Scary Stats

[andrewducker]

Plastic has some scary stats on recent US polls:

"On the other hand, the report states that the public has an increased suspicion toward followers of Islam. The poll found 44 percent of those surveyed believe that the religion promotes violence, a large leap from the 25 percent who felt that way just last year. The survey found 24 percent of respondents believed 'all or most' Muslims are anti-American, with an additional 25 percent believing 'about half' of members of the Islamic faith hated the U.S. Each figure jumped from 18 percent in March 2002.

"The view of politics and religion had some interesting revelations -- 41 percent believed political leaders expressed their faith in public 'too little,' 21 percent said politicians cited their religion 'too much' and 29 percent thought it was 'about right.' Where President Bush was concerned, 58 percent said his faith affected his political decisions the 'right amount,' 21 percent thought not enough, and only 10 percent surveyed thought his faith had too much influence on his policymaking.

Comments

[ekatarina.livejournal.com]

sigh

[heron61.livejournal.com]

The views about Muslims both saddens and surprises me. I would have thought that anti-Muslim feeling would have peaked 3-6 months after 9/11, not more than a year and a half afterwards. The fact that only 10% of the populace thinks a mad fundamentalism like Bush is too much influenced by his religion is deeply disturbing. I remain even more firm in my belief that no one with deep religious convictions (including devout atheists) should ever be elected to any national office, at least not in a society with any significant amount of religious diversity.