The Atlantic Online summarizes the relevant part of the report thus:
Jesus taught Christians to "love thy neighbor." According to a recent survey by researchers at Cornell University, however, the more religious the American, the less likely he is to love (or at least trust) his Muslim neighbors. For instance, 42 percent of the highly religious (versus only 15 percent of citizens who are "not very religious") believe that American Muslims should have to register their whereabouts with the government; 34 percent (versus 13 percent) say that U.S. mosques should be monitored; and 40 percent (versus 19 percent) look favorably on government infiltration of Islamic civic and volunteer organizations. The highly religious are also more distrustful the more attention they pay to TV news. While it's true that all the 9/11 terrorists were Muslims, none of them were Americans. So why do the religious mistrust American Muslims? The survey contains a hint: 65 percent of "highly religious" Americans believe that Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence.The results of the survey can be interpreted in more than one way. This editor at the Atlantic Online attributes these suspicions to ignorant prejudice and hypocrisy. Christians are, of course, just demonstrating what everyone knows about Christians since the Crusades, 1492, Servetus and all that. And as for hypocrisy, well, it's a given.
Hmmm. In the general population "the most religious" generally take religious differences most seriously. The non-religious, especially the militantly secular, sometimes sees all religions as equally suspect and susceptible to blind prejudice and dangerous fanaticism. Many in the secular media have more worries about Christians than Muslims because, well, they just do. They tend to overlook incidents such as that unfortunate series of events preceding the Crusades, the first widespread encounter between Christianity and Islam, when Islam first offered to direct the future course of Europe. (The offer was declined.) And they tend to overlook a certain statistical pattern connecting religion and terrorism today. Could it be that there are actual reasons for suspicion? The survey does not indicate whether the most religious actually know more than the non-religious about the history and beliefs of Islam. Nor does it take a position on that history and belief system, but just ignores that what the peerless Islamologist Bernard Lewis has called Islam's "bloody borders."
But, on the other hand, American Muslims don't have a record of violence in their short history.
So the reaction of "the most religious" to their Muslim neighbors could be based in ignorant prejudice and hypocrisy, or in knowledgeable prejudice, or in some combination of the two.
The same could be true of the reaction of the Atlantic.
