How did Orlando shooting affect American attitudes towards Muslims?

Tazeen Hasan

According to Brooking's institution research, American perception's bent in favor of Muslims after Orlando Shooting.

As the United States gears up for the 2016 presidential elections, Americans seem increasingly sensitive on issues related to Islam, terrorism and Middle Eastern conflicts in the backdrop of ISIS-claimed attacks on the American soil.

However, Perplexing results have appeared in recent American surveys  conducted to find out American voter's perceptions  towards their Muslim population. According to polls conducted by the Brooking Institution's fellow before and after the Orlando shooting, a strong majority of respondents (62 percent) expressed a favorable view of Muslims. Two week before the Orlando shooting, 58 percent of respondents expressed a favorable view of Muslims. Interestingly, a survey in November 2015 indicated only 53 percent of respondents expressed favorable views of Muslims. This positive change in American perceptions about Muslims and Islam from 53 percent to 62 percent is inexplicable for the media pundits as well as Brooking scholars.

Senior Fellow at the Centre for Middle East policy, Shibley Telhami conducted two public opinion surveys on American attitudes toward the Middle East—one two weeks before the shooting in Orlando and one two weeks after, providing an opportunity to evaluate any shift in public attitudes.

Telhami has suggested that this poll may be an indication that Americans are pushing back against Islamophobic hate speech of the media as well as Trump. "One might expect that anti-Muslim rhetoric in the wake of the shooting might have swayed Americans towards more negative opinions," but the finding seems perplexing according to an article published in Al-Markaz, Middle East Politics and Policy Journal of Brookings Institute.

However, American views on Muslims and the Middle East are found to be deeply polarized especially when one compares the views of supporters of  Republican candidate Donald Trump with that of the supporters of the democratic party candidate Hillary Clinton.

When asked if they hold a favorable attitude towards Islam, 66 percent of the Clinton supporters endorsed as compared to 16 percent of the Trump supporters, specifically.

When asked about the compatibility of the Islamic and Western religions and societies, 13 percent of Clinton supporters asserted that they believe in a so-called clash of civilizations as compared to 62 percent of Trump supporters.

Besides public perceptions bending in the favor of Muslims, these results have also indicated a strong polarization within the American society over the issues related to terrorism, and Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It appears that anti-Islamic hate speech by Donald Trump  and Islamophobic rhetoric of the American media have annoyed a considerable slice of the population and have driven them to think rationally.