Islamophobia, 2008 Election, and White Evangelicals

One mystery for pollsters, political analysts, and some Republican Presidential hopefuls is why Giuliani has so much support among white evangelical voters despite his social views and personal history (some polls have him ranked as the number one Republican candidate among this bloc). A possible answer - Islamophobia. Giuliani is the national security candidate and icon of September 11th. I argue that based on my own survey data (being submitted to AAPOR 2008) that many white evangelicals have come to define themselves in opposition to Islam and Muslims. In other words, Islamophobia has become an identity marker for many within this voter segment. Thus, viewing the election through this interpretive schema, national security and the U.S. War on Terror are more salient and important issues than social issues upon which to evaluate candidates for many white evangelicals.

I hope to conduct a survey within the context of the election that will attempt test this proposition and others concerning the links between attitudes toward Islam, foreign policy perceptions, and candidate preferences.

Deconstructing Ahmadinejad’s Visit: When Public Diplomacy is NOT Public Diplomacy

The typical definition of public diplomacy is “direct communication with foreign peoples, with the aim of affecting their thinking, and ultimately, that of their governments.”

In this sense, was the goal of Ahmadinejad’s attempt to visit the World Trade Center Memorial, speech at Columbia University, and address to the UN General Assembly a form of public diplomacy aimed at the United States? In short, NO. What many in the U.S. failed to understand was that his audience was not the American public or politicians. Rather, his primary audience was his domestic base in Iran – demonstrating that he can move beyond his confrontational style and make some attempt to “reach out” to the Americans. A secondary audience is the greater Muslim world in general, and in this sense he was using his visit as a tool of public diplomacy to this secondary audience.

Simply put, the outcry over his attempt to visit the World Trade Center and petty attempts to punish Columbia University for hosting his speech by misguided and ignorant political leaders only play into his hands and aid his task of promoting his agenda to Iranians and the greater Muslim world. Metaphorically, he can say that he offered a hand to the U.S., and that we slapped it away.

If we are to effectively confront and disarm this “petty and cruel dictator” as Bollinger so aptly named him, we must be smarter and wiser in how deal with Ahmadinejad’s attempts to promote his image to his own people and other Muslims, as well as how we communicate our counter-messages in return. I am not saying that we should have given him a ticker-tape parade, but rather we should confront him and his agenda forcibly and openly like Bollinger at Columbia - publicly deconstructing his totalitarian agenda for American, Iranian, and Muslim audiences alike.

FIGHTING ISLAMOPHOBIA THROUGH...A TV GAME SHOW???

Tonight is the premier of the the TV show game show called Without Prejudice on the Game Show Network (GSN). The show touts itself as a means to fight prejudice and deconstruct stereotypes and has supposedly partnered with several social justice organizations in order to achieve these goals. One of these organizations is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has a press release about this cooperation here.

I have blogged previously about how television programming can be used to deconstruct stereotypes and address Islamophobia. However, I remain somewhat skeptical on whether a competitive game show format may achieve this goal. I will try to check it out tonight.

POLITICAL (IN)TOLERANCE TOWARD MUSLIMS

The NY Times had an article over the weekend on how a presidential candidate's religious affiliation may impact their public support. Above is a chart from that article. Basically other than atheists, Muslims are the most unpopular religious group among the electorate. This is classic political intolerance - not suprising considering the current opinion climate - but disturbing in a democracy that prides itself on pluralism. History teaches us that the only way to integrate a minority group into a society is to ensure its integration into the political process.

HISPANIC AMERICANS LESS FAVORABLE TOWARD MUSLIMS THAN NON-HISPANICS?

The Pew Hispanic Center/Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life recently released a report on the religious views of Latinos and Hispanics in the United States.

What caught my attention in the report was Hispanic views of Muslims. Based on survey results from August through October 2006, when asked their overall opinion of Muslims, the results were:

Very favorable Opinion - 11%
Mostly favorable Opinion - 16%
Mostly unfavorable Opinion - 18%
Very unfavorable Opinion - 19%
Never heard of (Vol.) - 6%
Can't rate (Vol.) - 15%
Don't know/Refused - 17%

What struck me was that the percentage of Hispanics who had a "favorable" rating of Muslims - 37% - was much lower than the general population figure of 54% favorable recorded by Pew in May 2006.

The reasons for this lower favorability? This is pure speculation, but it it could be a combination of lower education levels, high levels of (Christian) religiosity and perceived value differences, and a disproportionate number of family and friends serving in Iraq/Afghanistan.