.

Conclusions and Recommendations

In summary, our research generated several key insights that help to unpack the contours of Islamophobia within the Latino community. We identified several themes that suggest why this minoritized racial and ethnic group has lower levels of Islamophobia.

1. Theme 1: Common experiences with discrimination
2. Theme 2: Partaking the immigrant experience and the American dream 
3. Theme 3: Interactions with American Muslims
4. Theme 4: Religion and religiosity as a point of unity

We also identified several themes regarding the persistence of Islamophobia among Latinos.

1. Theme 1: Misogyny
   1. Perceptions that Muslim women are mistreated by Muslim men
   2. Perceptions that Islam is patriarchal
   3. Perceived differences between Muslim women and Catholic/Christian women
   4. Comparisons to machismo culture
2. Theme 2: The persistence of negative stereotypes of Muslims as violent or terrorists
3. Theme 3: Religion and religiosity as a point of difference

Finally, our research explored whether providing information to Latinos about Islam, why women might choose to wear a hijab, and how conversation with a Latina Muslim could work to mitigate Islamophobia or misconceptions about American Muslims and Islam. We found that these interventions were successful in changing Latinos’ attitudes about Muslims and Islam.

Conclusions and Recommendations

In summary, our research generated several key insights that help to unpack the contours of Islamophobia within the Latino community. We identified several themes that suggest why this minoritized racial and ethnic group has lower levels of Islamophobia.

1. Theme 1: Common experiences with discrimination
2. Theme 2: Partaking the immigrant experience and the American dream 
3. Theme 3: Interactions with American Muslims
4. Theme 4: Religion and religiosity as a point of unity

We also identified several themes regarding the persistence of Islamophobia among Latinos.

1. Theme 1: Misogyny
   1. Perceptions that Muslim women are mistreated by Muslim men
   2. Perceptions that Islam is patriarchal
   3. Perceived differences between Muslim women and Catholic/Christian women
   4. Comparisons to machismo culture
2. Theme 2: The persistence of negative stereotypes of Muslims as violent or terrorists
3. Theme 3: Religion and religiosity as a point of difference

Finally, our research explored whether providing information to Latinos about Islam, why women might choose to wear a hijab, and how conversation with a Latina Muslim could work to mitigate Islamophobia or misconceptions about American Muslims and Islam. We found that these interventions were successful in changing Latinos’ attitudes about Muslims and Islam.

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Recommendations

In light of our findings, we offer the following recommendations to stakeholders and researchers, which include expanding outreach to the Latino community to increase knowledge about Islam and American Muslims and to increase interactions between these groups, developing additional measures to understand the relationship between misogyny and Islamophobia, and exploring the immigrant experience as a factor that reduces Islamophobia by conducting research with other immigrant groups in the United States.

Improving outreach to the Latino community

A consistent finding across our in-depth interviews and focus group is that many Latinos had limited knowledge about Islam and Muslims. One potential explanation for lower levels of Islamophobia among this group might be related to the fact that Latinos do not have crystallized or deeply entrenched views about American Muslims. Such an explanation would be consistent with our findings that Latinos were more likely to frame their attitudes about American Muslims in general rather than specific terms as well as draw heavily on media portrayals and common stereotypes about Muslims. Considering this finding, we recommend increased outreach to the Latino community to improve their knowledge about and interactions with American Muslims. Increased exposure and interactions should facilitate the crystallization of Latinos’ attitudes about American Muslims and attenuate prejudice. 

We further view this approach as important for developing deeper ties with the Latino community. As explained earlier in this report, our focus group participants were receptive to receiving new information when they were exposed to a video clip that discussed the pillars of Islam. For those who were religious or familiar with Christianity and Catholicism, many noted the parallels and that they did not know this information. Some participants expressed that this had influenced them to think differently about Islam and American Muslims. While we are unable to determine whether attitude change persisted beyond the focus group setting, research on prejudice and discrimination has often found the continued exposure and interaction between groups can facilitate long-term attitude change, especially when there are shared identity bonds between them such as religious similarities. The dynamic in our final focus group also demonstrated this point. When given the opportunity to interact with a Latina Muslim, participants were engaged, open-minded, and curious to learn more about her life after converting to Islam. This suggests that increasing engagement within the Latino community is a useful step forward in overcoming negative stereotypes and Islamophobia. 

As part of outreach efforts, we recommend that organizations, researchers, and stakeholders work to educate Latinos about the diversity of the American Muslim community. More than half of American Muslims are born in the United States and many are Black or African American. The participants in this research connected the American Muslim experience to shared status between Latinos and Muslims as immigrant groups—even though many Latinos and Muslims are also born in the United States. Relatedly, the participants generally did not make explicit references to Black or Asian Muslim groups or the diversity of the Muslim community. Instead, American Muslims were narrowly perceived to be from the Middle East and often respondents talked about Muslims in the Middle East rather than American Muslims. As interactions between Muslims and Latinos increase, there is an opportunity to highlight the diversity of American Muslim communities.

Developing effective educational materials and activities 

The findings in this research have implications for the development of effective educational materials and activities. When engaging in outreach to Latino communities, organizations should create educational materials that emphasize how Latinos and American Muslims share common values, including the importance of family, being hardworking, aspiring for the American dream, and devotion of faith. Latinos’ perceptions of these shared values were factors that influenced positive attitudes about American Muslims and are likely to resonate in future efforts to deepen ties within Latino communities. Our research found that video educational materials were effective at shifting Latinos attitudes about Islam as well as about Muslim women who choose to wear a hijab. Therefore, we recommend the development of video materials as a scalable option for future outreach. All educational materials should be produced in Spanish and English language. 

 Educational materials should not only be produced in a video format. This research also found that interpersonal interactions between Latinos and American Muslims were associated with lower Islamophobia. Although not as scalable as producing video materials, creating opportunities for Latinos and American Muslims to interact with and learn from one another can help deepen ties and build understanding in Latino communities. Researchers and organizations should be cognizant of potential challenges when designing activities that facilitate interpersonal interactions. The influence of misogyny on Islamophobia, for example, suggests that the messenger in educational content and activities will be important. We found that there was strong resonance among non-Muslim Latinas who interacted with a Latina Muslim to learn about why some women choose to wear a hijab. Since Latinas and Latinos had similarly gendered attitudes about American Muslims and Islam, Latina Muslims might be particularly effective messengers in future content. Latino Muslims may also be effective messengers due to shared racial and ethnic group identity, but our research cannot speak directly to whether that is the case. Relatedly, this research suggests that activities centered around perceived commonalities between Latinos and American Muslims could be particularly effective. For example, an activity organized around a tradition shared by Islam and Christianity could be an opportunity to increase interpersonal interactions while simultaneously tapping into a common devotion of faith. Other research on engagement with Latino communities finds that churches play a key role in civic engagement for Latinos and, therefore, we anticipate that activities centering similarly shared religious values would be effective. Although shared religious values are important, researchers and organizations should consider that educational materials and activities should be contextually specific and remember that not all Latinos are Catholic or religious. Thus, a multi-pronged outreach effort that considers religion as one commonality among many is more likely to be successful than one that is only about religion or faith.  

 Our research also identified several challenges related to lowering Islamophobia. Among Latinos, Islamophobia persists due to the influence of misogyny and negative stereotypes of Muslims as violent and Islam as ideologically extreme. Educational materials and outreach will need to address these negative stereotypes. One way to do so is to emphasize commonalities that are related to negative portrayals of Latinos and American Muslims. Participants in our research, for example, viewed the negative portrayal of Muslims in media as similar to the negative portrayal of Latinos. As a result, educational materials or outreach that make this commonality salient might be more likely to resonate with Latinos and help reduce prejudice. Likewise, many participants in our research perceived the gender dynamics of machismo culture as similar to gender dynamics within Islam and Muslim communities. Although perceiving these cultural similarities, there was also a perception that Latino culture was more progressive. Therefore, we recommend designing educational materials and activities that lead people to reflect on their own experiences dealing with negative stereotypes and experiences to build mutual understanding about the experiences of American Muslims. Similar to the above, we note that Muslim women may be particularly effective at communicating about misperceptions regarding gender dynamics and Islam. 

FURTHER RESEARCH

Measuring how perceptions of misogyny influence Islamophobia 

Our findings demonstrated how perceptions of misogyny were central to the persistence of Islamophobia despite Latinos’ less prejudicial attitudes relative to other racial groups in the United States. This evidence suggests a need to further understand how the contours of misogyny manifest in persistence of Islamophobia among other racial groups. Since our findings are drawn from a qualitative analysis, a useful next step would be to develop quantitative measures that capture the different ways that perceptions of misogyny shaped Islamophobia. We recommend that future research develop a scale of questions to examine the extent to which these attitudes are widespread and which among them have a greater impact on the persistence of Islamophobia. The ability to conduct analyses across groups would help identify whether the patterns observed in this study are general factors or whether different racial groups link perceptions of misogyny to Islam and American Muslims in different ways.

Does the immigrant experience mitigate Islamophobia among other groups?

Finally, we suggest that future research should probe how aspirations for the American dream and the immigrant experience in the United States lead to lower levels of Islamophobia among immigrant groups. Since Asian Americans are the fastest growing immigrant group in the United States, they would be particularly well-suited to further explore this relationship. If similar attitudes are identified among Asian Americans, our findings would suggest that this is a general mechanism that reduces Islamophobia among immigrant groups rather than specific to the Latino community. 

There are also differences between the Latino and Asian communities that suggest this research could yield fruitful insights. There are millions of Asians around the world who are Muslim. This suggests that Asian Americans may have more knowledge about and exposure to Muslim culture and Islam, which would allow for comparison between immigrant groups that have varying levels of knowledge and exposure. These differences could help researchers further identify the factors that shape the development and persistence of Islamophobia.

Methodology

ISPU partnered with researchers from Latino Decisions, a research organization specializing in the views of the U.S. Latino community, to conduct a two-stage study about Latinos’ views of American Muslims. The first stage consisted of nine in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Latinos, including two Latino Muslims. The second stage consisted of nine focus groups. The in-depth interviews (IDIs) were conducted between December 2022 and January 2023. The one-on-one interviews explored potential reasons why Latinos have lower levels of Islamophobia relative to other racial and ethnic groups in the United States. The interviews covered topics including experiences interacting with people from different backgrounds, experiences with and perceptions of discrimination, commonalities with American Muslims, and current political issues. Researchers used core themes from the IDIs to inform the questions asked during the focus groups. 

The nine focus groups were conducted between April and May 2023. There were five to seven participants per focus group. During the initial eight focus groups, one group was all men, one group was all women, and six were mixed gender. Two focus groups were conducted in Spanish. The focus groups covered the following topics: experiences interacting with people from different backgrounds, portrayals of Muslims and Latinos in the media, knowledge of Islam, commonalities between Latinos and Muslims, experiences with and perceptions of discrimination, and perceptions of Muslim women who wear a hijab. During the focus groups, participants were shown a short video about Islam to determine whether providing Latinos with information about Islam influenced their perception of American Muslims.  

After preliminary analysis of data from the eight focus groups, an additional focus group of women was convened to further probe the persistence of misogyny in Latinos’ attitudes about American Muslims. Participants discussed their previous interactions with American Muslims, knowledge of Islam, experiences with perceptions of discrimination, and their perception of Muslim women who wear a hijab. The focus group included the same video about Islam as well as a second video clip about why Muslim women might choose to wear a hijab. After seeing both videos, participants discussed whether the video affected their opinions. The additional focus group concluded with a 30-minute discussion with a Latina Muslim. 

Methodological approach and sample representativeness

One strength of conducting qualitative analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interviews and focus groups is the ability to generate contextually rich insights about the foundations of Latinos’ views of American Muslims. While our previous quantitative research identified broad, generalizable trends about Islamophobia, quantitative methodologies are less suitable for unpacking the contextual content that shapes Latinos’ attitudes toward American Muslims. To overcome this methodological issue, this research uses an inductive approach that identifies thematic contexts and mechanisms that help explain why we observe lower levels of Islamophobia among Latinos as well as its persistence. 

The tradeoff between these methodologies had implications for the recruitment of participants in this research. The results in this report are not generated from a nationally representative sample of Latinos. Although our sample is not nationally representative, we recruited a diverse sample based on key demographic characteristics that our previous research identified as factors correlated with Islamophobia and that other research identified as important correlates with Latinos’ attitudes. These factors include gender, ethnicity, age, religion, partisanship, and where participants live. Table 1 below summarizes our interview and focus group samples based on these key demographic characteristics.

The full study methodology and tables are available here.

Endnotes

¹https://www.ispu.org/american-muslim-poll-2019-predicting-and-preventing-islamophobia/#II

² In some instances, the quotes we cite as evidence have been corrected for grammatical errors and issues. Since people speak differently than they write and participants were articulating thoughts and ideas, their statements in the transcripts were sometimes less coherent as they talked through complex thoughts. Interviews conducted in Spanish were also transcribed into English and some discrepancies were related to language differences. As a result, research analysts with Latino Decisions reviewed the transcripts and videos to make determinations about how to clarify any errors or issues while maintaining the authenticity of the participants’ statements.  All original interview and focus group recordings and transcripts have been archived by Latino Decisions. 

³https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/RHI725222

⁴https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/more-hispanics-converting-to-islam/

⁵https://www.ispu.org/american-muslim-poll-2019-predicting-and-preventing-islamophobia/#II

⁶ In some instances, the quotes we cite as evidence have been corrected for grammatical errors and issues. Since people speak differently than they write and participants were articulating thoughts and ideas, their statements in the transcripts were sometimes less coherent as they talked through complex thoughts. Interviews conducted in Spanish were also transcribed into English and some discrepancies were related to language differences. As a result, research analysts with Latino Decisions reviewed the transcripts and videos to make determinations about how to clarify any errors or issues while maintaining the authenticity of the participants’ statements.  All original interview and focus group recordings and transcripts have been archived by Latino Decisions.

⁷ Allport, Gordon. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.; Abrams, Jessica R., Karen J. McGaughey, and Hannah Haghighat. 2018. “Attitudes toward Muslims: A Test of the Parasocial Contact Hypothesis and Contact Theory.” Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 47 (4): 276–92. doi:10.1080/17475759.2018.1443968.

⁸ https://www.ispu.org/islamophobia-index/

⁹https://pillarsfund.org/content/uploads/2021/06/Missing-Maligned-in-Film-FINAL.pdf

¹⁰https://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/aii-study-muslim-erased-or-extremists-20220901.pdf

¹¹https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/08/09/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/

¹² We break down national heritage by Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Dominican because they are the three largest ethnic groups according to the U.S. Census. Other countries represented in our sample include Peru (7), Venezuela (5), Colombia (2), Costa Rica (2), Panama (2), Chile (1), Guatemala (1), Ecuador (1), Honduras (1), Uruguay (1), and Paraguay (1).

¹³ Non-denominational was a self-reported, written answer. As a result, we’re unable to determine whether they are Protestant but non-denominational, religious but not a particular religion, or Christian but non-denominational.