Chart Shows How Wrong You Are About Muslims in America
By:
A new chart shows just now wrong Americans are about the Muslim population in this country, and it exposes the damage of misinformation.
On Tuesday, the Guardian's Pamela Duncun wrote that there is a significant "gap between public perception and reality" about the number of Muslims living inside western European countries, the U.S. and Canada. In an survey from market research company Ipsos Mori, Americans estimated that one in six people in the U.S. are Muslim but in reality it's only one in 100, according to the Guardian.
This chart below shows that people around the world are drastically wrong about the number of Muslims living in their country.
So why are Americans so wrong?
A 2015 report by University of Illinois Communications Professor Travis Dixon found that news coverage of crime over represented Muslims and other minorities as the attackers, according to the UI blog. From 2008 to 2012, 81 percent of the news coverage of domestic terror suspects were identified as Muslim, but only 6 percent of FBI domestic terror suspects were actually Muslim.
Flickr/Maks Karochkin - flic.kr
The Council on American-Islamic Relations Ibrahim Hooper told ATTN: that fear stoked by anti-Muslim political rhetoric from the presidential campaign could also be at fault. President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly called for a ban on Muslim immigration during his campaign, and more recently, his team publicly considered a Muslim registry.
Hooper said he's worried some of Trump's cabinet picks will further encourage American fear of Muslims.
"There's this bizarre notion that somehow Muslims are going to somehow overthrow the Constitution and somehow institute Sharia law," said Hooper. "It would be laughable, if it wasn't actually believed by people who are going to be in the White House."
