Why do Muslims Like Obama?

In 2008, Muslims in America overwhelmingly disapproved of the job George Bush was doing as the now ex-President had a mere 7% approval rating. That is hardly surprising. The economy was in dire straits at the time, America was embroiled in wars against two predominantly Muslim countries and the intelligence community had a nasty habit of holding threats to the nation, many of whom happened to be Muslim, indefinitely in places like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Of course these were not merely the gripes of one segment of society; Bush's approval ratings at the time were incredibly poor among all the major religious groups in the country. Indeed, among the major religions, the only group which viewed Bush overall favorably was the Mormons, and that only at a 52% clip.

Fast forward to 2011. The economy is, if at all possible, more precariously perched than it was in 2008. America is still involved in two wars against predominantly Muslim countries. Intelligence and military officials still find Guantanamo Bay to be a pretty convenient place to hold potential threats to the US. There is a president in office with very poor favorability ratings among the general public. In other words, the overall tide is against Obama and main factors which led to Muslims disliking Bush are still in play. However, despite this, the favorability rating of the sitting president among the Muslim population is sky high, recently found to be 80%.*


The question we would ask is why? Why do Muslims favor Obama so highly? There is a historic connection between Obama and the faith (though he is a declared Christian at this point). However, this does not seem like it would account for such an incredibly large difference when many of the nation's policies are the same as they were in 2008. Other religious groups' favorability ratings of Obama in 2011 are higher than Bush in 2008 as well, but not nearly as dramatically. Therefore it isn't part of a broader increase. For those familiar with investment terms, there is clearly some 'alpha' involved in Muslim's approval rating of the President. We just can't manage to figure out why.

We managed to violate both golden rules of polite dinner conversation with this post (ie no religion or politics). However we have crossed the Rubicon, and what is done is done. Therefore we would invite our readers to have a go at the question presented in the title of the post in the comments section.


*Both of the links in the piece lead to a Gallup report examining U.S. Muslims' political, social and spiritual engagement a decade after 9/11.