From Obama to Osama: Image of God and Trust in Muslims among the Highly Religious in the United States

Abstract

Although Muslims in the United States are highly assimilated into American society, they represent less than 1 percent of the total population. Therefore, most of the information Americans receive about this group comes from secondary sources. Two theoretical perspectives of opinion formation—image of God and low information rationality—shed light on the subject of trust in this marginalized group. For highly religious Americans, nearly two-thirds of the 2005 Baylor Religion Survey's national sample, Muslims may represent the ultimate outsiders. We compare the effect of the central religious narrative, or an image of God as creator or judge, to the effect of political ideology, or the likely exposure to forms of low information rationality such as framing, spinning, and buzzwords. We use indicators of these concepts in a multivariate analysis of trust in Muslims as a test of these competing perspectives of opinion formation. Using the 2005 Baylor Religion Survey data, we find that not only does trust in Muslims decrease with both a more conservative political ideology and a stronger view of God as vengeful and angry but that these effects interact to produce individuals who are far less likely to trust Muslims compared to their Democrat, Independent, and “loving God” counterparts.