Americans Now Almost Twice As Likely To Think Islam Encourages Violence As They Were Six Months After 9/11

The general trends were what you would expect. The more conservative and older a person was, the more likely he or she was to opt for Islam causing violence.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: Business Insider | The Wire
By Noah Davis | April 28, 2011

Good's excellent new Tumblr posted an infographic by Column Five Media that shows a Pew poll detailing the percentage of Americans who answered Islam was most likely than other religions to encourage violence.

Some of the results are surprising.

In March, 2002 -- just six months after 9/11 -- only a quarter of the respondents answered that way. A full 51% thought that Islam "doesn't encourage violence more than [other religions]."

Fast forward eight years and 40%  of those polled chose the "more likely" option compared with just 42% who said the religion does not lead to more violence. (18% said they did not know, compared with 24% in '02.)

Those numbers are better than they were in August 2007 when 45% went with "more likely" vs. 39% who said less, but not as encouraging as August 2010 (35% vs. 42%).


Good also broke the numbers down by age, political affiliation, race, and religion.

The general trends were what you would expect. The more conservative and older a person was, the more likely he or she was to opt for Islam causing violence.

goodForty-four percent of white votes said "more likely," compared to 36% of Hispanics and 24% of Blacks.

Self-identified Protestants were the only group to vote "more likely" more than less likely (46% vs. 37%) while Catholics (35% vs. 45%) and unaffiliated (30% vs. 56%) skewed the other direction.


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