American Jews Not Prejudiced Against Muslims, New Poll Finds

By Nathan Burstein August 3, 2011

For all the distrust that supposedly separates them, American Jews feel a lot of solidarity with their Muslim counterparts.

That’s the stereotype-defying implication of a new poll by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, which shows that American Jews express more understanding for American Muslims than any other U.S. religious group.

Eighty percent of American Jews believe U.S. Muslims are loyal to the country, placing them behind only Muslims themselves (93%), and far ahead of the next most sympathetic religious group, Catholics, 59% of whom see American Muslims as loyal.

Jews also topped all other religious groups — except for Muslims themselves — in expressing the belief that U.S. Muslims don’t support al Qaeda.

In one case, American Jews actually managed to be more sympathetic to Muslims than Muslims themselves, with 6% more asserting that U.S. Muslims face prejudice from other Americans.

Gallup’s accompanying report doesn’t speculate on the causes of this affinity, but The Shmooze wonders whether centuries of “dual loyalty” accusations have heightened Jews’ ability to identify with other minorities.

Even on the most polarizing issue that divides them, American Jews and Muslims share the same general vision. Eighty-one percent of U.S. Muslims support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a view held by nearly the same proportion — 78% — of U. S. Jews.

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