FiveThirtyEight: American Muslims Are A Diverse Group With Changing Views

American Muslims are also ideologically diverse. A plurality identify as moderate, with around 30 percent identifying as liberal and about 20 percent identifying as conservative. However, a large majority of Muslims in the U.S. prefer the Democratic Party, and that hasn’t changed since the 2007 Pew survey of Muslim Americans, the first in this series. In the 2016 presidential election, 78 percent of Muslim American voters said they voted for Hillary Clinton, which is a much lower share than the 92 percent who said they voted for Barack Obama in 2008.4

The Republican Party’s reputation among American Muslims seems to have deteriorated in recent years. According to the Pew survey, 59 percent of American Muslims believe the GOP is unfriendly toward Muslims; that’s an increase of more than 10 percentage points since 2011 — when Pew’s second survey in this series was done.5 Nearly three-quarters perceive President Trump to be unfriendly toward Muslim Americans, and 68 percent said he makes them feel worried. [...]

Another notable shift that the 2017 survey found was an increase in the share of American Muslims who say that homosexuality should be accepted by society, reflecting broader trends in the U.S. population as a whole. This change in attitude was present in almost every subgroup of American Muslims, not just the younger generation. [...]

Media coverage might contribute to the perception problem. A recent study by Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy found that in reports with Muslim protagonists on three major national TV news networks, Muslim voices were rarely heard. It also found that news coverage about Muslims is often about terrorism and war. According to the Pew survey, 60 percent of American Muslims and 53 percent of the public agree that the media covers Islam and Muslims unfairly. Rayyan Najeeb, 26, who attended the Islamic Society of North America convention, said the media frequently failed to distinguish between the views of Muslims who live elsewhere in the world and the views of American Muslims. Najeeb said he appreciated that surveys like Pew’s give American Muslims the opportunity to speak for themselves: “It really counteracts a lot of the terrorist-next-door type of thinking … and a lot of the fear-mongering that has been happening in the news.”

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