Research / Key polls
Research & data
What Pew’s surveys asked — and what they found
Polls are not scripture, and a single survey cannot settle a civic argument. They can, however, replace guesswork. The figures below are from Pew Research Center’s 2017 survey of 1,001 U.S. Muslim adults (January 23–May 2, 2017; average margin of error ±5.8 percentage points) and from later Pew reporting cited on the page.
American identity and the American dream
In 2017, 89% of U.S. Muslims said they were both proud to be American and proud to be Muslim. Fully 92% agreed with “I am proud to be an American,” and 97% with “I am proud to be Muslim.” Eight-in-ten said they were satisfied with the way things were going in their lives, and 70% said most people who want to get ahead can make it in America if they work hard.
At the same time, half said it had become harder to be Muslim in the United States in recent years, and 48% reported at least one of the specific forms of discrimination asked about in the prior 12 months. A similar share, 49%, said someone had expressed support for them because of their religion in the past year.
Concern about extremism
Pew found that U.S. Muslims largely shared — and in some respects exceeded — the general public’s concern about religious extremism. Eight-in-ten Muslims (82%) said they were very concerned (66%) or somewhat concerned (16%) about extremism in the name of Islam around the world, similar to 83% of the U.S. general public, though Muslims were more likely to be very concerned (66% vs. 49%). About seven-in-ten Muslims, and a similar share of Americans overall, were concerned about extremism in the name of Islam in the United States, including 49% of U.S. Muslims who were very concerned about domestic extremism.
Nearly three-quarters of U.S. Muslims (73%) said there was little or no support for extremism among American Muslims, while about one-in-six said there was a “fair amount” (11%) or a “great deal” (6%). The general public was more divided: 54% saw little or no support, and 35% saw at least a fair amount, including 11% who saw a “great deal.”
Views on violence against civilians
When Pew asked whether targeting and killing civilians can be justified to further a political, social, or religious cause, 84% of U.S. Muslims said such tactics can rarely (8%) or never (76%) be justified, while 12% said they can sometimes (7%) or often (5%) be justified. Muslims were more likely than the U.S. public as a whole to say such tactics are never justifiable (76% vs. 59%). The share saying such tactics are often justified (5% of Muslims, 3% of the public) was not a statistically significant difference, Pew reported.
Pew also warned readers not to treat every “justified” answer as a statement about terrorism. In follow-up interviews, some respondents — Muslim and non-Muslim — who said violence against civilians can sometimes or often be justified said they had in mind situations such as military action or self-defense. The 12% and 5% figures still matter as a minority view; they should be cited with that caveat attached.
Islam and democracy
Two-thirds of Muslims (65%) said they do not think there is a natural conflict between the teachings of Islam and democracy, while three-in-ten said there is an inherent conflict. Among those who saw a conflict, open-ended explanations varied: some pointed to incompatible principles, others to public misunderstanding or the effects of terrorism, and others to a tension between democracy and religion in general.
These findings cut against two crude stories: that Muslim Americans are uniformly alienated from the American constitutional order, and that questions about doctrine, law, and extremism are imaginary. Public debate should be able to hold both points at once.