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Study Finds Muslim Americans Share Mainstream Views; Muslim Americans Are Affluent, Well-Educated and Engaged in the Political Process |
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From Ascribe Newsfeed: Muslim Americans are highly involved in the political process, relatively affluent and educated, and resemble the average American in terms of party affiliation, education and family income, according to research by Jen'nan Ghazal Read, associate professor of sociology at UC Irvine. Read aims to shed light on a community that has been the subject of intense media scrutiny since 9/11, yet is still relatively unknown. In a recent survey, 66 percent of Americans said they know "very little or nothing" about Islam, and 34 percent said they have an "unfavorable opinion" of the religion. "Muslim immigrants are not any different from earlier immigrant groups who came to America - they are motivated by the same desire to integrate and achieve a better way of life," Ghazal Read said. "So what this means in terms of their political involvement is that the same things that dictate your average American's political attitudes and behaviors - socioeconomic status, marital status, race/ethnicity, age, gender and so on - dictate their attitude and behaviors." - 43 percent of Muslim Americans believe religion should influence politics, compared to 54 percent of U.S. Christians. Read draws on the only national data currently available on Muslim American political attitudes and behaviors to draw these conclusions. Founded in 1965, UCI is among the fastest-growing University of California campuses, with more than 27,000 undergraduate and graduate students and about 1,800 faculty members. AScribe Newswire distributes news from nonprofit and public sector organizations.
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