didn't believe that Muslim Americans were loyal to the U.S. More than nine in 10 Muslims surveyed thought that their community was loyal. The concerns of some Americans may have been raised by incidents such as the November 2009 shooting spree that killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, and the attempted bombing of New York's Times Square in May 2010. U.S. citizens of Muslim extraction have been charged in the first case and have pleaded guilty in the second. Panelists who introduced the survey at the National Press Club said those events didn't represent the true face of Muslims in this country, a group that on average is younger, holds a greater percentage of professional graduate degrees and earns a higher income than average Americans.

"There are so many American Muslims who (have) served in the Army and in law enforcement. Those stories have not been told. All that you hear about is the negative view of Islam and Muslims," said Imam Mohamed Magid, the president of the Islamic Society of North America. Law enforcement agencies remain concerned, however, about certain corners of the American Muslim community, such as Somali-Americans living in Minnesota. Several dozen young Somali Americans have traveled in recent years to their East African home country to fight for al-Shabab, a State Department-designated terrorist group that's currently blocking famine-starved civilians from leaving areas under its control. The poll also found that many Americans of different religious groups say that Muslims aren't speaking out enough against terrorism. More than 60 percent of Protestants, Catholics and Jews say that Muslims should condemn terrorist attacks more publicly. Rabbi David Saperstein, the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said interfaith leaders had been unsuccessful in promoting how well-assimilated most Muslims were in America. This is in contrast to some European countries, where many Muslims have found integrating into the mainstream culture difficult. "We really need to change the images of Islam to more accord with the reality. (The survey) gives us a lot to work with," Saperstein said. D. Paul Monteiro, the associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, said that one way for Muslim Americans to increase other Americans' level of trust was to engage person-to-person with people of other faiths. "When a person who is a Protestant or any other religion meets a person who is Muslim, the conversation changes. The perception changes," Monteiro said. "As long as someone ... doesn't know personally someone who is Muslim, then they're open and susceptible to some of this rapidly spreading misinformation that even in some parts of the press presents a not-so-great picture of Muslims or Islam as a whole."

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/08/02/2342429/poll-american-muslims-upbeat-about.html

Poll: American Muslims upbeat about life in US BY DANIEL LIPPMAN

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- A Gallup poll released Tuesday found that most Muslim Americans are very optimistic about their lives in the United States and are loyal to a country that's given them a wealth of economic opportunities, even though some Americans continue to treat the community with hostility.

But the report also identified one area of concern: how to improve the strained relationship between Muslims and other Americans.

Experts said the survey findings were important because they could mitigate some of the concerns Americans have about the susceptibility of American Muslims to extremist causes. The thinking goes that if people are satisfied with their lives, they're unlikely to get sucked into radical movements, which often prey on economically vulnerable people.

Asked to rate what their lives would be like in five years, Muslim Americans gave higher ratings than members of most other religious groups did. On a 1-to-10 scale, Muslims rated their future lives at 8.4, while Americans of other religious groups give average ratings of 7.4 to 8, Gallup pollsters said.

Mohamed Younis, a senior Gallup analyst, attributed Muslims' positive outlook to a range of reasons, from political factors to the slowly recovering economy having improved their standard-of-living expectations.

"We definitely see a lot of approval for President Barack Obama and a changed rhetoric around the role of Muslims in America and Muslim-U.S. relations globally," Younis said. The survey found Obama's job approval rating at 80 percent among American Muslims.

The survey, which consisted of two polls conducted from January 2010 to April 2011, comes from the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center with some financial support from the crown prince of Abu Dhabi. The firm surveyed 1,500 Muslim Americans and thousands of Americans from other faiths, with a margin of error of 0.3 to 6.6 percentage points.

With the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaching, some Americans are still skeptical of the allegiances of Muslims who live in the United States. The poll found that more than a third of Protestants and Roman Catholics didn't believe that Muslim Americans were loyal to the U.S.

More than nine in 10 Muslims surveyed thought that their community was loyal.

The concerns of some Americans may have been raised by incidents such as the November 2009 shooting spree that killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, and the attempted bombing of New York's Times Square in May 2010. U.S. citizens of Muslim extraction have been charged in the first case and have pleaded guilty in the second.

Panelists who introduced the survey at the National Press Club said those events didn't represent the true face of Muslims in this country, a group that on average is younger, holds a greater percentage of professional graduate degrees and earns a higher income than average Americans.

"There are so many American Muslims who (have) served in the Army and in law enforcement. Those stories have not been told. All that you hear about is the negative view of Islam and Muslims," said Imam Mohamed Magid, the president of the Islamic Society of North America.

Law enforcement agencies remain concerned, however, about certain corners of the American Muslim community, such as Somali-Americans living in Minnesota. Several dozen young Somali Americans have traveled in recent years to their East African home country to fight for al-Shabab, a State Department-designated terrorist group that's currently blocking famine-starved civilians from leaving areas under its control.

The poll also found that many Americans of different religious groups say that Muslims aren't speaking out enough against terrorism. More than 60 percent of Protestants, Catholics and Jews say that Muslims should condemn terrorist attacks more publicly.

Rabbi David Saperstein, the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said interfaith leaders had been unsuccessful in promoting how well-assimilated most Muslims were in America. This is in contrast to some European countries, where many Muslims have found integrating into the mainstream culture difficult.

"We really need to change the images of Islam to more accord with the reality. (The survey) gives us a lot to work with," Saperstein said.

D. Paul Monteiro, the associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, said that one way for Muslim Americans to increase other Americans' level of trust was to engage person-to-person with people of other faiths.

"When a person who is a Protestant or any other religion meets a person who is Muslim, the conversation changes. The perception changes," Monteiro said.

"As long as someone ... doesn't know personally someone who is Muslim, then they're open and susceptible to some of this rapidly spreading misinformation that even in some parts of the press presents a not-so-great picture of Muslims or Islam as a whole."

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http://original.antiwar.com/lobe/2011/08/02/us-muslims-more-tolerant/

US Muslims More Tolerant, Opposed to Violence Than Other Faiths by Jim Lobe, August 03, 2011

Muslims in the United States express greater tolerance for members of other faiths than any other major

religious group, according to a major new survey and report released Thursday by the Abu Dhabi Gallup

Center.

They are also more likely than any other religious group to oppose violent or military attacks against civilians,

according to the survey, ―Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom, and the Future.‖

Nearly four out of five (78 percent) U.S. Muslims say that military attacks against civilians can never be

justified. That compares with less than two of five Protestants (38 percent) and Catholics (39 percent) and just

over four out of Jews (43 percent) who take that position, the poll found.

Similarly, 89 percent of Muslims said attacks by ―an individual person or a small group of individuals to target

and kill civilians can never be justified.‖ Between 71 percent and 75 percent of Christian and Jewish

respondents agreed.

The survey also found that Jewish and Muslim Americans shared many views, including how best to solve the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Eighty-one percent of Muslims and 78 percent of Jews queried by Gallup said they

supported a two-state solution.

Jewish respondents were also more likely than any other group, including Muslims themselves, to believe that

Muslims face prejudice in the U.S.

While 60 percent of Muslims agreed with the proposition that ―most Americans are prejudiced against Muslim

Americans,‖ that was less than the 66 percent of Jews agreed with it. Protestants and Catholics, in contrast,

were roughly evenly split on the question.

Jewish respondents (80 percent) were also more likely — besides Muslims themselves (93 percent) — to see

Muslim Americans as being loyal to the United States, compared to less than 60 percent of Christian

respondents. Conversely, more than a third of Protestant and Catholic respondents questioned Muslims‘

loyalty, as did 19 percent of Jews.

The survey, which was based on nearly 2,500 interviews with respondents, 475 of whom said they were

Muslim, poses a major challenge to efforts, primarily by right-wing Christian and Jewish groups in the U.S., to

depict Muslims — and Islam as a religion — as fundamentally alien, if not actively hostile, to ―Judeo-Christian‖

or ―Western‖ values and U.S. society.

Those efforts reached a high point over the past year in the form of a largely successful effort to derail the

construction of a Muslim community center — the so-called ―Ground Zero Mosque‖ — two blocks from the site

of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan and an ongoing state-by-state campaign led by the

neoconservative Center for Security Policy (CSP) to outlaw the application of Shariah, or Islamic law, in U.S.

courts.

The latter campaign, headed by a former resident of a Jewish settlement on the occupied West Bank, has

claimed that Shariah is part of plot by the Muslim Brotherhood to transform the United States into an Islamic

―totalitarian‖ state.

Those campaigns — as well as congressional hearings chaired by Republican Rep. Peter King this year on

threats allegedly posed by Muslim extremism in the U.S. — have affected the public‘s perceptions of U.S.

Muslims. Their perceptions of the U.S. was not addressed by the survey, which is based on interviews

conducted early last year and again last October, according to Mohamed Younis, a senior analyst at the

Washington-based Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and main author of the survey analysis.

―I really can‘t speculate on the impact of those events,‖ he told IPS.

The survey also didn‘t break down differences of views — based on ethnicity or other factors — among U.S.

Muslims who make up the most racially diverse religious community in the country.

Asian Muslims, who comprise about 18 percent of the total Muslim population, enjoy particularly high incomes

on average, for example, while African-American Muslims — about 35 percent of the total — are least well off,

according to the last major Gallup survey, ―Muslim Americans: A National Portrait,‖ published in 2009.

Overall, Muslim Americans expressed more optimism about their lives, including their economic well-being,

than all the other major religious groups, according to the survey.

They felt especially positive about President Barack Obama, the first president with Muslim roots. Eighty

percent said they approved of his performance, compared to 65 percent of Jews and only 37 percent of

Protestants.

On the more negative side, nearly half of all Muslim respondents (48 percent) said they had experienced

discrimination over the past year, compared to an average of 20 percent of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews,

and 31 percent of Mormons.

And while, of all religious groups, Muslim respondents were most likely to express confidence in the honesty of

elections (57 percent), they were the least likely be registered to vote (65 percent) and to express confidence

in the military (70 percent) and in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (60 percent), no doubt because they

have been the target of repeated investigations, especially since 9/11.

Four out of five Muslims said they do not believe it is possible to profile a terrorist based on his or her gender,

age, ethnicity, or other demographic traits. Slightly less than half of the other major religious groups agree with

that view.

According to a ―religious tolerance index‖ devised by Gallup, in which respondents assess how strongly they

identify with other religions, the survey found that Muslims and Mormons were the most accepting or

―integrated‖ — defined as going ―beyond a live-and-let-live (or ‗tolerant‘) attitude [to] actively seek to know

more about and learn from others of different religious traditions.‖

Forty-four percent of Muslim respondents fit that definition, compared to 34 percent of Catholics, 35 percent of

Protestants, and 36 percent of Jews.

Asked whether U.S. Muslims were sympathetic to al-Qaeda, 92 percent of Muslim respondents, 70 percent of

Jews, 63 percent of Catholics, and 56 percent of Protestants responded negatively. Nonetheless, about one

third of Christian respondents did not dismiss the possibility of Muslim Americans holding some sympathy for

al-Qaeda.

On foreign policy in the Muslim world, U.S. Muslims tended to be more skeptical than other religious groups.

Eighty-three percent of Muslims said they thought the Iraq war was a mistake, compared to 74 percent of Jews

and an average of 47 percent of Christian respondents. Muslim Americans (47 percent) were also the most

likely to see U.S. military action in Afghanistan as mistaken, compared to about one third of Jews and

Catholics and 29 percent of Protestants.

While most respondents of all religious groups said the U.S. suffered a negative image in Muslim world,

Muslim Americans (65 percent) were the only group that attributed it to ―what the U.S. has done,‖ as opposed

to ―misinformation … about what the U.S. has done.‖ Seventy percent of Catholics, 65 percent of Protestants,

and 55 percent of Jews attributed Washington‘s negative image to misinformation.

(Inter Press Service)

http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=365884

US Muslims optimistic, but face discrimination: poll

08-03-2011, 00h26

WASHINGTON (AFP)

US Muslims are more optimistic about the future than other faith groups, but while they overwhelmingly reject

terrorism, nearly half report discrimination, a poll found.

The survey was carried out ahead of the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and looked at how

well integrated the 2.6 million Muslims living in the United States are in the wake of the "war on terror"

launched by former president George W. Bush after the deadly plane hijackings.

It found that Muslims tend to be more optimistic about both the economy and politics following the election of

President Barack Obama, who enjoys 80 percent approval among Muslims, higher than from any other major

faith group.

Sixty percent of Muslims said they were "thriving" in the United States, compared to 61 percent of Jews, 54

percent of Catholics and 52 percent of Protestants, according to the poll.

Only 37 percent of Muslims said they were "struggling," less than both Christian groups but a single

percentage point higher than Jews, while just three percent of Muslims said they were "suffering."

Fifty-four percent of Muslims said the US economy was "getting better," a far higher percentage than any

other religious group.

"Muslim Americans are satisfied with their current lives and more optimistic than other faith groups that things

are getting better," said the report, which did not distinguish between different Muslim groups.

However, 48 percent of Muslims surveyed said they had "personally experienced racial or religious

discrimination" in the past year, compared to 31 percent of Mormons, 21 percent of Jews and 20 percent of

Catholics.

Muslims tend to have more negative views of the US military and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the

report said, attributing such feelings to the "war on terror" seen by some as focusing heavily on Muslims.

Muslim Americans are also far more likely than other groups to blame unfavorable views of the United States

in the Muslim world on the US government's actions, rather than "misinformation," the report found.

However, Muslim Americans also led all other groups in opposing attacks on civilians by individuals or

groups, with 89 percent opposing such actions.

The poll by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center -- a Gallup research hub in the United Arab Emirates -- used data

from interviews conducted between January 2008 and April 2011 with 868,264 adults, including 3,883

Muslims.

The other faith groups examined in the poll were Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons and "no

religion/atheist/agnostic."

AFP

http://www.macon.com/2011/08/02/1652922/poll-american-muslims-upbeat-about.html Tuesday, Aug. 02, 2011

Poll: American Muslims upbeat about life in US By DANIEL LIPPMAN - McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- A Gallup poll released Tuesday found that most Muslim Americans are very optimistic about their lives in the United States and are loyal to a country that's given them a wealth of economic opportunities, even though some Americans continue to treat the community with hostility.

But the report also identified one area of concern: how to improve the strained relationship between Muslims

and other Americans.

Experts said the survey findings were important because they could mitigate some of the concerns Americans

have about the susceptibility of American Muslims to extremist causes. The thinking goes that if people are

satisfied with their lives, they're unlikely to get sucked into radical movements, which often prey on

economically vulnerable people.

Asked to rate what their lives would be like in five years, Muslim Americans gave higher ratings than members

of most other religious groups did. On a 1-to-10 scale, Muslims rated their future lives at 8.4, while Americans

of other religious groups give average ratings of 7.4 to 8, Gallup pollsters said.

Mohamed Younis, a senior Gallup analyst, attributed Muslims' positive outlook to a range of reasons, from

political factors to the slowly recovering economy having improved their standard-of-living expectations.

"We definitely see a lot of approval for President Barack Obama and a changed rhetoric around the role of

Muslims in America and Muslim-U.S. relations globally," Younis said. The survey found Obama's job approval

rating at 80 percent among American Muslims.

The survey, which consisted of two polls conducted from January 2010 to April 2011, comes from the Abu

Dhabi Gallup Center with some financial support from the crown prince of Abu Dhabi. The firm surveyed 1,500

Muslim Americans and thousands of Americans from other faiths, with a margin of error of 0.3 to 6.6

percentage points.

With the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaching, some Americans are still

skeptical of the allegiances of Muslims who live in the United States. The poll found that more than a third of

Protestants and Roman Catholics didn't believe that Muslim Americans were loyal to the U.S.

More than nine in 10 Muslims surveyed thought that their community was loyal.

The concerns of some Americans may have been raised by incidents such as the November 2009 shooting

spree that killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, and the attempted bombing of New York's Times Square in

May 2010. U.S. citizens of Muslim extraction have been charged in the first case and have pleaded guilty in the

second.

Panelists who introduced the survey at the National Press Club said those events didn't represent the true face

of Muslims in this country, a group that on average is younger, holds a greater percentage of professional

graduate degrees and earns a higher income than average Americans.

"There are so many American Muslims who (have) served in the Army and in law enforcement. Those stories

have not been told. All that you hear about is the negative view of Islam and Muslims," said Imam Mohamed

Magid, the president of the Islamic Society of North America.

Law enforcement agencies remain concerned, however, about certain corners of the American Muslim

community, such as Somali-Americans living in Minnesota. Several dozen young Somali Americans have

traveled in recent years to their East African home country to fight for al-Shabab, a State Department-

designated terrorist group that's currently blocking famine-starved civilians from leaving areas under its control.

The poll also found that many Americans of different religious groups say that Muslims aren't speaking out

enough against terrorism. More than 60 percent of Protestants, Catholics and Jews say that Muslims should

condemn terrorist attacks more publicly.

Rabbi David Saperstein, the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said interfaith leaders

had been unsuccessful in promoting how well-assimilated most Muslims were in America. This is in contrast to

some European countries, where many Muslims have found integrating into the mainstream culture difficult.

"We really need to change the images of Islam to more accord with the reality. (The survey) gives us a lot to

work with," Saperstein said.

D. Paul Monteiro, the associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, said that one way for

Muslim Americans to increase other Americans' level of trust was to engage person-to-person with people of

other faiths.

"When a person who is a Protestant or any other religion meets a person who is Muslim, the conversation

changes. The perception changes," Monteiro said.

"As long as someone ... doesn't know personally someone who is Muslim, then they're open and susceptible to

some of this rapidly spreading misinformation that even in some parts of the press presents a not-so-great

picture of Muslims or Islam as a whole."

http://www.arabtimesonline.com/NewsDetails/tabid/96/smid/414/ArticleID/172182/reftab/73/Default.aspx Muslims Say They’re Thriving In US Sense Of ‘Well-Being’ Surges WASHINGTON, Aug 2, (Agencies): Muslim Americans have felt a surge in their sense of well-being, with the percentage of Muslims saying they were ―thriving‖ in the United States up 19 percent since 2008, according to a poll released on Tuesday. A Gallup study found 60 percent of Muslim Americans surveyed reported they were thriving, slightly higher than for Americans of any other religion except for Jews, who edged them out of the top spot by one percentage point. Pollsters noted in particular the rapid surge in positive sentiment among Muslim Americans, with the 19-point increase since 2008 double that of any other major faith group. ―Muslim Americans today feel a greater sense of belonging in their country,‖ Dalia Mogahed, director of the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, told Reuters by telephone. Only three percent of Muslim Americans said they were suffering, while 37 percent said they were struggling. Authors of the study said they attributed the change in outlook to improved economic conditions and a sense of more political enfranchisement since the election of President Barack Obama, a Christian with Muslim family roots who has reached out to Muslim communities worldwide. The report said the approval rating for Obama, a Democrat, among Muslim Americans was 80 percent, and that 46 percent of Muslim Americans identified as Democrats, compared to only 9 percent who identified as Republicans. ―They may see Obama as promoting policies that are more in keeping with their own political views than those of former President George W. Bush,‖ a Republican, the report said. Muslim Americans also felt, to the tune of 64 percent, that their standard of living was getting better, up from 55 percent in 2009 and 46 percent in 2008. Jewish Americans had some views in common with Muslim Americans. A majority of Americans from both faiths agreed on a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Jewish Americans were also the most likely religious groups, besides Muslims themselves, to believe that Muslim Americans were loyal to the United States. Some 80 percent of Jews said this, compared to 59 percent of Catholics and 56 percent of Protestants. ―There is an untapped resource, and relationship and a possible coalition between Muslim and Jewish Americans,‖ Mogahed said. Gallup said the study was one of the most expansive of Muslim American public opinion to date. Instead of finding respondents by selecting people with Islamic-sounding names or going to parts of the country with large Muslim populations, the study is drawn from a random selection of U.S. households.

The developer of an Islamic community center and mosque near the site of the Sept 11 attacks in New York says it may take years to determine what kind of project Muslims and non-Muslims want. Sharif El-Gamal tells The New York Times that decisions will be made after consultation with lower Manhattan residents and New York City-area Muslims. El-Gamal says that in the past year he‘s built relationships with neighborhood groups. He‘s recruited a Sept. 11 victim‘s relative to his advisory board and sought donors from around the country. He concedes he should have done those things before going public with the project.

http://www.care2.com/causes/muslim-americans-are-the-most-optimistic-religious-group.html

Muslim-Americans Are The Most Optimistic Religious Group

by Amelia T.

August 3, 2011

An extensive survey of Muslim-Americans conducted by Gallup last year reveals that far from being a

disgruntled, subversive minority group, Muslim-Americans are more optimistic about their future than any other

religious group in the United States. They are also overwhelmingly loyal to their country, even though they

were far more likely to say that they had recently experienced discrimination.

―The prejudice and discrimination are definitely there, and that‘s something we have consistently seen in the

data,‖ said Mohamed Younis, a senior analyst at the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. ―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.‖

Over ninety percent of the Muslim-Americans surveyed said that they believed that their fellow Muslims were

loyal to the U.S., but they also acknowledged the likelihood that their allegiance was questioned by members

of other faiths. Nearly all of the people surveyed said that Muslim-Americans had no ties or sympathies with

al-Qaeda, but they were also critical of U.S. foreign policy measures since the 9/11 attacks.

Disturbingly, half of the respondents said that they had experienced outright prejudice or discrimination

because of their religion in the past year. Only Mormons were anywhere close to matching these numbers,

and Muslims also reported feeling disrespected when they practiced their religion in public. In the context of

these findings, it‘s truly remarkable that Muslims manage to retain such a strong sense of goodwill toward the

United States and a spirit of optimism about their own futures.

One thing is for sure: Muslim-Americans are avid supporters of President Obama, perhaps because he

promised to repair frayed relationships with Muslim countries abroad. In the survey, respondents gave Obama

an 80% approval rating. With the exception of American Jews, all other religious groups rate Obama below

50%.

Somebody should send this study to Herman Cain. It might make him just a little more grateful that, after

his repeated displays of Islamophobia, Muslim-Americans were still willing to engage in a ―heartfelt dialogue‖

with him.