Personal contact with Muslims substantially reduces anti-Muslim sentiment across party lines

Evidence

Negative public opinion correlated with a lack of personal experiences and knowledge of Islam. Surveys show that respondents who know Muslims are less likely to hold unfavorable views than persons who have little knowledge of Islam or no interaction with Muslims. Thus, the more a person interacts with Muslim neighbors, coworkers, classmates, roommates, and friends, the more favorable their views of Islam. A 2015 Brookings Institution poll, for example, showed that Democrat respondents who did not know any Muslims reported 48 percent unfavorability, compared to 18 percent of Democrat respondents who knew some Muslims very well. Republican respondents who did not know any Muslims reported 78 percent unfavorability of Muslims, compared to 42 percent of Republicans who knew some Muslims very well. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 846

Categorization

• SEED: The intergroup contact finding, with vivid Democrat versus Republican numbers (48 vs 18, 78 vs 42), could anchor a column on whether ‘contact’ can overcome manufactured moral panic.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 846