CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The fact that 24 percent of Americans believe Barack Obama is a Muslim, according to a poll just released by Time magazine, and the ongoing controversy about building a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero reflect widespread anti-Islam feelings in the country.

Americans have the right to believe anything and the legal right to express their views, even when they are false or hateful.

But national security experts who are in a position to know have grown concerned that all this anti-Muslim bigotry parroted all over the airwaves daily is truly a threat to the nation. It alienates and angers millions throughout the world.

"Islamic radicals are seizing on protests against a planned Islamic community center near Manhattan's Ground Zero and anti-Muslim rhetoric elsewhere as a propaganda opportunity and are stepping up anti-U.S. chatter and threats on their websites," The Wall Street Journal reported on Aug. 23.

Lumping the world's 1.5 billion Muslims into one group of extremist sects like al-Qaida actually helps those sects recruit new members, warns "Militant Islamic Ideology," a book just published by the U.S. Naval Institute Press.

That simplistic philosophy "feeds into al-Qaeda's objectives of portraying themselves as the defenders against injustices committed upon Muslims," writes author Youssef H. Aboul-Enein, a naval officer and top adviser at the Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism.

Militant extremists like al-Qaida, he believes, "alienate not only the United States but also Islamist political groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. It is time for a more nuanced definition of this threat."

By now, the refrain is dully familiar. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., said building a Muslim center near Ground Zero would be similar to displaying a Nazi logo near the Holocaust Museum in Washington. The Rev. Terry Jones, a minister at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., proclaimed that Sept. 11 should be "International Burn a Koran Day." Local fire department officials denied him a permit, but Jones plans to go ahead with his plans to burn books next month.

Evan F. Kohlmann, who tracks computer websites of militant jihadist groups for Flashpoint Global Partners, a security consulting firm, told The New York Times that al-Qaida supporters are seizing on the mosque controversy "with glee." The U.S. Departments of Defense and Justice are among Flashpoint's clients.

Kohlmann called the anti-Islam rhetoric associated with the Muslim center dispute "disturbing and sad" and predicted it is likely to fuel anti-American sentiments and provoke more violence.

Thoughtful Americans know that the country has grown past these ugly outbreaks again and again. Every group has had to struggle first for tolerance and then acceptance. It happened to Eastern Europeans, Italians, Irish, Catholics, Jews, Japanese, blacks, women, Hispanics. The experiences are uneven, slow and painful, but the story of the United States generally trends toward more diversity and more acceptance.

Indeed, nationally and locally, plenty of people have spoken out in defense of fellow peace-loving, taxpaying Americans who happen to also be Muslim. Those responses have come from Christians and Jews, Democrats and Republicans, to name a few.

Demonizing everyone who believes in Islam might be an effective tactic for some political leaders, but it is not in America's best interests, either in the long or short term. Nor is it in America's best tradition.