King hearings and shaping American attitudes toward Muslims

Since the  hearings  conducted by Peter King  looking into the dangers of radicalization of American Muslims took place only this past week  it is too soon to know if King was successful in making more Americans fear Muslims. 

 I suspect the needle will not move much on the anti Muslim opinion polls because US attitudes have already hardened depending upon certain demographics and political affiliation.  Recent polls indicated that Republicans were more inclined than Democrats to be anti Muslim. The PEW poll revealed also that seniors and the uneducated were more likely to oppose the rights of Muslims. Public  opinion  has already  been influenced by demographics, and party affiliation  so that   a brief one sided, narrowly focused  hearing may not make much difference.

   A Gallup poll taken the day of the hearings showed only 36% of American Muslims think American Muslims are “too extreme in the religious beliefs” while 50% do not, and only 28 percent think they are sympathetic to Al-Qaeda while 54% do not. yet only 53% of Americans believed Muslims were loyal to the US . However, many Americans are  more are more tolerant in spite of their suspicions. A Pew poll taken last summer revealed 65% of Americans believed Muslims had the same right to build mosques as practitioners of other religions did.  

Anti Muslim fear mongers on blogs, cable talk, and emails have made much of passages in the Koran taken either out of context or contradicted by other passages to claim that the religious beliefs of Muslims are de facto dangerous to Americans because they promote violence and jihad against Christians and have as their goals to take us over and establish a Caliphate. Certainly some Muslims do believe that and Osama Bin Laden is one who does.  Most Muslims do not follow that line of jihadism. Peter Bergen in his recent book 
"The Longest War" relates how some of Bin Laden's  closest associates did not believe killing innocents was justified and Bin Laden kept the details of plans of 9/11 from them until the very last.  A Gallup poll taken  of Muslims world wide two years ago
revealed that 93% did not believe their religion justified 9/11 and the killing of innocents.  Those who did support the Al Qaeda actions on 9/11 attributed the motivation for 9/11 to political reasons...the Israeli Palestine conflict and US support of brutal dictatorships. 

 What Kings’ abbreviated hearing failed to do was to show no  more than anecdotal and already reported evidence that some American Muslim youth were recruited to the radical cause.. No new evidence was presented to substantiate  claims by some cable talk show guests   that radical Muslims had penetrated all levels of the US government or all mosques  so that probably the needle will not move much on  the trust  issue.

Source of polls can be found at www.mufticforum.com/footnotes