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Recommendations

Based on the research presented, we offer the following recommendations to a variety of stakeholders in a position to address some of the greatest challenges identified facing American Muslim communities.

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Muslim Community Leaders:

• • Direct GOTV messaging toward Muslim women and young people as they are less likely to plan to vote in the midterm election.
  • Educate American Muslim voters about how to respond when facing obstacles to voting.
  • Recognize internalized Islamophobia as a major challenge facing young Muslims and integrate accurate information about the community into educational content.
  • Address Muslim mental health challenges with greater awareness and resource allocation.
  • Educate community members to report institutional Islamophobia and bullying to the relevant authorities.
  • Promote and facilitate careers in media and mental health to young people.
  • Engage in intra-Muslim conversations about race and racial healing.

Interfaith Leaders/Allies:

• • Seek to partner with Muslim organizations and leaders on issues of collective importance (i.e., climate change, public health, etc.).
  • Include anti-Islamophobia content in your inclusion and diversity training, policies, and hiring practices.
  • Familiarize your networks with manifestations (and roots) of Islamophobia.
  • Recognize Islamophobia as both individual and institutional.

Social Media Companies:

• • Engage Muslim communities in a review of platform community norms and the application of policies toward Muslim users.
  • Review anti-bullying safeguards from a religious-discrimination informed lens.
  • Consider applying ‘Misinformation’ warnings to anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and false claims.
  • Include anti-Islamophobia content in your inclusion and diversity training, policies, and hiring practices.

Educators:

• • Include anti-Islamophobia content in your inclusion and diversity training of staff and administrators.
  • Teach about the contributions of diverse communities, especially those of the children in your classroom.
  • Discuss bullying in your classroom, what it sounds like, and how bystanders can stand up to bullies, including online.
  • Explore your own unintended bias and educate yourself about the children under your care.
  • Provide a concrete way to address bullying by adults.

Media Professionals:

• • Equip your news or writers’ room with resources to portray Muslim communities accurately and creatively, keeping in mind the impact of trope-perpetuating media on Muslim self-concept and public acceptance of prejudiced and anti-democratic policies.
  • Recruit and hire more Muslim journalists, editors, writers, and producers.
  • Explore your own unintended bias and educate yourself about the communities about whom you tell stories.
  • Include anti-Islamophobia content in your newsroom and staff inclusion and diversity training and initiatives.

Methodology

SSRS conducted a survey of Muslims, Jews, and the general population for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding from February 22 through March 21, 2022. The study investigated the opinions of Muslims, Jews, and the general population regarding politics, important issues facing the country, faith customs, and religious discrimination.

For the survey, SSRS interviewed 807 Muslim adults, 351 Jewish adults, and 1,001 adults from the general population. A total of 2,159 respondents were surveyed. This report details the methodological components of the study: sample design, questionnaire design, programming, field operations, data processing, and weighting. The interviews were completed by phone and on the web. Among Muslim respondents, 214 interviews were completed over the phone and 593 were completed via web panels. Seventy-seven were completed via the SSRS probability panel and 516 were completed via a non-probability panel. Among Jewish respondents, 315 interviews were completed over the phone and 36 were completed via the SSRS probability web panel. A total of 940 interviews were completed with general population adults via the SSRS probability web panel and 61 by phone with non-internet respondents. Non-internet respondents are respondents who do not use the internet and do not have access to the internet.

The sampling procedures were designed to efficiently reach the target populations of interest. The sample sources are listed below:

• • Telephone Sample:
    • Prescreened Muslim households from the SSRS weekly national telephone omnibus survey from years 2014-2022.
    • Prescreened Jewish households from the SSRS weekly national telephone omnibus survey from years 2019-2022.
    • Prescreened non-internet households from the SSRS weekly national telephone omnibus survey from years 2021-2022 (in order to fully represent the general population, including the non-internet).
  • Web Sample:
    • SSRS Opinion Panel, SSRS’s probability-based panel, was used to sample Muslim, Jewish, and general population respondents. Among the general population sample, we also oversampled Catholics and white Evangelicals in the panel to achieve a minimum of 200 completes in each religious group.
    • Non-probability online panel sample was used for additional Muslim respondents.

In total, 330 interviews were completed via cell phones, 260 via landline phones, and 1,569 via web survey. Table 1 summarizes the total number of interviews by sample type, religious affiliation/general population, and sampling frame.

The general population sample included respondents who were of Muslim or Jewish religion. These Muslim and Jewish respondents are not included in the counts shown here but are included in the final data of all Muslim and all Jewish respondents. Combined with the general population respondents, the total number of Muslim respondents is 814 and the total number of Jewish respondents is 364.

The questionnaire was developed by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding in consultation with the SSRS project team. Prior to the field period, SSRS programmed the study into our data collection platform, Confirmit, for both the phone/Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) and web portions of the study. Extensive checking of the programs was conducted to ensure that skip patterns and sample splits followed the design of the questionnaire.

Survey data were weighted to: 1) adjust for the fact that not all survey respondents were selected with the same probability, and 2) account for non-response across known demographic parameters for the Jewish and Muslim adult populations. Weighting procedures accounted for key demographic variables including age, race, gender, region, education, marital status, number of adults in the household, voter registration, phone usage, and political party identification. The survey has a margin of error at a 95% confidence level of Muslims ±4.9% and Jews ±8.2%.

The study was weighted to provide nationally representative and projectable estimates of the adult population 18 years of age and older. The weighting process takes into account the disproportionate probabilities of household and respondent selection due to the number of separate telephone landlines and cell phones answered by respondents and their households, as well as the probability associated with the random selection of an individual household member. The survey has a margin of error at a 95% confidence level of the general population ±4.2%. All statistically significant findings in this report are based on a 95% confidence interval.