Gallup Poll: Most Muslim-Americans Loyal to US

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.