Czech secondary school students view Muslims and refugees more negatively than in 2007, according to the Median agency’s poll for the People in Need humanitarian organization that has released its results to the Czech News Agency.
One-third of the students now said they would not mind if their neighbor was a Muslim, while eight years ago two thirds of students said they would not mind it.
Half of the respondents said students should not wear symbols of their faith in school, while only one out of four (26 percent) opposed the wearing of such symbols in 2007, the poll showed.
Karel Strachota, from People in Need, said the opinions of young people are influenced by media and social networking websites.
“Undoubtedly, hysterical reactions of a part of society to the refugees have been affecting them,” Strachota said.
The pollsters concluded that the silent majority is not willing to react to the radical comments on Czech social networks and correct them.
The pollsters said the students have become more mistrustful of Muslims due to an increased number of violent incidents that occurred in the past 12 months, such as the operations by Islamic State militants and the armed attack on the Paris seat of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine.
But these events had other than religious roots, too, for example the geopolitical situation in the Middle East or the problems the second generation of European migrants had with their employment and social integration, the pollsters said.
The poll showed that Czech secondary school students are more wary of living together with foreigners than Czech adults, whose opinions Median examined in February.
The students’ attitudes to the Vietnamese and East Europeans improved, compared with 2007, as well as their attitudes to homosexuals.
The groups that the students viewed most negatively are homeless people, prisoners, drug addicts and Romanies.
Strachota said the personal experience markedly changed the view of the students. “If they know a member of a minority, their attitude is much more accommodating and open to this minority,” he said.
The poll was conducted on 1,103 students from more than 40 of different secondary schools from all over the country.