Pew - By a 66%-21% margin, conservative Republicans believe Islam is ‘more likely than other religions to encourage violence’
A higher percentage of teabaggers agrees. The numbers are also high for evangelicals.
This should come as no surprise. As Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Frank Gaffney and their ilk fear monger over Islam, and as certain enablers in the conservative media - Sean Hannity chief among them - give them a platform from which to do it, right wingers are eating right out of their hand.
From The Pew Research Center:
The public remains divided over whether Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers. Currently, 40% say the Islamic religion is more likely than others to encourage violence while 42% say it is not.
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Political and ideological divisions are even wider: By roughly three-to-one (66% to 21%), conservative Republicans say Islam encourages violence more than other religions. Moderate and liberal Republicans are divided – 46% say Islam is more likely to encourage violence, 47% say it is not.
By more than two-to-one (61% to 29%), liberal Democrats say that Islam is not more likely than other religions to promote violence. Conservative and moderate Democrats, by a smaller margin (48% to 31%), agree.
Fully 67% of those who agree with the Tea Party movement say Islam is more associated with violence than other religions. Among those who disagree with the Tea Party, the balance of opinion is nearly reversed – 62% say Islam is no more likely than other religions to promote violence while 24% say it is. Among the large share of the public that offers no opinion of the Tea Party, 38% say Islam is more likely to promote violence while about the same number (41%) disagrees.
A clear majority of white evangelical Protestants (60%) say that Islam is more likely to encourage violence than are other religions. Far fewer white mainline Protestants (42%) and white Catholics (39%) express this view. And by nearly two-to-one (56% to 30%), the religiously unaffiliated say that the Islamic religion does not encourage violence more than others.
The overall trend is disturbing as well. In March 2002 - six months after the 9/11 attacks - only 25% of all Americans (according to Pew) felt this way. Now it’s 40%.
Here are the full results: