Answer:
Southern slaveholders often used biblical passages to justify slavery. Those who defended slavery rose to the challenge set forth by the Abolitionists. The defenders of slavery included economics, history, religion, legality, social good, and even humanitarianism, to further their arguments.
Radical Islamists have contributed to this misunderstanding of Islam as inherently violent, intolerant, and fundamentalist religion and worldview. However, an average Westerner also partakes in this collection of prejudices, as they are not informed enough, nor do they wish to acquaint themselves better with the history of Islam. The Islamic Middle East was a cradle of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, arts. Even later, while the Western Europe was grappling with medieval bigotry, intolerance, quackery and different forms of witch hunt, Islamic countries have been perhaps the most advanced societies of their time in the scientific, artistic and civilizational sense.
They were all ways of combatting the immense poverty caused by the depression. The shantytowns were ways for the poor to have cheap housing, as terrible as those towns often were, they were a place for people to stay. Soup kitchens and bread lines were a way for people who couldn't afford food to get things to eat.
