The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) has released the “American Muslim Poll 2019”, its fourth annual poll in which different religious groups, and those that consider themselves non-affiliated, are surveyed in order to compare attitudes. These religious groups are Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Protestants and white Evangelicals. ISPU places the Poll in the context of record breaking voter turnout and the election of a diverse new class in the 2018 midterm elections, the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the travel ban, and the longest ever government shutdown.

ISPU have, created in partnership with Georgetown University’s “The Bridge Initiative”, used an “Islamophobia Index (II), in which it has selected five negative stereotypes that have been linked with a greater acceptances for anti-Muslim policies. It then measures the level of public endorsement of these negative stereotypes, to provide a evidence-based way to predict Islamophobia. The Index calculated levels of agreement with these five statements: That Muslims living in the United States are more prone to violence than others; that they discriminate against women; that they are hostile to the United States; that they are less civilized than other people; and that they are partially responsible for acts of violence carried out by other Muslims.  The poll found that the level of public endorsement of these five negative stereotypes, and therefore the score of Islamophobia among the general public went up from 24 in 2018 to 28 in 2019.

Aside from Muslims, the faith groups scoring the lowest are Jews. The Poll found that 53% of Jews report having positive views of Muslims. White Evangelicals scored highest on the index (35), with 44% holding unfavorable opinions, compared to the 20% who held favorable opinions.

Read the full report here.

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