From its origin on the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century C.E., Islam has grown into a worldwide religion with more than 1.6 billion adherents – nearly a quarter of the world’s population. Today, Muslims live on all inhabited continents and embody a wide range of races, ethnicities and cultures. What beliefs and practices unite these diverse peoples into a single religious community, or ummah? And how do their religious convictions and observances vary?

This report by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life seeks to describe both the unity and the diversity of Islam around the globe. It is based on more than 38,000 face-to-face interviews conducted in over 80 languages with Muslims in 39 countries and territories that collectively are home to roughly two-thirds (67%) of all Muslims in the world. The survey includes every country that has a Muslim population of more than 10 million, except those (such as China, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria) where political sensitivities or security concerns prevented opinion research among Muslims.

Unity and diversity are themes that emerge naturally from the survey results. On what are often considered Islam’s articles of faith and “pillars” of practice, there is much commonality among Muslims around the world. But on other important questions, such as whether Islam is open to more than one correct interpretation or which groups should be considered part of the Muslim community, there are substantial differences of opinion. The survey also suggests that many Muslims do not see themselves as belonging to any particular sect: Fully a quarter of the Muslims surveyed identify themselves neither as Sunni nor as Shia but as “just a Muslim.”

 Graphic: Muslim Beliefs Around the Globe

Based on interviews with 1,033 Muslim Americans conducted this year (April 14-July 22) in English, Arabic, Farsi and Urdu, the wide-ranging report looks at Muslim Americans’ political and social attitudes; religious views and practices; experiences and difficulties faced after 9/11; views of Islamic extremism; views of US efforts at combating terrorism; and views of national conditions. In addition to updating trends from earlier Pew Research surveys, the report includes comparisons of Muslim Americans with the general public and with Muslims in other countries, as well as detailed demographic information.

Read the full report

See a slideshow of the report highlights

View an infographic of report highlights

Map: Controversies Over Mosques and Islamic Centers Across the U.S.

Controversies related to Muslim Americans — one sparked by a Florida pastor’s plans to burn the Koran and another by a proposal to build an Islamic community center blocks from Ground Zero — topped the news last week as the country marked the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Plans by Terry Jones, the pastor of a small church in Gainesville, Fla., to mark the Sept. 11 anniversary by burning the Muslim holy book sparked outrage and prompted condemnation by everyone from Gen. David Petraeus to Sarah Palin. Jones eventually relented, but the controversy, and other signs of anti-Muslim sentiment, represented the No. 2 story for the week of Sept. 6-12, filling 15% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Liberal talk show hosts on radio and cable took a particular interest in the topic.

When combined with the No. 4 story (4%), the furor over a planned Muslim community center and mosque near the World Trade Center site, the two stories accounted for nearly a fifth of the newshole last week, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index, which calculates the column inches and airtime devoted to stories in a broad sample of news media.

Indeed, attention to those hot-button issues concerning Islam almost completely overshadowed coverage of the Sept. 11 commemorations themselves, which accounted for only 2% of the newshole.

The sputtering economic recovery and proposals to revive it remained the single largest story of the week, accounting for 17% of the newshole. Proposals by President Obama to extend tax cuts for the middle class as well as spending more money on building roads and other infrastructure projects drove the coverage. Stubbornly high levels of unemployment and other economic news also generated headlines.

Closely tied to the economy are the political fortunes of Democrats and Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections, a subject that garnered 12% of the newshole as the No. 3 story last week. Driving the narrative were predictions that the Democrats will suffer at the polls and possibly lose control of one or both chambers of Congress.

Rounding out the top five news topics were stories related to the Obama administration. These included speculation that Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, might leave to run for mayor of Chicago in 2011, as well as discussions of Obama’s leadership. Those subjects represented 3% of the newshole.

Continue reading the full report at journalism.org.

Recent events such as the Fort Hood shootings and the arrest of five Muslim American students in Pakistan have raised questions about the threat of homegrown terrorism in the United States. However, the Pew Research Center’s comprehensive portrait of the Muslim American population suggests it is less likely to be a fertile breeding ground for terrorism than Muslim minority communities in other countries. Violent jihad is discordant with the values, outlook and attitudes of the vast majority of Muslim Americans, most of whom reject extremism.

A Middle Class, Mainstream Minority Group

As the title of Pew Research’s 2007 study suggests, Muslim Americans are “middle class and mostly mainstream.” Compared with their co-religionists in other Western societies, they are relatively well integrated into mainstream society. Unlike Western Europe’s Muslim populations, Muslims in the U.S. are generally as well-educated and financially well-off as the general population. Most (72%) say their communities are good or excellent places to live, and most believe in the American dream — 71% say that in the U.S., most people who want to get ahead can make it if they are willing to work hard.

When asked whether they think of themselves first as an American or as a Muslim, 47% of Muslims in the U.S. think of themselves first in terms of their religion, while 28% identify themselves first as Americans and 18% volunteer that they identify as both. At 46%, French Muslims are about equally as likely as those in the U.S. to think of themselves first as Muslim. However, Muslim Americans are less likely to identify primarily with their religion than are Muslims living in Britain, Germany, and Spain.

Primary identification with religious affiliation is not unique to Muslims. Religious identity is almost equally as high among American Christians, 42% of whom say they think of themselves first as Christian. About half (48%) of Christians in the U.S. identify first as Americans, while 7% volunteer that they identify both with their nationality and their religion.¹

Roughly six-in-ten Muslim Americans (62%) say that the quality of life for Muslim women in the U.S. is better than the quality of life for women in most Muslim countries, while 7% say it is worse, and 23% believe it is about the same. French Muslims are equally likely to think that life is better for Muslim women in their country, while in Britain, Germany and Spain, Muslims are somewhat less likely to hold this view.

Many Muslim Americans share the concerns of the broader population about Islamic extremism. Roughly three-quarters (76%) are very or somewhat concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism around the world, compared with 81% of the U.S. general population.² About six-in-ten Muslim Americans (61%) are also worried about the potential rise of Islamic extremism in the U.S., although this is lower than the level of concern among the general public (78%).³

Few Endorse Extremism

Very few Muslim Americans hold a positive opinion of al Qaeda — only 5% give the terrorist organization a favorable rating, while 68% express an unfavorable view, including 58% who describe their view as very unfavorable. About one-quarter (27%) decline to offer an opinion.

Support for suicide terrorism among Muslim Americans is similarly rare: 78% believe that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets to defend Islam from its enemies can never be justified, and another 5% say these types of attacks are rarely justified. Fewer than one-in-ten American Muslims say that suicide bombing is sometimes (7%) or often (1%) justified.

Over the course of the decade, the Pew Global Attitudes Project has asked this same question of Muslim populations around the world, and results show that Muslims in the U.S. are among the most likely to reject suicide bombing. Among the populations surveyed recently, opposition to suicide bombing is highest in Pakistan (87% say it is never justified) — a nation currently plagued by suicide bombings and violence by extremist groups. As recently as 2004, only 35% of Pakistani Muslims held this view. As Pew Global Attitudes surveys have documented, the growing rejection of extremism in Pakistan is part of a broader pattern in the Muslim world.

Most European Muslims surveyed agree that suicide attacks can never be justified. This view is especially prevalent in Germany, where 83% of the country’s largely Turkish Muslim community say that suicide attacks are not justifiable. Most Muslims in Turkey, Indonesia, Jordan, Israel and Egypt agree, while fewer than half take this position in Lebanon and Nigeria. Palestinians are the clear outlier on this issue — only 17% think violence against civilian targets can never be justified.

But Small Pockets of Support and Doubts About Sept. 11

Of course, although American Muslims largely reject extremist ideologies, results from the 2007 survey do reveal small pockets of support for extremism. And the survey found that younger Muslims in the U.S. are slightly more accepting of Islamic extremism than are older Muslims. Those under age 30 are more than twice as likely as those age 30 and older to believe that suicide bombings in the defense of Islam can often or sometimes be justified (15% vs. 6%). This pattern is consistent with findings from Europe — Muslims under age 30 in Britain, France, Germany and Spain are slightly more likely than those in older age groups to endorse suicide attacks.

The survey also finds that native-born African-American Muslims are less likely than other U.S. Muslims to condemn al Qaeda completely. Only 9% express a favorable view of the organization, but at the same time, just 36% give it a very unfavorable rating.

And fewer than half of Muslim Americans — just four-in-10 — accept the fact that groups of Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. Roughly a third (32%) express no opinion as to who was behind the attacks, while 28% flatly disbelieve that Arabs conducted the attacks. Fewer highly religious Muslim Americans believe that groups of Arabs carried out the attacks than do less religious Muslims. The survey also finds that those who say suicide bombings in defense of Islam can often or sometimes be justified are more disbelieving than others that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

<sub>1. Data for U.S. Christians from 2006 Pew Global Attitudes survey.
2. U.S. general public data from April 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
3. U.S. general public data from April 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.</sub>

The poll also finds that two-thirds of non-Muslims (65%) say that Islam and their own faith are either very different or somewhat different, while just 17% take the view that Islam and their own religion are somewhat or very similar. But Islam is not the only religion that Americans see as mostly different from their own. When asked about faiths other than their own, six-in-ten adults say Buddhism is mostly different, with similar numbers saying the same about Mormonism (59%) and Hinduism (57%).

By a smaller margin, Americans are also inclined to view Judaism and Catholicism as somewhat or very different from their own faith (47% different vs. 35% similar for Judaism, 49% different vs. 43% similar for Catholicism). Only when asked about Protestantism do perceived similarities outweigh perceived differences, with 44% of non-Protestants in the survey saying Protestantism and their own faith are similar and 38% saying they are different.

Results from the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, conducted Aug. 11-17 among 2,010 adults reached on both landlines and cell phones, reveal that high levels of perceived similarity with religious groups are associated with more favorable views of those groups. Those who see their own faith as similar to Catholicism, Judaism, Mormonism and Islam are significantly more likely than others to have favorable views of members of these groups.

Detailed questions about perceptions of Islam show that a plurality of the public (45%) says Islam is no more likely than other faiths to encourage violence among its believers; 38% take the opposite view, saying that Islam does encourage violence more than other faiths do. Views on this question have fluctuated in recent years, with the current findings showing that the view that Islam is connected with violence has declined since 2007, when 45% of the public said that Islam encourages violence more than other religions do.

Almost half of Americans (45%) say they personally know someone who is Muslim. Also, slim majorities of the public are able to correctly answer questions about the name Muslims use to refer to God (53%) and the name of Islam’s sacred text (52%), with four-in-ten (41%) correctly answering both “Allah” and “the Koran.” These results are consistent with recent years and show modest increases in Americans’ familiarity with Islam compared with the months following the 9/11 attacks. Those people who know a Muslim are less likely to see Islam as encouraging of violence; similarly, those who are most familiar with Islam and Muslims are most likely to express favorable views of Muslims and to see similarities between Islam and their own religion.

Continue reading the full report at pewforum.org.

Muslim Americans are a population of great interest to scholars, journalists and policy makers in the U.S. Yet because Muslims make up a very small percentage of the total U.S. public, it is extremely difficult to interview a large enough sample to provide a reliable picture of their views, experiences and demographic characteristics. This week the Muslim West Facts Project, a partnership between Gallup and the Coexist Foundation, released a survey of American Muslims. Like the Pew Research Center’s 2007 survey of Muslims in the U.S., “Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream,” the Gallup study is based on a nationally representative probability sample. But there are important differences in the methodological approach and findings of the two studies.

A principal difference between the studies is how much of the Muslim American population is covered by the study. The Pew Research study includes Muslim Americans who speak English, Arabic, Urdu and Farsi, while the Gallup study covers only those who speak English and Spanish. This difference in approach is critical because about two-thirds of American Muslims are foreign born, and a significant minority of them may not speak English well enough to complete an interview in that language. Based on the languages used in the interviews, Pew Research’s study estimates that at least 17% of Muslim Americans fall into this category.

In part because of this difference, the two studies reach significantly different conclusions about the racial composition, educational attainment and employment status of the population. Gallup estimates that more than one-in-three American Muslims (35%) are black, compared with Pew’s estimate of 24%. Gallup estimates that 40% of Muslim Americans have obtained a college degree; Pew estimates that 24% have done so. And Gallup estimates that more Muslims are currently employed than does Pew Research (70% vs. 57%).

On race, education and employment, Muslims interviewed in English by Pew Research are roughly similar to Muslims interviewed by Gallup. Muslims interviewed by Pew Research in Arabic, Urdu or Farsi, by contrast, exhibit very different characteristics than those interviewed in English. For instance, only 8% of Muslims interviewed in these languages describe their race as black, compared with 27% of Muslims interviewed by Pew Research in English and 35% of Muslims interviewed by Gallup. Only 14% of Muslims interviewed in these languages report having graduated from college, about half the number of college graduates among those interviewed by Pew Research in English and about one-third the number of Muslims interviewed by Gallup. And only 25% of those interviewed in Arabic, Urdu or Farsi are currently employed, which is less than half the employment rate seen among Muslims interviewed in English by Pew Research or Gallup.

Additionally, the two studies sought to learn different kinds of things about Muslim Americans and took very different approaches to finding and interviewing them. Pew’ Research’s questionnaire and sampling approach was tailored specifically to this population. In addition to questions about demographic characteristics, economic status and political behavior, the Pew Research interview also included a large number of questions about the experience of Muslims in the U.S. in the post-9/11 period, immigration, religious attitudes and customs specific to Islam, religious conversion, concern about Islamic extremism and attitudes about foreign policy.

By contrast, the Gallup study is based on responses given by Muslim respondents identified in the course of political, economic and health-tracking surveys of the general public conducted in 2008. Out of more than 319,000 interviews, 946 Muslim respondents were identified. Gallup’s study covered basic demographics, health, employment, economic status, political and civic engagement and community satisfaction, among other topics.

The Pew Research study used two sample sources to reach a broad cross-section of Muslim Americans. One involved re-contacting Muslim respondents identified in previous Pew Research Center interviews; this part of the sample is the most similar to Gallup’s, in that all telephone households had a roughly equal chance of being included in the sample. The second source was a new random-digit dial (RDD) sample divided into five strata. Four of these strata were based on the estimated density of the Muslim population in each county of the United States, with a disproportionate number of interviews conducted in counties estimated to have larger concentrations of Muslims. The fifth stratum consisted of a commercial list of approximately 450,000 households believed to include Muslims, based on an analysis of first and last names common among Muslims. The phone numbers associated with these households were matched against the RDD sample and the duplicate cases removed, which allows the list-based sample to be treated as a random stratum.

Pew Research offered respondents a modest monetary incentive for completing the interview, while Gallup respondents received no incentive. The incentive was offered largely because the Pew Research survey was very lengthy. The average length was more than 30 minutes, significantly longer than most national political surveys. The use of incentives in lengthy or complex surveys is quite common; among the many well-known studies that employ them are the National Immunization Survey, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumer Attitudes, the California Health Interview Survey and the National Survey of Family Growth.

One strength of the Gallup study is that it included interviews with cell-phone only respondents. The Pew Research study, by contrast, was conducted using landline phones only. This is important since it is likely that many recent immigrants rely only on a cell phone. Of course, some immigrants reached by cell phone may have been unable to complete an interview in English or Spanish. And it is important to note that some Muslim American immigrants speak languages used in neither survey.

Despite the differences in approach and some divergent findings, both studies share the same strength, namely, that they are each based on nationally representative, probability samples of American Muslims. This means that each study can provide estimates with a known degree of sampling error, which is the key for any sample survey that purports to be representative of some larger population. Because federal government surveys do not ask about religious affiliation or background, there is little information about this population from the Census or other large government studies. Thus both the Gallup and Pew Research studies, like those that are sure to follow, help increase our understanding of the Muslim community in the United States.

For more information, see the Pew Reseach Center report on Muslim Americans.