42% of Americans Think 58% of Americans Need to Pay More Attention

Have you been noticing lately you hear fewer and fewer media accusations about America’s widespread Islamophobia? I think that must be part of the reason CAIR-MI is reduced to junk hijab lawsuits to help create some ruckus.

Today’s Detroit News had an article reporting a Pew survey that shows “Americans” having “more favorable views about Muslims” since 9/11, while at the same time we also “believe Muslims in the United States face more discrimination than any other major religious group.” (“Poll: 58% believe Muslims face discrimination”).

The only group that gets treatedworse, in the opinions of those surveyed, are homosexuals, “with almost two-thirds of Americans saying homosexuals are discriminated against a lot.”

I’d say CAIR has some work to do if they want Muslims to be Number One Victim. Here’s a brainstorm. How about a Triangle-CAIR coalition? Man, those guys would be the Victims from Hell.

This Pew survey doesn’t measure objective facts, just what Americans perceive. And what many Americans perceive, especially Americans who rely on sound bites and/or reports of sound bites from friends and family, is what the media repeats most often.

For instance, for five straight years the media, led by the New York Times, repeated day in and day out that the detention camp at Gitmo was a combination Stalinist gulag and Hitler death camp. Then after five years surveys showed the American people had a negative perception of Gitmo. Now where do you suppose they got that idea?

Then there’s the Duke “rape” case. Valerie Plame. Katrina. Millions of my fellow Americans, God bless their souls, still think that the Democrats freed the slaves and America fought a war in the 1940s to free the world from the Republican Party.

This blog has had to respond to repeated news articles that led off with unsubstantiated declarations, reported as historical truth, that there was a post-9/11 “surge of hate crimes”, violence, discrimination and “profiling” against American Muslims, who as likely as not would be kidnapped and renditioned into the Bush gulag as make it to work on any given morning.

Dawud Walid, leader of Michigan CAIR, stated simply, repeatedly, and falsely: “Our community has been under siege since 9/11.”

In January 2008, I wrote:

How prosaic and ineffective it feels to write, simply, that there is no “siege” against the Arab community in Dearborn, not since 9/11, nor ever. The very suggestion is an insult to every resident of the area, Arab, Muslim, or non-Muslim.

If you don’t agree, don’t bother calling me names if you aren’t going to show up with facts to the contrary.

Since 9/11 Americans have been told two things about Islam more or less without letup in the news, in popular shows, and by their lesser informed spiritual leaders: 1) that Islam is a religion of peace being “hijacked” by a teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy few hundred guys called “terrorists” and 2) that Muslims face a hailstorm of hate crimes every time they leave their houses.

Then we get a guy elected to be President who was saying during his campaign speeches things like, "If there is an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, it threatens my civil liberties."

So why would it be surprising that after eight years of hearing this Americans have a more favorable view of Muslims (they’re peaceful!), and believe they face a lot of discrimination (they’re under siege)? And on top of which, thanks to George W. Bush, we haven’t had a repeat of 9/11, and have been allowed to forget about Mohamed Atta and Osama bin Ladin, and all that unpleasant stuff about jihad?

Not surprising, the media has been reporting since as far back as the early 1980s that homosexuals, (statistically among the highest-paid, best-educated, and best-postured (males, anyway) people in the country), have been suffering unceasing discrimination, hate, and “intolerance.”

Hollywood has been forcing harmless gay characters on us since Billy Crystal was in “Soap,” all the while telling us that the only thing Bubba and his NRA buddies would rather be doing than shooting Bambi is beating the brains out of some guy in a turtleneck with a ball bat. Is it any wonder Americans “perceive” that homosexuals are even worse sufferers of discrimination than Muslims? Look at the head start they've had! (Oh, it makes me so mad I could just spit!)

Dawud Walid’s response to the survey, (or maybe it's just his automatic response to being approached by a reporter), was to say, “Discrimination towards Muslims has steadily increased according to our own study. It seems Islam-phobia has drastically increased.”

That really isn't what the survey said, but then, Dawud's always saying shit like that.

It’s a living, I guess.