By now, you'd think pretty much everyone knew how Muslims feel about other Americans' attitudes toward them. But no, CBS News trudged that worn path yet again yesterday.
Ace anchor Scott Pelley interviewed five young Muslims all American born. He asks how they feel going to work and school after an attack like the recent massacre in San Bernardino, Calif. And he seldom goes off script.
A hijab-clad student talks about being tripped by a man who then starts screaming "Go back to where you came from." Another woman complains about the mother of her "absolute best childhood friend" putting a "super-hateful post" about Muslims on Facebook.
"When I saw it, I just broke down in tears," she says, choking up a bit. She says she wrote the woman a long letter saying, "We're the Muslim family you know, and you know we're not like that."
What did the Facebook post say? And did the mother reply? Pelley doesn't ask.
The young Muslim does volunteer that the family are "white Christians." Why does that make a difference? Why didn't Pelley ask?
He asks about a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute, saying that 56 percent of Americans believe "The values of Islam are at odds with American values." The five interviewees naturally disagree. And interestingly, three of them deny that the faith is inherently violent or counsels killing the innocent -- interestingly, because Pelley's question didn’t bring that up.
He's clearly done some homework, but verses in the Quran and Hadith about violence didn't seem to be part of it (although the HuffPost wrote on it five years ago). One of the young Muslims repeats a standard liberal line that you can use Bible verses to support violence, too.
Pelley does ask their reaction to the claims by ISIS that it's acting "in the name of all Muslims." Again, they unshockingly reject ISIS as Islamic at all. One says the word "Islam" means peace. (Actually, "Islam" means "submission"; the Arabic word for peace is salaam.) Another says that anti-Muslim voices, like that of Donald Trump, are "playing into the hands of ISIS."
Among the few surprises in the interview was from a young man: "I don’t like to identify myself as a Muslim-American. I'm an American who is Muslim." Other interesting comments come a uniformed Army lieutenant. He says that when he decided to join the Army, everyone -- Muslim and non-Muslim alike -- asked "Are you going to kill your own people?" This revelation of prejudice on the Muslim side doesn't draw any interest from Pelley.
