Rare Muslim violence drives broad perception of Islam as violent

Evidence

In the post-9/11 era, amid the aftermath of a number of mass shootings (e.g., “Mumbai rocked,” 2008l; Pew Research Center, 2009) and the rising death toll of U.S. military personnel associated with the war on terror (U.S. Department of Defense, Statistical Information Analysis Division, 2012), Muslims and the religion of Islam are prominently centered in conflicts. Although an exceptionally small proportion of Muslims are responsible for acts of violence, recent events and the tumultuous nature of the Middle East often prompts many people to view Islam and its followers as backward, irrational, and inherently dangerous (Gottschalk & Greenberg, 2008). — Sherman A. Lee, Chelsea A. Reid, Stephen D. Short, Jeffrey A. Gibbons, Ruth Yeh, and Matthew L. Campbell, Fear of Muslims, 8

Categorization

• QUESTION: The cited Mahimkar/Chopra study on Mumbai’s 7/11 bomb blasts seems to measure implicit death-thought accessibility, not attitudes toward Muslims — worth verifying the citation’s relevance here.