40% of Americans link Islam to violence: poll

A Pew poll says that four in 10 Americans believe that Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions. -- ST FILE PHOTO

WASHINGTON - FOUR in 10 Americans believe Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions, up sharply from March 2002, six months after the September 11 attacks, according to a new Pew poll.

The figure is lower than July 2004, when a post-9/11 high of 46 per cent of respondents said the Muslim faith is more likely than others to foment attacks, but it marks a significant rise from the 25 per cent recorded in March 2002 and 35 per cent from just seven months ago.

In the latest national poll conducted February 22 to March 1 by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 42 per cent of respondents said Islam does not encourage violence more than other ideologies, down from 51 per cent in March 2002.

Parsing its own findings, the center reported that Tea Party conservatives and conservative Republicans were most likely to link Islam to violence, with 67 per cent and 66 per cent respectively, while just 29 per cent of liberal Democrats were.

Six in 10 white evangelical Protestants were likely to do the same, while 'by nearly two to one (56 per cent to 30 per cent), the religiously unaffiliated say that the Islamic religion does not encourage violence more than others,' Pew said.

The survey results were released ahead of controversial congressional hearings held on Thursday in Washington on homegrown Muslim terrorism. The independent, non-partisan Pew interviewed 1,504 adults by telephone in the United States for its poll, which did not report a margin of error. -- AFP