The Washington Post has an article today about how Americans believe improving relations with the Muslim world is an important goal. However, the article mentions a recent poll conducted regarding American’s perception of Islam and Muslims. The overall consensus is:
There is still a broad lack of familiarity with the world’s second-largest religion — 55 percent of those polled said they are without a basic understanding of the teachings and beliefs of Islam, and most said they do not know anyone who is Muslim. While awareness has increased in recent years, underlying views have not improved.
In fact, 48% of those polled view Islam negatively and 29% overall think of it as a violent religion. Funny enough, those who do not hold Islam in a positive light are people who do not know too much about
the religion itself and most likely have never even met a Muslim.
Apparently despite all the work Muslim Americans have done in this country in terms of public outreach, it is clearly not enough.
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Jazak Allah Khair for pointing to the article and the survey.
This underlines and signifies the importance of us Muslims being visible with our good actions and deeds in our communities– not by mere words. We need to be visible as role models in our own right – model neighbors, model colleagues, and model classmates etc helping the ones in need, standing for and do what is right and standing up against what is wrong. And we need to keep working on educating people around us, in our communities – one person at a time.
More importantly, this underlines the need to keep the focus and work towards the end goal, which if done with sincerity and right intention, is bound to earn the help and ultimate reward of Allah SWT.