It's called Public Relations, or if you wanna be harsh (honest?) you can call it Propaganda. There's a book i read once about Edward Bernays, the name of the book slips my mind. But he's pretty much known as the Godfather of PR. However he basically ran a massive PR campaign in the early 1900's that convinced Women smoking was cool, and it worked brilliantly.
Your mistaken about Islam though, there's a huge PR push here in the states to show tolerance and acceptance towards that Religion. PR is also used heavily in marketing and schools, kids are taught to think certain ways and accept certain ideals. I won't go into it further cause it would just create an endless debate and lazy people won't ever look into it.