As the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, a comprehensive public opinion survey finds no indication of increased alienation or anger among Muslim Americans in response to concerns about home-grown Islamic terrorists, controversies about the building of mosques and other pressures that have been brought to bear on this high-profile minority group in recent years. There also is no evidence of rising support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans.

On the contrary, as found in the Pew Research Center’s 2007 survey, Muslims in the United States continue to reject extremism by much larger margins than most Muslim publics surveyed this year by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. And majorities of Muslim Americans express concern about the possible rise of Islamic extremism, both here and abroad.

A significant minority (21%) of Muslim Americans say there is a great deal (6%) or a fair amount (15%) of support for extremism in the Muslim American community. That is far below the proportion of the general public that sees at least a fair amount of support for extremism among U.S. Muslims (40%). And while about a quarter of the public (24%) thinks that Muslim support for extremism is increasing, just 4% of Muslims agree.

Many Muslims fault their own leaders for failing to challenge Islamic extremists. Nearly half (48%) say that Muslim leaders in the United States have not done enough to speak out against Islamic extremists; only about a third (34%) say Muslim leaders have done enough in challenging extremists. At the same time, 68% say that Muslim Americans themselves are cooperating as much as they should with law enforcement.
The survey of 1,033 Muslim Americans, conducted April 14-July 22 by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, finds that far more view the United States’ efforts to combat terrorism as sincere than did so in 2007. Currently, opinion is divided – 43% of Muslim Americans say U.S. efforts are a sincere attempt to reduce terrorism while 41% do not. Four years ago, during George Bush’s presidency, more than twice as many viewed U.S. anti-terrorism efforts as insincere rather than sincere (55% to 26%).

For Muslims in the United States, concerns about Islamic extremism coexist with the view that life for Muslim Americans in post-9/11 America is difficult in a number of ways. Significant numbers report being looked at with suspicion (28%), and being called offensive names (22%). And while 21% report being singled out by airport security, 13% say they have been singled out by other law enforcement. Overall, a 52% majority says that government anti-terrorism policies single out Muslims in the U.S. for increased surveillance and monitoring.

However, reports about such experiences and feelings of being subject to intense scrutiny have not changed substantially since 2007. Overall about the same percentage today as in 2007 say that life for Muslims in the U.S. has become more difficult since 9/11 (55% now, 53% in 2007). The percentage reporting they are bothered by their sense that Muslim Americans are being singled out for increased government surveillance also is no greater now than four years ago (38% bothered a lot or some today vs. 39% in 2007).

The controversies over the building of mosques in New York City and other parts of the country are resonating in the Muslim American community. Most Muslim Americans (81%) have heard about the proposal to build a mosque and Islamic center near the site of the World Trade Center and a clear majority of those who are aware of the planned mosque (72%) say it should be allowed. However, 35% say either that the project should not be allowed (20%), or that it should be permitted but is a bad idea (15%).
A quarter of Muslim Americans (25%) report that mosques or Islamic centers in their communities have been the target of controversy or outright hostility. While 14% report that there has been opposition to the building of a mosque or Islamic center in their community in the past few years, 15% say that a mosque or Islamic center in their community has been the target of vandalism or other hostile acts in the past 12 months.

Nonetheless, Muslim Americans have not become disillusioned with the country. They are overwhelmingly satisfied with the way things are going in their lives (82%) and continue to rate their communities very positively as places to live (79% excellent or good).

At a personal level, most think that ordinary Americans are friendly (48%) or neutral (32%) toward Muslim Americans; relatively few (16%) believe the general public is unfriendly toward Muslim Americans. About two-thirds (66%) say that the quality of life for Muslims in the U.S. is better than in most Muslim countries.

Strikingly, Muslim Americans are far more satisfied with the way things are going in the country (56%) than is the general public (23%). Four years ago, Muslim Americans and the public rendered fairly similar judgments about the state of the nation (38% of Muslims vs. 32% of the general public were satisfied).

The current disparity may well reflect the fact that Muslim Americans are much more satisfied with the current political situation in the country than they were four years ago. Most Muslim Americans continue to identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party and they overwhelmingly support Barack Obama. Fully 76% approve of Obama’s job performance; in 2007, about as many (69%) disapproved of George Bush’s job performance.

Support for Extremism Remains Negligible

As in 2007, very few Muslim Americans – just 1% – say that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are often justified to defend Islam from its enemies; an additional 7% say suicide bombings are sometimes justified in these circumstances. Fully 81% say that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilians are never justified.

A comparably small percentage of Muslim Americans express favorable views of al Qaeda – 2% very favorable and 3% somewhat favorable. And the current poll finds more Muslim Americans holding very unfavorable views of al Qaeda than in 2007 (70% vs. 58%).

There is much greater opposition to suicide bombing – and more highly negative views of al Qaeda – among Muslims in the United States than among Muslims in most of the seven predominantly Muslim countries surveyed by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. In the Palestinian territories, 68% of Muslims say suicide bombing and other forms of violence are at least sometimes justified, as do 35% of Muslims in Lebanon and 28% of those in Egypt.

In the other Muslim publics surveyed, the median percentage saying that suicide bombing and other violence against civilians are never justified is 55%; by contrast, 81% of Muslims in the U.S. say such violence is never justified. Similarly, the median percentage across the seven Muslim publics with very unfavorable views of al Qaeda is 38%, compared with 70% among Muslim Americans. (For more, see “U.S. Image in Pakistan Falls No Further Following bin Laden Killing,” June 21, 2011; “Muslim-Western Tensions Persist,” July 21, 2011.)

Opposition to violence is broadly shared by all segments of the Muslim American population, and there is no correlation between support for suicide bombing and measures of religiosity such as strong religious beliefs or mosque attendance. Yet opposition to extremism is more pronounced among some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others.

Overall, just 5% of Muslim Americans express even somewhat favorable opinions of al Qaeda. Yet hostility toward al Qaeda varies – 75% of foreign-born U.S. Muslims say they have a very unfavorable opinion of al Qaeda, compared with 62% of all native-born Muslims and 56% of native-born African American Muslims. However, the proportion of African American Muslims expressing very unfavorable opinions of al Qaeda has increased from 39% four years ago.

Perhaps relatedly, 40% of native-born African American Muslims believe that there is at least a fair amount of support for extremism among U.S. Muslims, compared with just 15% among foreign born Muslim Americans.

Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream

A majority of Muslim Americans (56%) say that most Muslims who come to the U.S. want to adopt American customs and ways of life; just 20% say that Muslims in this country want to be distinct from the larger American society. In contrast, just a third (33%) of the general public believes that most Muslims in the U.S. today want to assimilate.

Moreover, only about half of U.S. Muslims (48%) say that most of their close friends are Muslims, and just 7% say that all their close friends are Muslims. These figures are little changed from 2007.

Nearly three-quarters (74%) of Muslim Americans endorse the idea that most people can get ahead if they are willing to work hard; just 26% say hard work is no guarantee of success. Among the general public, somewhat fewer (62%) say that most people who work hard can get ahead.

U.S. Muslims are about as likely as other Americans to report household incomes of $100,000 or more (14% of Muslims, compared with 16% of all adults), and they express similar levels of satisfaction with their personal financial situation. Overall, 46% say they are in excellent or good shape financially; among the general public, 38% say this. Muslim Americans are as likely as the public overall to have graduated from college (26% of Muslims vs. 28% among the general public). Because as a group Muslim Americans are younger than the general public, twice as many report being currently enrolled in a college or university class (26% vs. 13%). Similar numbers of Muslim Americans and members of the general public report being self-employed or owning a small business (20% for Muslim Americans, 17% for the general public).

When it comes to many other aspects of American life, Muslim Americans look similar to the rest of the public. Comparable percentages say they watch entertainment television, follow professional or college sports, recycle household materials, and play video games. About one-in-three (33%) say they have worked with other people from their neighborhood to fix a problem or improve a condition in their community in the past 12 months, compared with 38% of the general public.

When asked to choose, nearly half of Muslims in the U.S. (49%) say they think of themselves first as a Muslim, while 26% see themselves first as an American; 18% volunteer that they are both. In a 2011 survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, 46% of Christians in the U.S. say they identify as Christian first while the same number identify as American first. White evangelicals are much more likely to identify first as Christian (70%).

The survey also finds that compared with Muslims elsewhere, Muslim Americans are more supportive of the role of women in society. Virtually all Muslim Americans (90%) agree that women should be able to work outside of the home. Most (68%) also think that there is no difference between men and women political leaders. These are not the prevailing views of Muslims in most predominantly Muslim countries surveyed by the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

And on a key foreign policy issue, Muslim Americans are far more likely than Muslims in the Middle East to say that a way can be found for the state of Israel to exist so that the rights of the Palestinians are addressed (62% say this; 20% disagree). In this regard, the views of Muslim Americans resemble those of the general public, among whom 67% say a way can be found for the state of Israel to exist while protecting the rights of the Palestinians; 12% disagree.

Who Are Muslim Americans?

A 63% majority of Muslim Americans are first-generation immigrants to the U.S., with 45% having arrived in the U.S. since 1990. More than a third of Muslim Americans (37%) were born in the U.S., including 15% who had at least one immigrant parent. Despite the sizable percentage of immigrants, 81% of Muslim Americans are citizens of the U.S., including 70% of those born outside the U.S. This is a much higher rate of citizenship among foreign-born Muslims than among the broader immigrant population in the U.S.; 47% of all foreign-born are citizens.

First-generation Muslim Americans come from a wide range of countries around the world. About four-in-ten (41%) are immigrants from the Middle East or North Africa, while about a quarter (26%) come from South Asian nations including Pakistan (14%), Bangladesh (5%) and India (3%). Others came to the U.S. from sub-Saharan Africa (11%), various countries in Europe (7%), Iran (5%), or other countries (9%).

Among the roughly one-in-five Muslim Americans whose parents also were born in the U.S., 59% are African Americans, including a sizable majority who have converted to Islam (69%). Overall, 13% of U.S. Muslims are African Americans whose parents were born in the United States.

A 55% majority of Muslim Americans are married, comparable to 54% among the U.S. general public. Most Muslim Americans (83%) are married to someone of their own faith, as is the case generally in the U.S. For example, among married U.S. Christians, 92% are married to a Christian.

Muslim Americans’ Political Attitudes

Muslim Americans have liberal attitudes on a number of current political issues. A substantial majority (68%) says they would rather have a larger government providing more services than a smaller government providing fewer services. That compares with 42% of the general public.

Most Muslim Americans (70%) either identify as Democrats (46%) or lean toward the Democratic Party (24%); just 11% identify with the Republican Party or lean toward the GOP.

Nearly half of Muslim Americans (48%) say they feel that the Republican Party is unfriendly toward Muslim Americans; just 15% say the party is friendly toward them. By contrast, 46% say the Democratic Party is friendly toward Muslim Americans, and 64% feel that way about Barack Obama. Among Muslim Americans who say they voted in 2008, an overwhelming 92% say they voted for Obama. In comparison, the 2007 survey found that 71% reported voting for Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 election.

One issue on which Muslim Americans do not stand out as especially liberal is on societal acceptance of homosexuality. About as many Muslim Americans say homosexuality should be discouraged by society (45%) as accepted by society (39%). The general public, by a 58% to 33% margin, says that homosexuality should be accepted. Still, there is greater support for societal acceptance of homosexuality, among both U.S. Muslims and the public, than there was a few years ago. In 2007, Muslim Americans, by more than two-to-one (61% to 27%), said homosexuality should be discouraged.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Muslim Americans have a far more positive view of immigrants than does the public generally. About seven-in-ten (71%) say that immigrants today strengthen the country with their hard work and talents; just 22% say that immigrants are a burden because of their impact on the availability of jobs, housing and health care. The general public is evenly divided on this question; 45% say that immigrants strengthen the country, while 44% say immigrants are a burden.

Religious, But Not Dogmatic

Many Muslim Americans are highly religious: 69% say that religion is very important in their lives, and about half (47%) report at least weekly attendance at a mosque for prayer. Similarly, about half (48%) say they make all five salah prayers daily, and another 18% report making at least some salah daily.

By these measures, Muslims in the U.S. are about as religious as Christians in the United States: 70% of Christians say that religion is very important in their lives and 45% attend services at least weekly according to recent surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Overwhelming numbers of Muslim Americans believe in Allah (96%), the Prophet Muhammad (96%) and the Day of Judgment (92%). Yet the survey finds that most reject a dogmatic approach to religion. Most Muslim Americans (57%) say there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of Islam; far fewer (37%) say that there is only one true interpretation of Islam. Similarly, 56% of Muslim Americans say that many different religions can lead to eternal life; just 35% say that Islam is the one true faith that leads to eternal life.

In this respect, Muslim Americans differ from many of their counterparts in the Muslim world and are similar to U.S. Christians. In the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 28% of Christians said that there was only one way to interpret the teachings of their religion.

About the Muslim American Survey

The 2011 Muslim American Survey is based on telephone interviews conducted April 14-July 22, 2011 with 1,033 Muslims in the U.S. Interviews were conducted in English, Arabic, Farsi and Urdu.

The survey was conducted by landline telephones and cell phones, using a nationally representative random sample combining interviews from three sampling sources. (1) About a third (35%) of the interviews (358) were obtained from a geographically stratified random-digit-dial (RDD) sample of the general public, which entailed screening 41,689 households. (2) An additional 501 came from a commercial database of 113 million households, of which more than 600,000 included people with likely Muslim first names or surnames who also had a telephone number; Muslim households from this database were excluded from the geographically-stratified RDD sample but were included in a separate stratum as part of the general public RDD sample. (3) An additional 174 interviews were obtained by recontacting English-speaking Muslim households on landlines and cell phones from previous nationwide surveys conducted since 2007.

The results of all three sampling sources were combined and statistically adjusted to the demographic parameters of the Muslim population, as estimated by the results of the interviews from the geographically-stratified RDD and listed sample (excluding the recontact interviews). The margin of sampling error for results based on the full sample is plus or minus 5 percentage points. Details about the study’s sample design and the overall methodological approach are contained in the survey methodology. The study’s design was nearly identical to that used in the 2007 survey of Muslim Americans.

The relationship between religion and politics is a controversial one. While the public remains more supportive of religion’s role in public life than in the 1960s, Americans are uneasy with the approaches offered by both liberals and conservatives. Fully 69% of Americans say that liberals have gone too far in keeping religion out of schools and government. But the proportion who express reservations about attempts by Christian conservatives to impose their religious values has edged up in the past year, with about half the public (49%) now expressing wariness about this.

The Democratic Party continues to face a serious “God problem,” with just 26% saying the party is friendly to religion. However, the proportion of Americans who say the Republican Party is friendly to religion, while much larger, has fallen from 55% to 47% in the past year, with a particularly sharp decline coming among white evangelical Protestants (14 percentage points).

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, conducted July 6-19 among 2,003 adults, finds that most Americans (59%) continue to say that religion’s influence on the country is declining, and most of those who express this view believe that this is a bad thing. The public is more divided on the question of whether religion’s influence on government is increasing (42%) or decreasing (45%). And in contrast to views of religion’s influence on the country, most of those who think that religion is increasing its influence on government leaders and institutions view this as a bad thing.

The survey finds that religious conservatives, and white evangelical Christians specifically, have no equal and opposite group on the religious left. About 7% of the public say they identify with the “religious left” political movement. That is not much smaller than the 11% who identify themselves as members of the “religious right,” but the religious left is considerably less cohesive in its political views than the religious right.

The survey traced the spiritual roots of the religious right and left to two broader faith communities. On the right, white evangelical Christians comprise 24% of the population and form a distinct group whose members share core religious beliefs as well as crystallized and consistently conservative political attitudes.

On the left, a larger share of the public (32%) identifies as “liberal or progressive Christians.” But unlike evangelicals, progressive Christians come from different religious traditions and disagree almost as often as they agree on a number of key political and social issues.

These differences in the makeup of the religious left and right are an important reason why white evangelicals remain a more politically potent force. On issues ranging from the origins of life to Christ’s second coming, evangelicals express distinctly different views from those held by the rest of the public and even other religious groups.

For example, six-in-ten white evangelical Protestants say that the Bible should be the guiding principle in making laws when it conflicts with the will of the people, a view rejected by an equally large majority of Americans, including most Catholics and white mainline Protestants.

Seven-in-ten white evangelicals (69%) believe God gave Israel to the Jewish people and a solid majority (59%) believes that Israel is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy ­ views rejected by majorities of the rest of the public, including most mainline Protestants and Catholics. Significantly, those who believe that God gave Israel to the Jews and that the state of Israel fulfills biblical prophecy are much more likely than others to sympathize with Israel in its dispute with the Palestinians.

On matters of faith, fully 62% of white evangelicals say the Bible is the actual word of God, to be taken literally. In contrast, only 35% of the public ­ including just 24% of Catholics and 17% of white mainline Protestants ­ share this literal view of the scriptures, with most believing that although the Bible is God’s word, not everything in it is literally true.

The survey also finds continuing tension in the public’s views of science and religion, especially in opinions about evolution and the origins of life. However, there is broad agreement across the religious spectrum that scientific advances will help rather than harm mankind. Nearly two-thirds of all Americans (65%) express a positive opinion of scientific advances, compared with 19% who feel such advances harm mankind.

Despite the ongoing conflicts over the role of religion in public life, contemporary policy issues are being widely addressed in churches and other houses of worship. More than half of those who attend services at least monthly say members of the clergy in their place of worship have spoken out about such politically charged issues as abortion (59%), the situation in Iraq (53%), laws regarding homosexuals (52%), and the environment (48%). Smaller proportions report hearing their clergy talking about evolution and intelligent design (40%), the death penalty (31%), embryonic stem cell research (24%) and immigration (21%). But nearly everyone ­ 92% ­ says that their clergy has spoken out about poverty and homelessness.

Finally, while an overwhelming percentage of Christians (79%) say they believe in the second coming of Jesus Christ, far fewer see Christ’s return as imminent. Overall just 20% of all Christians expect Christ to return to earth in their lifetime; even among those who say that the Bible is the literal word of God, just 37% expect Christ to return to earth in their lifetime.

Roadmap to the Report

Section I, which begins on page 5, covers public attitudes toward religion’s role in the nation, including opinions about whether the Bible or the will of the people should have greater influence on the country’s laws. Section II, beginning on page 9, shows continuing differences over issues involving religion, politics and policy. Section III highlights attitudes toward religion and science; it begins on page 16. Section IV, which starts on page 21, focuses on people’s religious beliefs. Following the report, beginning on page 25, is a statement on the survey’s methodology followed by complete topline results.

The Sept. 11 attacks have increased the prominence of religion in the United States to an extraordinary degree, but not at the expense of acceptance of religious minorities. Fully 78% now say religion’s influence in American life is growing ­ up from 37% eight months ago and the highest mark on this measure in surveys dating back four decades. At the same time, the public has a better opinion of Muslim-Americans than it did before the attacks. Favorable views of Muslim-Americans have risen from 45% in March to 59% today, even though 40% of the public think the terrorists were motivated at least in part by religion when they carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

The survey finds clear evidence that Americans are heeding President Bush’s call for tolerance toward Muslims, and the president’s own core constituents ­ conservative Republicans ­ have shown by far the biggest turnaround. Nearly two-thirds of conservative Republicans (64%) feel favorably toward Muslims in this country, up 29 percentage points since March.

Despite the improving image of Muslim-Americans, few Americans know much about the Muslim faith and even fewer feel their religion has much in common with Islam. Roughly four-in-ten (38%) say they know something about the Muslim religion and its practices, while 31% see common ground between their own religion and Islam. And while a 49% plurality believes that the terrorists who attacked the United States were motivated primarily by their political beliefs, 30% see mainly religious motives behind the attacks and another 10% see a combination of religious and political factors.

The nationwide survey of 1,500 adults by the Pew Research Center, in collaboration with the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, finds broad agreement among all demographic and religious groups that religion now occupies a more important place in American life. Yet this dramatic shift has not been matched by an increase in attendance at religious services ­ nor is there much evidence that religion is playing a larger role in Americans’ personal lives at this time. Attendance stands at the same level as it did in March. More important, the number of Americans who say religion is very important to them personally stands at 61%, virtually the same level as eight months ago.

The survey also asked whether people agreed or disagreed with the following statement: “Some religious leaders have said that the terrorist attacks on the United States signal that God is no longer protecting the United States as much as in the past.” Members of all religions reject this idea. White evangelical Protestants are only somewhat less dismissive of this idea than are others — 63% in this group totally disagree, compared with 73% of the general public.

The public remains solidly behind U.S. military action in Afghanistan and the survey finds that the current war effort taps about as much potential moral support for war as exists among the public. Asked whether war is sometimes or never morally justified, 83% choose the former, which mirrors current support for military action against terrorism (85%). When asked an alternative version of the question, fewer (64%) say war is often morally justified. There is somewhat greater division over how the United States conducts military operations. More Americans (56%) say they worry that the United States doesn’t push hard enough to achieve victory than express concern that the U.S. does too little to avoid civilian casualties (25%).

Religion’s Influence Seen as Growing

The nearly eight-in-ten who see religion gaining influence in American life surpasses measures on this question dating back at least four decades. This figure has not been approached since 1957 when, in a Gallup survey, 69% said the influence of religion was increasing. Since then, the number who said religion was growing in importance has never exceeded 45%.

The change in opinion since March has been striking ­ in most demographic groups, the number of people who say that religion’s influence is growing has doubled. But while solid majorities of all groups now see religion growing in influence, there is a modest gender gap ­ 83% of women say religion is becoming more important, compared with 70% of men.

Despite the public’s overwhelming belief that religion has become more important for the nation, there is little evidence that many Americans who were not actively religious prior to the attacks have turned to religion in the wake of the crisis. Attendance at religious services is comparable to March levels ­ in both surveys roughly four-in-ten say they attend church once a week or more, a third say they attend less frequently, and a quarter report seldom or never attending religious services. About six-in-ten (61%) currently say religion plays a very important role in their lives, virtually unchanged from the 64% who said that in March.

Still, many people say that since the terror attacks they have become more actively religious, especially when it comes to prayer. Better than four-in-ten (44%) say they are praying more, although that represents a significant decline from 69% who reported praying more in the Pew Research Center survey conducted just after the attacks (Sept. 13-17). And 16% say they are attending religious services more now than prior to the attacks.

This apparent contradiction between long-term measures of religious observance, which have been remarkably stable, and the self-reported rise in activity since Sept. 11 is explained with closer examination of those Americans who are praying more and attending religious services more often. The evidence suggests that it is largely those already highly religious who are saying that they have increased their religious activity even further.

Of those who say religion is very important in their lives, 56% are praying more since the attacks, compared with 35% of those who say religion is only fairly important, and just 10% of those who say religion is not very important to them. And while 21% of those who are highly religious say they are attending church more, just 3% of those for whom religion is not very important say the same.

The events of Sept. 11 also have had an impact on how Americans view family life. Nearly four-in-ten (37%) say they are trying to spend more time with family this holiday season as a result of the attacks ­ and better than half (54%) of parents say they are making more of an effort to spend time with their children. More women than men stress an effort to spend extra time with family (41%-33%), and mothers are more likely than fathers to say they are trying harder to spend time with their children (59%-47%).