Islam has a negative image all because of American ignorance, you see. "Is Islam Misunderstood in America?," from the VOA, with thanks to LGF:
A new survey of U.S. public attitudes toward Muslim-Americans and Islam finds that a majority of Americans -- 55 percent -- regard Muslim-Americans favorably, but that smaller numbers - only 41 percent -- have favorable impressions of Islam as a religion. The study by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center indicates that many Americans perceive a link between Islam and violence, with more than one in three saying Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers. Experts on Islamic-American relations believe such negative views stem from American ignorance of Islamic culture.Muslims and Islamic culture have long been an integral part of American society. But today, almost years after the 9/11 attacks by radical Islamists and the start of America's war on terror, many Americans associate Islam with violence and extremism....
The Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center did a more scientific survey. Gregory Smith, who co-authored the study say, "Only about four in 10 say they have favorable views of Islam, and there is also a minority of the public - but a substantial minority, about one third in our survey last summer - who say that they are concerned that Islam encourages violence among its believers."
American Muslim leaders blame the US news media for generating what Nihad Awad, Executive Director of the Council for American Islamic Relations calls "Islamophobia".
"The kind of coverage that the American audience has been receiving about Islam and Muslims leads one to just one conclusion, that Islam is bad and Muslims are violent," he said. "The media has failed to capture the reality of the Muslim world and only focused on the actions of the few."
Charles Johnson puts it well:
The “actions of the few” include those of CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad himself, who during a 1994 speech at Florida’s Barry University stated, “I am in support of the Hamas movement.”This Voice of America article, like almost all mainstream media pieces that cite the Council on American-Islamic Relations, doesn’t bother to mention Nihad Awad’s statement supporting a genocidal terrorist group. Mainstream media also think you don’t need to know that at least five of CAIR’s employees and board members have been arrested, convicted, deported, or otherwise linked to terrorism-related charges and activities.
But oddly enough, even though the media are keeping us ignorant of these facts, Americans seem to have increasingly negative opinions about Islam. Go figure!
Re: “Muslims and Islamic culture have long been an integral part of American society.”
I guessed I missed this one.
If we presume that mainstream media is more or less dhimmi, and either tries to paint a rosy picture of Islam or play things down, we can only wonder how Islam still manages to be "misunderstood" by people. If journalists, politicians and intellectuals are actively trying to improve the image of Islam, then how is it possible that people still remain "ignorant" about Islam's peaceful nature? I guess it's just very, very difficult to try to put a positive spin on the non-stop terrorism, violence and oppression.
You know, about six months ago, I didn't even give much thought to Islam. I didn't see anything special about it. I think I probably believed in all of the "leftist" or "liberal" arguments that I now scoff at. At any rate, it was during the cartoon riots that I started to question the immutable truth that Islam is a Religion of Peace. I didn't start to question it because of racist right-wing propaganda or because of The Media. I started to question it because thousands (millions?) of Muslims were rioting, violently protesting, burning down buildings and embassies, threatening the world with death and destruction, and demanding that the West must abolish freedom of speech. Not even The Media could spin that one, so it was because of Muslims themselves that I became sceptical. How ironic.
I wonder why people aren't ignorant of Buddhist culture. I doubt that the average American or European has detailed knowledge of Buddhism (quite a few people think that Buddha is a deity), so information or the lack of it can't be the reason why people don't feel that Buddhism is a violent religion. There's no campaign to convince people of the fact that Buddhism is peaceful, yet people still think it is peaceful. Maybe there's no such campaign because there's no need for it. Buddhists have never given anyone any reason to regard them with suspicion, largely because they haven't flown airplanes into buildings, conducted genocide or caused civil unrest and chaos in European cities while making veiled and not so veiled threats againts anyone who disagrees with them. "Prejudice" and stereotypes don't just appear out of nowhere, there are clearly reasons why Muslims are regarded with suspicion, why Islam is considered to be a violent religion, and why Buddhism is seen as benevolent. The Media has nothing to do with it.
Re: “Muslims and Islamic culture have long been an integral part of American society.”
johnb sez: I guessed I missed this one...
I guess I missed it also. I'm still missing it.
I have difficulty with two words in that statement.
'Culture', festering sore is more like it.
'Integral'. From Dictionary.com:
1.Essential or necessary for completeness.
2.Possessing everything essential; entire.
Islam is NOT integral to American society. It is not essential, and not necessary. Never has been, and never will. So this is worse than a lie, it is a mistake. A lie can be exposed and corrected fairly easilly, a mistake can last a long time and be repeated.
That statement is full of word magic and trickery...I bet the author knew that when he wrote it. Statements that need trickery to back them up are essentially worthless. Or, possibly they may have value to a twisted or demented mind. Either way, beware of authors carrying magic wands, they are always up to no good...
Integral? As in essential to American society? NO!
Long been part? Let's see . . .
Yeah, for the last 27 years
Let me think some more . . .wait, it's longer than that . . . recallAmerica's War with the Barbary Pirates ,(the one which established the U.S. Navy and Marines), which won its first war against jihad terrorism in the early 1800s. . . yup, they've had a part in that too.
Goes to show ya, No Matter How Much Things Change, They Stay The Same.
Integral? NOPE. Extraneous or conflicting perhaps.
If there is a perception problem, why not have an open and honest debate? Even leaving aside terrorism, questions could include: are women and girls executed for 'lewd behavior' in Iran or not? Are women forced to cover themselves in Saudi or not? is there gender segregation in UAE? lashes and amputation for minor theft? death sentences for apostasy? How about the treatment of homosexuals and members of other faiths?
Re: “Muslims and Islamic culture have long been an integral part of American society.”
Didn't you know? The Indians and their culture are directly tied to Islam:
http://www.jannah.org/articles/native.html
(YES, I am being sarcastic)
the media operates in its own bubble as does the Washington government officials. you the see the common people are more onto the real truth of the death cult called islam.
I'm with John B.;
When did the mainstream media print or broadcast, report anything negetive about Islam? For crying out loud, President Bush even called Islam a "religion of peace!" Television shows that had the terrorism plotline had to realter their plots because of CAIR's fear of Muslim terrorists being portraited as Muslims! Well slap my face and call me cornpone!
May be the fact that 90 to 95% of the known terrorists in the world are Muslim or of Middle Eastern desent is the reason why most Americans look at Islam and Muslims in a negetive light.
But hen CAIR does have a point. 19 of the September 11th, 2001 terrorists were Fraudi Arabian. Not Muslim. But wait, Isn't Fraudi Arabia a Muslim country? Where the citizens are all 99% Islamic? Where no Christians are allowed to worship and/or practice their faith? Thus making anyone from Fraudi Arabia Muslim?
Yeah, "We the People" have got it all wrong. And you'd think that the mainstream media would get sick and tried of being lied on by these Muslim groups. Don't hold your breath. They'll just continue to try and better understand Muslims.
Real Americans do understand Muslims. September 11th, 2001 was the day of the awakening.
Article reminds me of the cartoon on why Muslims have what is called "a bad image " problem which came out earlier this year during the hight of the Danish Mohammed cartoons bruhaha. This is the one with the pr people talking to Muhammed himself and presenting why there is this "bad image " promblem.
“Muslims and Islamic culture have long been an integral part of American society.”
I agree with this, they are "integral". They keep the security services employed and occasionally provide free building demolition.
Tell me again how the mohammedans are integral? Silly me, I must have forgotten. I'm racking my brains at the moment to remember ANYTHING worthwhile in America that they've contributed to. Damn this forgetfulness!
"The Pew study suggests many Americans believe the terrorist attacks of recent years are just the first salvoes of an intensifying conflict between Islam and the West."
That many Americans believe this despite the MSM's determined campaign to sanitize Islam for infidel consumption is a very hopeful sign that the American public may be seeing through the veil of disinformation. While a lot more needs to be done, it's still a good sign.
"American Muslim leaders blame the US news media for generating what Nihad Awad, Executive Director of the Council for American Islamic Relations calls "Islamophobia"."
News media my ass, you can thank the internet for dropping the Islamostooge numbers down to 40%.
"Muslims and Islamic culture have long been an integral part...." Maybe they mean the Shriners.
"Muslims and Islamic culture have long been an integral part...."
Islam's biggest contribution to American culture is that big hole in the ground in New York City where the World Trade Center used to be.
Didn't the Muslims settle the state of Utah?
Oh, the Mormons...my bad.
Well I guess I can't think of anything the Muslims may have been integral of.
Definition of Islamophobia from The New Devil's Dictionary:
Islamophobia: The slur true believers and their useful idiots employ when they want to discredit those who tell the truth about Islam.
Gary:
Thanks for that link - that's my LOL of the day.
Re: "My name is Mahir Abdal-Razzaaq El and I am a Cherokee Blackfoot American Indian who is Muslim. I am known as Eagle Sun Walker. I serve as a Pipe Carrier Warrior for the Northeastern Band of Cherokee Indians in New York City."
Me thinks Mahir isn't smoking tobacco in that "peace" pipe.
Dr. Yvonne Haddad is mentioned as an authority in the VOA article. This woman is a past master at taqia - see
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/38/75/acns3883.cfm
for just how good she is at it.
See also:
http://www.alhewar.com/Haddad.htm
for more on how good at it she is and how she does it.
See:
http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/haddady/?PageTemplateID=75
for who she is and where she is.
And of course she is a favourite at ISPU:
http://www.ispu.us/pastBooks.html
Need I say more?
But her thought processes are more revealingly shown at
http://www.islamctr.org/article1.asp
where she almost, but not quite, gives the game away.
This academic is dangerous and needs watching. Worse, she is deeply embedded and being listened to.
Dominic.
One can also find some criticism of her (Haddad) at
http://www.noniedarwish.com/pages/745452/page745452.html?refresh=1110343830146
where the author is speaking from a first-hand encounter.
As I said, this moslem academic is a real menace and someone with better skills than I needs to challenge her. Perhaps Robert and Hugh should have a go.
Dominic.
Haddad is also beloved of CAIR. See
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0499/9904108.html
By her friends, so shall you know her.
Dominic.
Gary, regarding the "Cherokee Blackfoot Indian muslim" article, you might be interested by this:
http://users.pandora.be/gohiyuhi/nafps/articles/art32.htm.
This is by a PeeDee Indian muslim (!) who completely dismantles the article as a total fraud, almost word by word, starting with the guys name! I am not sure how much credence I give to this one either, as he also claims muslims were in America long before Columbus, but his comments on the origins of the name Tallahassee, for example, are easily verifiable by a quick internet search.
Yvonne Haddad is a collaborator with lean, mean, jogging machine John Esposito. She, along with John Voll, are his most loyal apparatchiki. An islamochristian, she exhibits all the classic symptoms, and she may not be doing it entirely for the money. Voll and Esposito are another matter.
"Stop opposing Islam NOW!"
Posters seen in Indonesian recently.
I'd like to see the cunning wording of any such survey that could produce this obviously slanted and utterly bogus result.
I would guess 80 % of infidel Americans find Islam disturbing, if not outright disgusting.
And the negative numbers will increase with every outrage, cartoon jihad, Koran flushing flap, bombing, beheading, kidnapping, ad nauseam.
Pure taqiyya.
Or as we say in the U.S.: spectacular b.s.
Muslims and Islamic culture have long been an integral part of American society(?!?!)
Why yes they have...they instigated the formation of the US Marines who've been singing about the "shores of Tripoli" ever since.
Additionally, many of our founders felt the need to address the "Mohammedans" as well in their duties as ambassadors to Europe as I've learned here on JW/DW.
They have been integral in forcing the all the security in airports, stadiums and other buildings.
Yep, sure have been. The U.S. fought it's first anti Jihad war, right after becoming a nation, memoralized in the "Islamophobic" Marine Corps Hymn, "To the Shores of Tripoli".
Trouble is that our fathers were ignorant of Islam and didn't realize that a hudnah (treaty of 1796-1797) had a shelf life of only ten years.
But our founding fathers were not ignorant of Islam.
John Quincy Adams
Another laughable piece of Islamopropaganda that surfaces constantly on the net.
According to them The Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson were influenced by the Koran, supposedly Thomas had a copy of it on his shelves in Monticello (if so I have that copy, the George Sales translation from the French, the Alcoran of Mahomet, Muslims don't like that translation). To make matters worse according to Islamorevisionism John Locke studied Arabic at Christ Church at Oxford, which of course would mean the Koran, and according to Islamic ideology anyone who reads the Koran, though raised kufr, automatically "sees the truth" and becomes Muslim (especially Surat l).
There is of course no proof of this assertion or claim, never the less Muslims make it and then use it to claim that the Founding Fathers got their ideas from the Qur'an, and thus the claim surfaces in obfuscating phrases such as Islamic culture has long been an integral part of American culture.
I think, I hope, that our learned Hugh and Mr Spencer can take the time to deconstruct this nonsense.. the only influence Islam has had on the U.S. besides being the first war (and anti Jihad at that) fought after independence has been negative, and not even notice until they started migrating here, during the reign of King Reagan.
"muslims were in America long before Columbus"
from a posting above.
They were never good sailors. And if they had even reached the shores of America, I know what the Red Indians did when they went on the warpath. In savagery and ferocity they can almost be compared with muslims. But the muslims have always won by treachery and deceit, and you have to hand it to the Red Indians, they were exceptional in jungle warfare. They would have roasted the muslims over slow fires, scalped some of them, and chopped and threw the pieces up in the trees. Why am I not upset at describing these atrocities ? I must be going wicked.
Bad image? 55% of the population having a favorable opinion of Muslims is much too high and a sign of great ignorance of what Muslims are. Consider these questions:
How should any infidel be expected to respect any Muslim (i.e., one who truly believes the Koran is Allah dictating and that Muhammad was a man to revere and emulate) when even if the Muslim is non-violent and polite, that muslim reveres a man who at 53 had sex (rape) with a 9 year old girl, and who performed a great number of extreme cruelties? Cruelties such as slaughtering all the post puberty male population of an entire Jewish tribe (keeping a fifth of the loot for himself) and taking the wives & children as concubines (sex slaves) and property. Why should a non-muslim respect anyone who believes (per Koran) that they should not have Christians or Jews as true friends but must instead regard them as worthy only of eternal hellfire and to be despised as the lowest of creatures “for Allah’s sake” (98:6), and possibly to be killed as part of Jihad or at least be subdued eventually as dhimmi?
Is it not clear that such people deserve neither respect nor a "good image", but only contempt and a watchful distrusting eye?
Possibly more Americans are taking a gander at what's in the Kuran and are getting turned off to Islam by what they have read of it.
Kuranic verses are among the things that more or less permanently (and very quickly) turned me off to Islam.
The VOA has been pro-Arab and anti-Israel for many years. I recall that once about 25 years ago, I was listening to the Voice of America in Spanish on my short wave radio. The announcer was giving an anti-Israel diatribe. Then my wife came into the room and heard what was being said on the radio. She then asked me if I were listening to Radio Havana. That's how bad it was.
The claim that the Native Americans [Indians] had Muslims among them is truly bizarre. It sounds very much like Arab history-writing [invention] to me. The Indians had their own traditional religions [Gitchee Manitou, Ghost Dance, etc.]. And it is ridiculous to claim that they would have allowed followers of other religions among them in the period when their control over America was unchallenged. And thw whole tribe followed the same religion.
Nariz points out that the first overseas war of the US was against the Barbary Pirates, that is, against Muslims. That's important to remind people of. The Barbary Pirates were warriors for Islam, that is, jihadists, and this was understood by a French diplomat and historian, Cesar Famin, 150 years ago. But Europeans and Americans seem to have forgotten what they once understood. See link:
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2006/03/barbary-pirates-were-warriors-for.html