Fearing The Alien

Bush may be down in the polls but his team is winning the domestic propaganda battle for (shrivelled) hearts and (small) minds. A new poll shows that 46% of Americans have a negative view of Islam, up seven points since 9/11.

The survey also found that one in three Americans have heard prejudiced comments about Muslims lately. In a separate question, slightly more (43 percent) reported having heard negative remarks about Arabs. One in four Americans admitted to harboring prejudice toward Muslims, the same proportion that expressed some personal bias against Arabs.

Though the two groups are often linked in popular discourse, most of the world's Muslims are not of Arab descent. For example, the country with the largest Muslim population is Indonesia.

Juan Cole today does his best to counter the racist xenophobia (phobia being the key point here):

All human beings are the same. They all have the same emotions. All laugh when happy and weep when sad. There are no broad civilizations that produce radically different behavior in human beings.

A separate poll recently found that more than half of all Americans, rejecting evolution theory and scientific evidence, agree with the statement, "God created man exactly how the Bible describes it."

I can't help wondering how many of those who profess hatred of Arab Muslims also believe that God created them, too - or did he only create Anglo-Saxons? I'd also like to know how many of these people have ever travelled outside the USA.