‘Enjoyed’ Brinton’s column on Muslim world

To the Editor:

As a Muslim American, I particularly enjoyed Scott Brinton’s column on American perceptions of Muslims, “When perception is reality in the Muslim world” (Sept. 16-22).

In the column, Brinton mentioned a past Pew Research Center survey on Muslim attitudes toward terrorism. An interesting and underreported fact is that in another recent Pew survey, 35 percent of Americans reported that they knew little about Islam, and 25 percent said they knew "nothing at all.” But 38 percent of respondents held unfavorable views of Islam. This past week, another Pew survey was released showing that 45 percent of Americans did not know that the Quran is the Muslim holy book.

The first step toward correcting misperceptions about Muslims is probably to raise the public's knowledge of Islam and of world religion in general.

Zachary Ibrahim

Merrick