Pride and prejudice: the context of reception for Muslims in the United States

Abstract

Public opinion surveys suggest that Americans increasingly have negative perceptions of Muslims especially following the tragic attacks on World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11. The widespread negative attitudes towards Muslims suggest potential challenges for Muslim immigrants' integration into American society. Drawing from theory and prior research on prejudice and using data from the nationally representative Religion and Diversity Survey, this study uncovers variation in prejudice towards Muslims in the United States. Specifically, this study investigates whether nativist attitudes towards immigrants – such as beliefs that nothing in other countries can beat the American way of life, immigrants are a threat to traditional American values and immigrants should give up their foreign ways and learn to be like other Americans – fear of terrorism and contact with Muslims can account for the prejudice against Muslims in the United States. The findings suggest that strongest predictor of prejudice towards Muslims is not the fear of terrorism, but nativist attitudes towards immigrants and lack of contact with Muslims.

Keywords:

• Muslims in the United States
• prejudice
• nativism
• contact hypothesis

Notes on Contributor

Dr Bulut earned her PhD in Sociology from Georgia State University. During her graduate tenure, Bulut was awarded the Outstanding Graduate Student of the year award in 2014 for her dissertation entitled ‘Acculturation and Mental Health among Latino and Asian Immigrants in the United States.’ Bulut taught courses on introductory sociology and racial and ethnic relations. Her principal research interests are in the areas of immigrant integration, racial, ethnic and gender inequalities.

Notes

1. Although factor analysis (results analysis not shown) suggested that I could group the first four items as one and the three questions as another variable, based on the Cronbach’s alpha results, I decided to form a scale index of all seven items and consider them as one concept (prejudice).

2. The question regarding marriage is: ‘Suppose you had a child who wanted to marry a Muslim who had a good education and came from a good family. How would you feel about this?’