One in six voters still think Obama’s a Muslim: Why?

[cbayer]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/one-in-six-voters-still-think-obamas-a-muslim-why/2012/05/10/gIQA1XDlFU_story.html

By Lauren Markoe| Religion News Service, Updated: Thursday, May 10, 8:50 AM

WASHINGTON — After nearly four years in the Oval Office, President Obama is incorrectly thought to be Muslim by one in six American voters, and only one quarter of voters can correctly identify him as a Protestant, according to a new poll.

Voters do better identifying Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, according to a poll released Thursday (May 10) by the Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service. A slim majority of voters — 51 percent — knows the presumed Republican presidential nominee is Mormon.


“Wow. He said it 100 times that he’s not a Muslim,” said Zainab Al-Suwaij, executive director of the American Islamic Congress, expressing surprise over the persistent number of American voters (16 percent) who make the mistake.

Is there something insidious behind the belief, a concerted attack to link the president with a religion that’s considered alien — or worse — by some Americans?


more at link

[Drale]

1. The real question should be why do those people care? /nt

[ellisonz]

6. The insinuation is that being a follower of the Prophet Muhammed is bad. n/t

[liberal N proud]

2. Maybe they are still fully under the FOX mind altering experience.

[polichick]

3. Yep - mindless ijits!

[veganlush]

4. for the same reason

many young Muslims in the middle east believe the Qur'an condones terrorism: because the under-educated are susceptible to the persuasion of their agenda driven "leaders". It's why red necks in the 99% vote against their interests and support the repugnants.

[tanyev]

5. Let's find a poll that tells us how many voters rely on FOX news as their only source of news

and see how well the results correlate.

[demosincebirth]

8. Give yourself a cigar!

[RoseMead]

7. Because it pleases them to do so

In spite of all evidence to the contrary, it pleases them to continue to believe Obama is a Muslim because they think it proves something "bad" about him.

In other words, they're bigots.

[Mariana]

10. They believe it because they want to believe it.

There's something else going on with some of them, though. I don't know how widespread it is, but I've seen several instances of it, some within my own family. There are people who know perfectly well that President Obama isn't a Muslim, but they pretend to believe it, and they try to convince other people that it's true. The same goes for some of the people who say they think he's a Communist, or that he wasn't born in Hawaii, and so on. Some of them, maybe even a lot of them, are faking it.

[lunasun]

9. Is there something insidious behind the belief? yes a form of racism

[Dorian Gray]

11. Why?

Ignorance

[struggle4progress]

12. What you say:

By now, everybody knows that President Obama is not a Muslim

What they hear:

blah blah blahblah blah blah blahblahblah Obama blah blah blah Muslim

[laconicsax]

13. I suspect it's probably more like this:

What you say:
By now, everybody knows that President Obama is not a Muslim.

What they hear:

By now, everybody knows that...Obama is...a Muslim.

What they might also hear:

I'm a librul marxist who wants Christians rounded up and thrown in death camps.

[struggle4progress]

15. To bolster my thesis, I refer to the existing literature:

[laconicsax]

17. Ah, but that literature has what appears to be a significant flaw.

It's well documented that some dog breeds are quite intelligent and certainly not so stupid as to be equated with the subjects of the OP.

[cleanhippie]

14. Because 1 in 6 is about the same number of fundie christofascists we have here.

[dimbear]

16. My faves are the 1% who pick Obama to be a Mormon.

That deserves some sort of unclearontheconcept prize.