Do you personally know a Muslim IRL?

[TJ in Oregon]

Yes (in academia).

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I work with a few.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Heartened by the poll numbers here.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Obviously.

[JA]

I can't really say "in real life" since I befriended her online almost 3 years ago, but we've talked practically every day since then and she's one of my closest friends. I'd love to visit Sarajevo one day so I can meet her in person. So, I voted yes. She's the one who helped make me into an outright Socialist.

[TPIG]

I know several, all of whom are decent, morally-upright people.

[TDAS04]

Yes.

[Seattle]

Yes, (normal) being Bosnian and all. Plus, I've gone to school with many Ethiopian, Somali, Pakistani, and Indian Muslims. Almost all the Arabs/Turks/Iranians I've met have been in professional/academic settings and I'm fairly sure 80%+ of them are atheists.

[Bojack Horseman]

I’ve met Muslims but I don’t know any personally.

[Mr. Smith]

Yeah.

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

I actually live right across the street from a very nice Muslim lady, so yes I do.

[JonHawk]

Yes only in college. None in my neighborhood tho

[TheSaint250]

Yes, a former attendee of my high school.

He was more the friend of my friend's brother, but I would talk to him frequently if we were all together.

I don't believe he was particularly religious, but nonetheless, he was a funny person.

[vanguard96]

I live in SE Michigan so of course, yes.

My roommate in college is from Pakistan, and is Muslim.
My mechanics are from Syria.
My wife's friend from ESL is from Iraq.
A customer engineer I used to work with is from Algeria, another from Iran, a third was born here and is of Iraqi descent.
The phone salesman we use is a Bosnian Muslim.

I do not see any niqab wearing women in our neighborhood - there may be a few who wear hijab. I do see women in niqab at the grocery pretty often - in Westland the next town over from Dearborn, Michigan where they observe Muslim holidays have night time hours during Ramadan, etc.

Where I live specifically the predominant Arab population is Orthodox Christian mainly from Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq) - and many of them Chaldean with their own distinct language. They are typically very well-to-do with lots of small businesses - car washes, restaurants, convenience stores & gas stations, bakeries. A far cry from the Arab Peninsula immigrants in Hamtramck and Dearborn.

[The Puppeteer]

Yes as my older brother ended up becoming one.

[Cokeland Saxton]

Online, yes. IRL, no.

[afleitch]

Yeah. I live in a high Muslim area and have a few close friends.

[Hope For A New Era]

A few years ago I knew several, but I don't really talk to them much anymore.

[NYDem]

Yes, mostly friends from home though. Probably at least 10% of my classmates were Muslims. Only know 1 or 2 at college.

The demographics of my school district were pretty odd now that I think about it. I don't think I knew a single white Protestant in high school. When I learned we had only had 1 Catholic President it blew my mind.

[Former President tack50]

Wow a 2016 bump. Either way yes, I do. Not super well or anything but I have known muslims irl. In my time in college I've had 4 muslim classmates.

3 were hijab-wearing women, with whom I barely talked. They spoke Spanish decently but with a very heavy Arabic accent. Of the 3 women; I lost track of 2 of them, though 1 did end up graduating alongside myself. From what I've heard they were fairly average students.

I do remember a "horror story" where one girl ended up having to do a group project with the 3 of them, with the 3 speaking Arabic and doing nothing while that lone Spanish girl was tasked with doing everything lol (I actually came close to being in that spot but somehow I dodged a bullet and instead ended in a group where I was the one who did little)

The 4th and final muslim student was a man, and was the one I interacted with the most since I shared many classes with him. This still only means fairly standard and mundane class interactions as he wasn't really among the group of "college friends" I had; but still. He spoke better Spanish and had a less noticeable accent (though it was still there). He was a fairly good student (better than the 3 women) and also graduated alongside myself.

Either way, none of these were particularly close relations or anything so it didn't really change any perceptions I had. If anything that "horror story" from a friend (yes, anectodal evidence) plus the fact that they all had heavy accents slightly lowered it (however iirc they all were people who were born and raised in Morocco and moved here for college; so I didn't really care about the accents since it was 100% understandable). Like someone else said on the thread you should not judge big groups of people based on interactions with a handful of people.

For some reason my college classes had a fairly large amount of non """ethnically""" Spanish students; I also had 2 black classmates (both from Equatorial Guinea iirc) and 3 Latin American classmates at the same time; and my college classes were actually very small at only 20-30 people. Granted it was rare for all of those to be together at the same time; since not everyone in college has the same classes, people often end up droping out, etc.

[ingemann]

I'm curious, have you actually met and know any Muslims? If so did it change your perception of Muslims?

Yes, and it changed my view of them for the worse, and no it’s not just because of a single person I know a lot of Muslims. Of course it doesn’t help that they can’t help sharing their awful views on everything, especially if you simply just listen to them and don’t interrupt while they tell you about the global conspiracy of Jews running everything or their “super enlighten” views on women or sexual minorities.

Edit: I saw I had answered this one earlier, this is my perspective now.

[HisGrace]

Not right now, there were a couple big Muslim families at my high school though.

[Kuumo]

I've met a few at my university. Most are international students from Middle Eastern and South Asian countries, but the only one I know well is Indian-American.

[beesley]

Yes, several.

[FT-02 Senator A.F.E. 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]