The University and Louisiana politicians took steps this week to better understand and respond to the Islamic State, the religious extremist group that attained infamy in the U.S. two months ago after beheading American journalist James Foley.
The Islamic State  is a militant group comprised of fundamentalist Sunni Muslims. 
Spawned from Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic State seeks to establish a radical Islamic state throughout parts of Iraq and Syria. 
Peter von Sivers, an associate professor of history at the University of Utah, said 200 to 400 Americans are suspected to be members of the Islamic State, with even greater numbers in Europe.
Sivers was on campus Wednesday to lecture on the Islamic State in front of a packed room of students in Hill Memorial Library. 
“The number of Middle Easterners with a Sunni background is much larger in Europe than the United States,” Sivers said.
Sivers said the Islamic State terrorists are paid the equivalent of $300 to $600 a month in American wages – much more than the Iraqi or Syrian armies pay their troops.
Candidates running in Louisiana’s Nov. 4 U.S. Senate election condemned the Islamic State in a televised debate Tuesday, with incumbent Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy and Republican Robert Maness denouncing the extremist group.
The Islamic State was the focus of one of the 13 questions asked throughout the broadcast and both Landrieu and Cassidy addressed the issue in recent campaign stops.
Hafsah Mohammed, a child and family studies junior, said University students are uninformed about the Islamic State and the true nature of Islam.
Mohammed is the president of the Muslim Student Association at LSU.
“I think they know what’s being said through the news,” Mohammed said. “When things happen in the media, they always want to group it with everybody else. They want to group all of us together.”
Mohammed said students watching news coverage about the Islamic State may be led to believe Islam condones the actions of the extremists.
“We’re always looked at in a bad light,” Mohammed said. “We have absolutely nothing to do with what’s going on over there. It’s completely different from what mainstream Muslims believe in.”
Mechanical engineering sophomore Louis Derose agreed University students were not well-informed on the issue.
Derose is the vice president of Young Americans for Liberty, a political student organization.
“They’ve probably all seen the headlines,” Derose said. “I’m sure not everyone’s looked into it. There’s no reason. It doesn’t affect us over here.” 
He said the greatest source of conflict in the Middle East was a hatred of Americans that will fuel terrorism for years to come. 
“Until the hatred subsides, this is going to be a contentious issue, regardless of whether it’s ISIS [the Islamic State] or some other group. It’s not going away,” Derose said.
In his lecture, Sivers displayed data from Pew Research Center polls conducted in 2002 and 2014. 
The data revealed an uptick in Americans’ negative perceptions of Muslims in 2014, similar to the 2002 increase in negativity towards Islam following the Sept. 11 attacks.
The polls asked respondents if they thought Muslims were violent by nature. 
Mohammed said she was not surprised by the negative perceptions Americans hold.
“We’ve been through it a lot of times. Every time something happens in the media, it’s like ‘well we hope its not a Muslim’ because it’s going to start all over again,” Mohammed said. “There’s no break. Nobody’s getting a break from this.”