A new poll on American attitudes towards Muslims in the United States has revealed that the public isn’t buying into a lot of anti-Muslim rhetoric from elected officials and prominent public figures.
The poll, conducted by Probolsky Research on behalf of the group Muslim Advocates, found that a majority of Americans (more than 57 percent) have either no impression or feel neutral about Muslims. Nearly 18 percent of Americans said they have a positive impression of Muslims or say they’re good people. And only 11 percent had a negative perception of them.
By the same token, more than 57 percent of respondents said that hate speech and violence against Muslims in America was on the rise.
In a press release, Scott Simpson, public advocacy director for Muslim Advocates, said, “Despite a years-long effort to demonize American Muslims, the Trump campaign and administration have not convinced voters to adopt their hostility toward Muslims. The numbers are clear: anti-Muslim policies and campaign rhetoric only reflect the attitudes of an extreme, isolated, and small minority of Americans.”
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump said that the United States should ban Muslims from entering the country after the San Bernardino terrorist attack in December 2015. Similarly, Trump said in a CNN interview that “Islam hates us,” and criticized Khizr and Ghazala Khan, Muslim American gold star parents who both spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
What stands out is that there appeared to be a large contingent of Trump’s base and the greater American public that viewed his comments and proposed policies favorably. In 2017, roughly 60 percent of voters approved of Trump’s travel ban that targeted mostly majority-Muslim countries.
However, with the defeat of the Islamic State, it’s possible that Americans feel less threatened by Muslims and that whatever rhetoric that Trump as well as others had for Muslims didn’t seem to have a lasting effect.
