By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –
The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) published a new opinion poll on America’s Muslims and other religious groups this week, which contains some surprises. One important finding is that mosque attendance is associated with strong identification as an American and strong civic participation as well as with opposition to violence toward civilians, whether committed by the state or by non-state actors. That is, people like Donald Trump who equate mosques with radicalism and just plan wrong.
Here are other results by the numbers:
5% – The proportion of Muslims who lean Republican. Muslims are the most Democratic religious group in the country save for Jews, but a bigger proportion of Jews identify as Republicans than do Muslims.
h/t ISPU
50% – The proportion of Muslims under age 35; Muslims are the youngest US religious community. The proportion of Protestants under 35 is only a quarter.
78% – Proportion of Muslims who think President Obama is doing a good job. This is 15 points more than any other group.
40% – The proportion of Muslims who favor Hillary Clinton for president. Assumptions that the community is patriarchal would be wrong.
27% – The proportion of Muslims who favor Bernie Sanders for president. This percentage is actually larger than the 24 percent of Jews who lean to Sanders, who is himself Jewish. Worth repeating: A larger proportion of American Muslims supports Sanders than the proportion of American Jews who do.
4% – Proportion of Muslim-Americans who support Donald Trump. This is the lowest of any major faith community in the US. This poll found 13% support for Trump among Jews and 28% among Catholics.
4 – the number of major ethnic groups into which American Muslims divide. They are the only major religious group in the US not dominated by a major ethnicity, being divided relatively evenly into four– whites, African-Americans, South Asian Americans, and Arab-Americans.
58% – the proportion of Muslims who say they have suffered religious discrimination in the past year (the highest of any religious community, though Jews are not far behind).
Jews do not like to be in the limelight. Jews voting for a Jewish president I think goes against the idea that they should operate more in the background than center stage.
That is anti-Semitic nonsense
Muslims are disproportionately socially conservative small business people–a natural Republican constituency. In 2000 the Muslim-American political leadership made a decision to collectively back Republicans as a way of getting their influence as a voting block recognized.
Times do change.
50% more Muslims support HRC than Sanders.
Very Interesting!
Muslims know the GOP is more Hawkish than Dems….especially in the Middle East. Like Mexicans, will vote Dem for generations.
The ISPU which conducted and managed the poll is not a neutral organization without its own opinions on the subject of the poll.
What is the margin of error for the survey? A 3% difference in the proportion of Jews who support Sanders and Mulims who do could be statistically insignificant or in other words a tie. There is a larger difference in the % of Jews who support Clinton than Muslims who do (10%) which is more likely to be statistically significant.
28% support for Trump by Catholics is a worry.
Jews may say they suffer religious discrimination, but it is probably political eg criticism of Gaza attacks and the rest.
The bar graphs are odd — the percentages domnot add up to 100%. Perhaps “undecided” makes up the difference and was not shewn.
The bar gaphs also show Protestants 2:1 Republican:Democrat (as to the question asked). Can this be true?
I find it rather more revealing that a significantly higher percentage of Muslims support the female candidate. After all, the mainstream media would have us believe that surely women are (to be) oppressed and prevented from any form of independence!
There have been women Presidents and Prime Ministers in Muslim nations, Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan) Sheikh Hasina (Bangladesh) and many others. Many represented third world nations, and voted in by millions of Muslims. It is unfortunate that the Western media keep portraying Muslims as backward and that women are oppressed, unable to be a leader because of their sex. There has even been a Fatwa issued saying Muslim women are allowed to rule and become judges, but it is the backward and conservative rules of Saudi Arabia that is always presented as the real face of Islam, which is far from reality. There are over 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide, and Saudi Arabia is a tiny part of a very diverse religion, where different cultures fashion the thinking of Muslims. A Muslim in Indonesia will dress differently, follow different rules, and are allowed to drive, unlike in Saudi Arabia.
Muslim female political leaders
link to en.wikipedia.org
But Saudi Arabia is right-wing AND pro-corporate. It has (until the last few years) supported US domination of the world. Its billionaires dress in business suits when needed, and drive Western cars and live like Western billionaires. All of which requires the Western media present the oil aristocracy as our default allies – while the Islamist extremism they’ve done the most to empower is blamed on the poor, the least white-looking beneath them.
It’s just like Vietnam and Latin America, we’re always looking for the oligarch with the white tailored suit (or uniform) to defend us from his strange, dark peasants when in reality he’s the bad guy.
Bernie Sanders campaigned in Dearborn, MI where 40% of the population is Arab-American and heavily Muslim and won in a landslide among the electorate in Dearborn:
link to thearabdailynews.com
link to freep.com
Bernie Sanders also did well but narrowly got fewer votes than Clinton in the Democratic primary vote totals from Hamtramck, MI, which has a Muslim majority population. Sanders did not campaign in Hamtramck.
The converse situation has existed as well: when Rashida Tlaib of Detroit – a Palestinian-American attorney – became the first Arab Muslim woman elected to the Michigan Legislature, about 20% of her campaign contributors were Jewish-Americans from Metro Detroit. Her anti-hate message resonated among all levels of local residents.
Thanks for a great comment, as usual.
Catholics are about 60% non-Hispanic whites and 30% Hispanics. As the demographics continue to change, there will be less Catholic support for someone like Trump, who is disliked by most Hispanics.
hillary will support israel’s continued war crimes. this is a reflection of that.
Reflection of what? Only 30% of Jews supported her, while 40% of Moslems supported her.
No doubt they theorize about Hillary’s hawkish record, and the unrelated coincidence that hawkish policies happen to be followed a short time later by chaos and destruction in muslim countries… aw heck, what if it wasn’t a coincidence?