Muslim Americans are more satisfied with their life in the United States than the American public at large, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday.
Eighty-two percent of Muslim Americans said they were satisfied with the way their life is going, compared to 75 percent of the American public. Muslim Americans are also significantly more satisfied with the direction the country is going in than Americans generally, 56 percent to 23 percent.
Though only 46 percent of Americans said they supported President Obama in a June Pew Poll, 76 percent of Muslim Americans say they approve of the president, which is significantly higher than the 15 percent that supported President Bush in a Pew poll taken in 2007.
Muslim Americans also overwhelmingly believe that the Democratic Party is friendlier to Muslim Americans than the Republican Party. Only 7 percent said they thought the Democratic Party was unfriendly toward Muslim Americans, while 48 percent said the Republican Party was unfriendly.
Politically, Muslim Americans seem to overwhelmingly support a bigger government with more services (68 percent), are more likely to support democracy in the Middle East at the expense of stability than the American public at large (44 percent to 37 percent), less likely to think American military action in Afghanistan was a wise after 9/11 than the American public at large (38 percent to 57 percent), and less likely to think homosexuality should be accepted by society than the public at a large (39 percent to 58 percent).
Fifty-six percent of those surveyed said that Muslims coming to the United States are more interested in adopting American customs than being distinct. American Muslims are also more likely to believe than the general American public that you can get ahead in the U.S. if you are just willing to work hard (74 percent to 62 percent). (RELATED: With CIA help, NYPD moves covertly in Muslim areas)
While 49 percent of Muslim Americans said that either negative views about Muslims or discrimination were the greatest problem facing them in America, 80 percent of respondents said the American public at large was either friendly toward Muslim Americans or neutral. Sixty-six percent of Muslims Americans said that the quality of life in America is better than the quality of life in most Muslim countries, with only 8 percent indicating it is worse.
Muslim Americans are more likely than the general American population to be “very” concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism around the world (42 percent to 37 percent), though slightly less concerned than the general American population about the possible rise of Islamic extremism in the U.S. Sixty-percent of Muslim Americans said they were either “very” or “somewhat” concerned compared to 66 percent of the American public at large.
Asked whether they “think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies,” American Muslims were more likely than Muslims in other countries Pew surveyed, other than Pakistan, to say that such attacks are never justified. Eighty-one percent said such attacks were “never justified,” while five percent they were “rarely” justified, seven percent said they were “sometimes” justified, and one percent said they were “often” justified.
Forty-eight percent of Muslims Americans said that they don’t believe that American Muslim leaders in the U.S. have done enough to speak out against Islamic extremists.
The Pew survey interviewed 1,033 Muslim Americans from April 14 to July 22 in English, Arabic, Farsi and Urdu. The survey’s margin of error is plus or minus 5 percent.
Based on data collected from the survey, Pew estimates that there are between 1.8 million and 2.75 million Muslims living in the United States. Most are first generation immigrants, says Pew, with 45 percent having arrived to the U.S. in the last two decades.
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