A poll from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has found that Americans view Islam as the most mistreated faith but at the same time are less tolerant of Muslims today than during the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

According to the poll released last Wednesday, 58 percent of American adults say Muslims are subjected to far more discrimination than are Jews, evangelical Christians, atheists or Mormons.

The survey conducted between August 11 and August 17 among 2,010 adults also found that while Americans are more likely to be familiar with Islam or personally know a Muslim today than in September 2001, levels of tolerance towards Muslims are actually lower today.

A previous Pew Forum poll conducted in November 2001 found that only 17 percent of Americans held unfavorable views of Muslim Americans, a decrease from 24 percent just eight months earlier. The shift in opinion was most evident among conservative Republicans – in March 2001, 40 percent viewed Muslim Americans unfavorably, but by November that had dropped to 19 percent.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Americans were also less likely to say that Islam encouraged violence at a disproportionate rate than other religious; only one-quarter agreed with that statement in March 2002. But by the time the Iraq war began the following year, that view had increased dramatically, with 44 percent of Americans saying they associated Islam with violence. Today, 38 percent of Americans believe Islam encourages violence more than other religions, while 45 percent of Americans say Islam is no more likely than other faiths to promote violence, the poll found.

At the same time, Muslims have become a more familiar part of American society – 45 percent of Americans say they personally know someone who is Muslim compared with 38 percent in November 2001. That number is expected to rise as it is the younger population that tends to have more familiarity with Islam and Muslims. In addition, researchers found that knowledge of Islam and Muslims tends to make people more likely to express positive views.

"People who know a Muslim tend to be less likely than others to see a connection between Islam and violence," Gregory Smith, a senior researcher at the Pew Forum, told Time magazine.

Seemi Choudry, 20, a Muslim student at Loyola University in Chicago, was skeptical of the report's findings that said Americans were more familiar with Islam.

"If they are learning Islam through mass media and pop culture, that's easily accessible stuff. I don't know that's the type of Islam that I would want to be infiltrated with," she said, adding that discrimination against Muslims is largely due to a "lack of knowledge or ignorance."

This survey was conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Both are projects of the Pew Research Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan think tank.

The full report can be found at: http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=436