Americans say Muslims face most intolerance in US

By Umar Farooq

WASHINGTON (AA) - Eight in ten Americans believe Muslims face more discrimination than any other group in the U.S., according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.

Eighty-two percent of respondents said Muslims face discrimination. Eighty percent of those surveyed said blacks faced some discrimination.

Pew released the figures Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted a video that attacked Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar from Minnesota.

The video was of a speech delivered by Omar in which she discussed how Muslim Americans came to be seen as second-class citizens after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The president's tweet mixed in footage from the attacks with parts of the speech.

Omar is one of the first Muslim lawmakers to be elected to Congress, alongside Michigan's Rashida Tlaib, and has faced a flurry of attacks since she began in office this year.

The Muslim congresswoman said she has faced more death threats since the president posted the tweet, sparking criticism that Trump is condoning harmful attacks against the country's own elected officials.

The survey was conducted prior to the president's tweet.

Ninety-two percent of Democrats said there is discrimination against Muslims in America, with 75% saying there is a lot of discrimination, according to the poll. While less Republican respondents said the same, 69%, a large majority, agreed.

The percentage of people that think Jews face "a lot" of discrimination nearly doubled since 2016, rising from 13% to 24%, with 64% of respondents saying there is some discrimination against the group, according to Pew.

Race played a large factor in predicting how much discrimination a respondent thought was happening. Seventy-three percent of black respondents said there is "a lot" of discrimination against blacks and 63% of Hispanics said the same about discrimination against Hispanics.

However, among whites, it was partisanship that was the biggest factor in deciding how they answered.

Among white Democrats and Democrat-leaning respondents, around two-thirds said there is discrimination against blacks, while only 16% of white Republicans and Republican-leaning respondents said the same.

The survey was conducted between March 20 and 25 and surveyed 1,503 adults.