More Bias in US Against Muslims Than Other Faiths (Sort Of...) [Updated]

The headline couldn't be clearer:

More bias in US against Muslims than other faiths

Americans are more than twice as likely to express prejudice against Muslims than they are against Christians, Jews or Buddhists, a new survey found. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they have little or no knowledge of Islam. Still, a majority dislike the faith.


The analysis, for release Thursday, is from the Gallup World Religion Survey and is part of a project on finding ways to increase understanding between Americans and Muslims.

Here are some of the numbers:

In the poll, just over half of Americans said they felt no prejudice against Muslims. However, 43 percent acknowledged at least "a little" prejudice against Muslims, a significantly higher percentage than for the other four faiths in the survey.

About 18 percent of respondents said they had some level of prejudice against Christians, while the figure was 15 percent toward Jews and 14 percent toward Buddhists [emphasis added].

While we're at it, lets take a look at some other numbers too. Here are the results of the FBI's yearly Hate Crime Statistics from 2008. The result for 2009 will come out later this year.

Of the 1,732 victims of anti-religious hate crimes:

* 66.1 percent were targeted because of an offender’s anti-Jewish bias.
* 7.5 percent were victims because of an anti-Islamic bias.
* 5.1 percent were victims because of an anti-Catholic bias.
* 3.6 percent were victims because of an anti-Protestant bias.
* 0.8 percent were targeted because of an anti-Atheist/Agnostic bias.
* 12.8 percent were victims because of a bias against other religions (anti-other religion).
* 4.0 percent were victims because of a bias against groups of individuals of varying religions [emphasis added]

So somehow, that 43% who have some prejudice towards Muslims translates into 7.5% of all religion-related hate crime, while the 15% who expressed anti-Jewish prejudice translates into 66.1% of those hate crimes.

What might account for such a discrepancy?

While the article emphasizes that the results are of a Gallup poll, the end of the article reveals:

The report, from the Muslim West Facts Project, a partnership of Gallup and the Coexist Foundation, is based on a random telephone survey of more than 1,000 adults, conducted from Oct. 31 to Nov. 13 of last year. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

A margin of error of 3.4%?
Maybe a little more than that...

UPDATE: Check out Cliff May's article: The War Against the Infidels

Connect these dots: In Nigeria this week, Muslim youths set fire to a church, killing more than two dozen Christian worshippers. In Egypt, Coptic Christians have been suffering increased persecution including, this month, a drive-by shooting outside a church in which seven people were murdered. In Pakistan, Christian churches were bombed over Christmas. In Turkey, authorities have been closing Christian churches, monasteries, and schools, and seizing Christian properties. Recently, churches in Malaysia have been attacked, too, provoked by this grievance: Christians inside the churches were referring to God as “Allah.” How dare infidels use the same name for the Almighty as do Muslims!

Why is it always the non-Muslims who are told they need to be educated?


Technorati Tag: Hate Crimes and Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.