Saturday, January 23, 2010

Gallup poll: 71 % Americans view Judaism positively

(Gallup).The vast majority of Americans say they have positive feelings towards Judaism and no prejudice against Jews, though nearly half say they have little knowledge of the religion, according to a new poll.

In addition, Americans are most likely to acknowledge prejudice against Muslims and the strongest predictor of such prejudice is whether those Americans also dislike Jews, the survey found.

Some 71 percent of Americans hold a positive view of Judaism (including 25% who hold a very positive view), according to the survey of religious attitudes put out by Gallup on Friday, while 25% do not. In addition, 15% self-reported feeling at least some bias against Jews.

That's in contrast to 43% who admit that they hold prejudice towards Muslims, though 31.6% of those people have similar feelings towards Jews, the survey found.

Of the three minority faiths covered - Islam, Judaism and Buddhism - those surveyed were far more likely to know a Jew personally than an adherent of the other two faiths. But still, 19% said they did not know a Jew personally.

The Gallup survey was conducted during the first two weeks of November among 1,002 American adults, with a margin of error of +/- 3.4%.