Understanding what Islamophobia is, how it operates, and why naming it accurately matters for every community.
The term Islamophobia has become the primary term that encapsulates discrimination and racism affecting many socially marginalized groups, especially Muslims. The term has a history that dates back to the early twentieth century, although the anti-Muslim racism it describes existed well before this. In 1997, the Runnymede Trust, a race equality think tank in the United Kingdom, released a report entitled Islamophobia: A Threat to Us All. The report provided a definition of Islamophobia and a series of recommendations to British policy makers and stakeholders. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Runnymede’s original definition of Islamophobia was picked up by several scholars to describe the immediate backlash that Muslims were experiencing in the United States and globally.
In the decades since, however, several scholars and advocacy organizations found issues with that definition, which defined Islamophobia as an irrational and unfounded hostility toward Islam. Thus, academicians have advanced the term and redefined it to increase understanding and theorize the process by which Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim encounter bias, hate, discrimination, and violence both within society’s structures and in interpersonal interactions.
The Bridge Initiative, a multi-year research project on Islamophobia out of Georgetown University, defines Islamophobia as “an extreme fear of and hostility toward Islam and Muslims which often leads to hate speech, hate crimes, as well as social and political discrimination.” Sociology professor Erik Love convincingly argues that Islamophobia is not just an irrational fear of Islam, as the original Runnymede definition had indicated, but a form of racism, where Muslims experience discrimination like other racial groups historically have because of their religious identity. Law professor Sahar Aziz pays special attention to the ways that the state participates in perpetuating discrimination against Muslims. Dr. Maha Hilal notes that it is important to think about how anti-Muslim bias intersects with one’s other racialized identities, such as race, ethnicity, and nationality. Runnymede Trust, following these critiques and the publication of scholarship that advanced the connection between Islamophobia and racism, published an updated report in 2017 that emphasized the term “anti-Muslim racism” to redefine Islamophobia.
Islamophobia is a form of discrimination, bias, and racism against Muslims — and consequently those who appear to be Muslim — that relies on stereotypes of Muslims and Islam that can result in their unequal treatment.
Muslims are the most racially and ethnically diverse religious group in the U.S., with 28% identifying as Black, 24% as Asian, 20% as white, and 12% as Arab. Therefore, the intersection of one’s religious identity and racial/ethnic one are important to note when understanding Islamophobia. According to ISPU, Islamophobia is a form of discrimination, bias, and racism against Muslims and consequently those who appear to be Muslim that relies on stereotypes of Muslims and Islam that can result in their unequal treatment. Islamophobia is structural and can be seen in American social structures, laws and policies, media narratives, and ideologies. It also exists in interpersonal interactions between individuals that result in the unjust treatment of Muslims and those misidentified as Muslims in society.
It is important to note that Islamophobia has had an impact on groups that are not Muslim, like Sikhs who have been mistaken as Muslims and consequently exposed to violence and discrimination. But it is not just those who are misidentified as Muslim who are impacted by Islamophobia. The response to 9/11 greatly altered American immigration laws and policies, which in turn had a significant impact on Latinos.
This toolkit uses the term Islamophobia because it has become the most frequently used word among advocacy groups, religious organizations, and scholars. But there are also debates about the use of this term emerging both in academia and in social justice spaces. There are many limits to this term and its definition.
First, Selod, Islam, and Garner find that the use of “phobia” in the term participates in associating anti-Muslim racism and bigotry with mental health issues. This language also vilifies mental health issues by making this association. The other major critique of the term is that it inherently ignores the intersections of race and ethnicity with religious-based discrimination and racism. For example, Husain notes that Islamophobia is conceptualized in a way that does not accurately capture the entirety of the experiences of African American and Black Muslims in the U.S., as it relies on immigrant Muslim experiences. Thus, the term as used by many may exclude the experiences of roughly one fourth of the American Muslim population.
Moreover, Islamophobia affects individuals and groups who are not Muslim, due to stereotypical associations between physical appearance (race) and religion. The term also implies that educating oneself about Islam would be a solution to eradicating Islamophobia, ignoring how embedded it is in our social structures resulting in limited solutions. Finally, religion has always been part and parcel of the history of race and racism globally. Thus, anti-Muslim racism is not new but something that has been a part of the history of racism. While we use the term Islamophobia, we work to address some of the critiques of this term in the definition provided in this toolkit.
There is a long history of stereotyping Muslims that dates back centuries. Sylviane Diouf explains in her book Servants of Allah that Islam first came to the U. S. via the system of slavery beginning in the 1600s, and during this time, many enslaved Muslims were forced to convert to Christianity. Edward Said notes in his 1979 book, Orientalism, that the present-day social construction of stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims dates back to the history of colonialism. They were marked as barbaric, violent, and misogynistic, which helped justify Europe’s invasion of Arab countries. While Said referenced European and American texts dating back centuries, in some ways, not much has changed in the current century.
Today, stereotypes of Muslims often stem from the preconceived notion that they are all foreigners in the U.S. Muslims are a racially and ethnically diverse population in the U.S., with more than a quarter identifying as African American, yet images of Muslims as terrorists are prominent in American culture. Jack Shaheen highlights in his 2003 study, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, the ways that Arabs have been stereotyped in American popular culture since the earliest Hollywood films as violent, greedy, and misogynistic. In similar ways, within the ongoing U.S. interventions in Iran, Syria, and beyond, we see the dehumanization of Muslims. They are often represented in the media as potential terrorists, violent threats, anti-American, anti-modern, and misogynistic. Stereotypes of Muslims are gendered, with Muslim men being marked as the ones more likely to commit violent acts and Muslim women shown as oppressed and as those who transgress Western cultural norms, like feminism. ISPU has been able to measure the impact of Islamophobic stereotypes through the Islamophobia Index.
The National American Islamophobia Index was developed in 2018 by ISPU scholars in partnership with Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative to measure anti-Muslim attitudes among faith and non-faith groups in America. The index has been included in the American Muslim Poll since 2018 and provides a standardized measure of how much the public endorses negative stereotypes about Muslims in the U. S.
The Islamophobia Index uses the following five items to create a score that ranges from 0 to 100. This metric is used to determine where individuals fall on the Islamophobia scale. Respondents indicate their level of agreement (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) with these statements about most Muslims living in the U.S.:
ISPU analysts chose these five statements based on previous research linking the perceptions they capture with greater tolerance for anti-Muslim policies. The more one agrees with these sentiments, the more likely one is to support discriminatory policies such as mosque surveillance, racial profiling, greater scrutiny of Muslims at airports, the so-called Muslim Ban, and even taking away voting rights from Americans who are Muslims. These five measures offer an evidence-based way to track perceptions known to predict acceptance of discriminatory policies, though they are not meant to cover the totality of public Islamophobia, which includes many other false beliefs about Muslims.
Muslims are not a monolith, and their experiences with discrimination are influenced by the multiple identities they hold. ISPU’s American Muslim Poll 2025 revealed that 63% of American Muslims experienced discrimination based on their religion in the prior year. This is a higher percentage than Jews (50%), Protestants (27%), white Evangelicals (26%), Catholics (25%), and the general public (22%). Muslim men and women are equally likely to report facing religious discrimination (63% and 64%, respectively). When it comes to age, young Muslims ages 18–29 (73%) are more likely to report experiencing some frequency of religious discrimination than older Muslims (58% of those ages 30–49 and 56% of those ages 50 and older). The portion of Muslims who experience discrimination based on their religion has held fairly steady since 2016. In 2016, when ISPU first fielded the American Muslim Poll, 60% of Muslims reported facing religious discrimination. In subsequent years, from 2017 to 2022, the percentage ranged from 60% to 62%.
Muslims remain the faith community most likely to report religious discrimination — reporting it at significantly higher rates (63%) than the general public and other faith groups measured (22-50%).
When it comes to race and ethnicity, Asian (73%) and Arab Muslims (70%) are as likely to report religious discrimination as white Muslims (66%). Asian Muslims (73%) are more likely to experience religious discrimination compared to Black Muslims (55%), the only significant difference found among racial and ethnic Muslims. This difference may point to the fact that Islamophobia relies on tropes about Muslims being foreigners, which may protect African American Muslims from experiencing religious discrimination in the same ways that Arab and Asian Muslims do. ISPU’s study Perceptions of American Muslims and Islam among Black Christians: Findings, Recommendations, and Implications for Interfaith Engagement highlights the ways that Islamophobia manifests within the Black Christian community as well as their experiences with anti-Black racism within the larger Muslim community, reflecting the unique intersection of race and religion in their experiences.
Yonas Fikre, an American Muslim, was placed on the federal No Fly List after refusing to serve as an FBI informant. Following this refusal, Fikre was tortured and imprisoned in the United Arab Emirates for 106 days. Following that, he applied for asylum in Sweden but was unable to return home to the U.S. When Fikre filed a lawsuit challenging his status on the list, the government attempted to render the case moot by removing him from the list and arguing that the court no longer had a reason to rule on the constitutionality of his placement. The case of FBI v. Fikre is an example of how structural Islamophobia is still embedded in our national security system.
The implications of the case are significant for Muslims, as well as all Americans, as it concerns the federal government being held accountable by judicial review when it comes to civil rights. When Muslims are placed on government lists like the No Fly List due to Islamophobia, without any appeal to the courts, it sets a precedent for the government to avoid due process, expanding its powers and jeopardizing the civil rights of all citizens. As CAIR National Deputy Litigation Director Gadeir Abbas stated, “the FBI cannot simply place innocent Muslims on a list only to remove them the moment a legal challenge is presented. We need to ensure that the ‘No Fly List’ does not remain a black box where our rights are suspended without proper due process."
In March 2024, the Supreme Court unanimously voted to allow Fikre to bring a lawsuit against the FBI for wrongfully placing him on the No Fly List. This victory was a win for Muslims who have been unfairly marked for surveillance and security in airports.
What does it mean that stereotypes of Muslims are embedded in our social structures or that Islamophobia is a form of structural racism? So-called counterterrorism efforts are characterized by a series of laws and policies ostensibly designed to prevent another terrorist attack. These policies intentionally and directly increased surveillance of Muslims significantly. Scholars have noted that surveillance used today is rooted in the history of African Americans’ experiences, from the time of slavery to COINTELPRO.
While the government’s official definitions of terrorism do not specify “Muslim,” it is clear that many of these policies target Muslims. This is best exemplified by the phrase “Flying While Muslim,” which is inspired by the phrase “Driving While Black,” to highlight the experiences with racial profiling that Muslims endure in airports. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created after 9/11, the first time airport security was federalized in the U. S. Muslim men and women have filed complaints with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), arguing that they are unfairly stopped and searched in airports by TSA agents because of their religious identity. TSA’s No Fly List and Secondary Security Screening Selection (Selectee List) are two programs used in airports. These lists derive from the FBI’s terrorist database, which is suspected to be overpopulated with Muslim names.
Data from American Muslim Poll 2025 highlights Muslim experiences with structural Islamophobia. Among Muslims who experienced religious discrimination, almost half (49%) reported experiencing discrimination on social media from social media platform companies (such as having posts removed or accounts closed). This reflects how anti-Muslim bias and discrimination is not taken into account by social media platforms. Airports follow social media platforms as the most frequent settings where Muslims experience religious discrimination (37%), and uniquely so, as no more than 6% of any other religious group studied reported the same. In the Banking While Muslim study, ISPU found that Muslims experienced challenges while banking: they were investigated, had their accounts closed, and had transactions denied. These are just a few examples of how Muslims are marked as suspicious and as threats to national security, consequently encountering hyper-surveillance by the government.
Among Muslims who experienced discrimination, 20%–29% experienced it in the following settings, all representing structural bias:
In almost all cases, Muslims are more likely than any group studied to report discrimination in these spaces.
In some situations, Muslim men are more likely than Muslim women to report discrimination. These include the following situations:
This data provides more nuance into the places where Muslim men and women experience discrimination. In past years, we compared overall experiences with discrimination (in 2019, 68% of women vs. 55% of men experienced discrimination) rather than noting the specific spaces where it occurred.
In August 2024, Kenneth Pinkney was sentenced for a violent attack on a female Muslim U.S. Postal Service worker. Pinkney approached her and began a targeted physical assault while she was in full uniform and operating a marked federal vehicle. He forcibly tore the hijab from her head and proceeded to punch her in the face. The attack was severe enough to cause the victim to bleed from her mouth and left visible scratches across her face. This incident gained attention as a clear instance of gendered Islamophobia, where a woman was targeted specifically because her religious attire made her identity visible.
In addition to structural Islamophobia, American Muslims encounter discrimination in everyday life, which can range from microaggressions to verbal assaults and even violent hate crimes. For decades, Muslim women who wear the hijab have encountered verbal and physical harassment by strangers on the street. Negative stereotypes about Muslims permeate the public psyche, manifesting in incidents ranging from being yelled at to “Go back home!” to individuals attempting to forcibly remove their hijabs and resulting in increased experiences of anti-Muslim hate and prejudice.
According to American Muslim Poll 2025, among those who reported having faced religious-based discrimination in the past year, Muslims (28%) were on par with other religious groups to have experienced it from peers at work, including Protestants (23%) and Jews (20%). Muslims (25%) were also more likely than any other group who reported facing religious discrimination to have experienced it at their university when interacting with peers, more than twice as likely as Jews (13%) and Protestants (6%).
| Societal Setting | Muslim | Jewish | Protestant |
|---|---|---|---|
| At your place of work when interacting with peers | 28% | 20% | 23% |
| At your university/college/academic institution when interacting with your peers | 25% | 13% | 6% |
| Structural Setting | Muslim | Jewish | Protestant |
|---|---|---|---|
| At your place of work when interacting with people in authority | 26% | 17% | 9% |
| At your university/college/academic institution when interacting with people in authority | 24% | 9% | 5% |
| When interacting with law enforcement | 26% | 5% | 3% |
| When receiving healthcare services, such as a medical or dental appointment, mental health services or hospital | 23% | 5% | 16% |
| When buying/leasing a home/condo/apartment | 20% | 5% | 9% |
| When interacting and/or conducting transactions with a U.S. banking/financial institution | 20% | 3% | — |
| On social media from social media platform companies (Facebook, X, etc.) | 49% | 46% | 24% |
| At the airport | 37% | 4% | 3% |
| When applying for a job | 28% | 7% | 4% |
| When interacting with immigration officers/officials | 29% | 2% | 2% |
When it comes to gender, Muslim men and women who experienced discrimination are equally likely (26% and 30%, respectively) to say it occurred when interacting with peers at work and when interacting with people in authority at work (30% for men and 20% for women).
On October 14, 2023, Wadee Alfayoumi, a six-year-old Palestinian American boy, was murdered by his family’s 71-year-old landlord, Joseph Czuba. The attacker reportedly targeted the family due to their Muslim faith and the ongoing genocide in Gaza (as declared by the International Association of Genocide Scholars in August 2025), stabbing the young child 26 times with a knife. During the attack, the landlord shouted, “You Muslims must die!” Wadee’s mother was also critically injured in the assault but survived. The local sheriff’s office quickly identified the motive as a direct response to the victims’ religious and ethnic identities.
The perpetrator was sentenced to 50 years in prison and the U.S. Senate passed the Wadee Resolution, honoring his life and affirming no place for Islamophobia, antisemitism, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Arab discrimination.
Although Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism have often been conflated, it is important to note how they are distinct and the ways that they potentially intersect. The Institute for the Understanding of Anti-Palestinian Racism has conducted research and provides training on anti-Palestinian racism. The report Anti-Palestinian Racism: Naming, Framing and Manifestations, prepared by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, defines anti-Palestinian racism as:
a form of anti-Arab racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives. Anti-Palestinian racism takes various forms including: denying the Nakba and justifying violence against Palestinians; failing to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine; erasing the human rights and equal dignity and worth of Palestinians; excluding or pressuring others to exclude Palestinian perspectives, Palestinians and their allies; defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander such as being inherently antisemitic, a terrorist threat/sympathizer or opposed to democratic values.
Anti-Palestinian racism, according to this definition, is discrimination that specifically targets someone because of their Palestinian identity. Palestinians, of course, are not a monolith, and have a wide diversity of religious identities. We must not conflate Islamophobia with anti-Palestinian racism, as they are contextually different due to the fact that not all Palestinians are Muslim. Anti-Palestinian racism is a project that is tied to the colonization and attempted erasure of the Palestinian people by denying them their human rights. Islamophobia, on the other hand, is racializing a religious identity by ascribing certain characteristics to it. These two intersect when Palestinians experience Islamophobia because many are Muslim. Furthermore, Palestinians are often stereotyped as terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, which is a stereotype that Muslims generally have had to contend with. Nevertheless, it is important that organizations and individuals do not use Islamophobia training to ignore or sideline anti-Palestinian racism or any other form of racism, which further silences and makes invisible the violence and racism Palestinians encounter.
The Islamophobia Index has risen sharply in 2025 compared to previous years. Among the general population in the U.S., the index jumped from 25 in 2022 to 33 in 2025. It also rose during this time period most sharply among white (24 to 35) and Latino Americans (25 to 34) in the general public. Black Americans’ Islamophobia Index score stayed fairly stable with only a slight rise from 26 in 2022 to 29 in 2025.
In 2019, the American Muslim Poll found a sharp increase for Black Americans on the Islamophobia Index. ISPU conducted a study on Black Christian attitudes toward Muslims to better understand what was driving Islamophobia for this group. The study revealed that limited knowledge of Islam, high prevalence of Islamophobic tropes in the media, and theological disagreements with the tenets of Islam were some of the factors associated with higher levels of Islamophobia among Black Christians. Also in 2019, ISPU found that Latinos in the general public had relatively lower levels of Islamophobia compared with white and Black people in the general public. ISPU’s study Latino Attitudes Toward American Muslims and Islam found that the majority of Latinos had a lower Islamophobia Index than other groups due to shared experiences with discrimination, partaking in the immigrant experience and aspirations of the American dream, and negative media portrayals of Latinos and Muslims.
Among religious groups, the increase varied significantly, with white Evangelicals showing the most pronounced jump, rising 15 points, followed by Catholics who went up 12 points and Jews who went up 11 points. Protestants increased 7 points from 23 in 2022 to 30 in 2025. Muslims decreased from 26 in 2022 to 21 in 2025, and the non-affiliated remained statistically stable, changing only from 22 to 25.
In several recent studies, ISPU found that some American Muslims express Islamophobic views. Internalized Islamophobia is when Muslims express or demonstrate Islamophobia. Muslims have fluctuated on their Islamophobia Index score from 19 in 2018 to 26 in 2022. Their score decreased to 21 in 2025. Demographic factors, like age (being 30 years and older), political party (identifying as Democrat), and race (identifying as Asian and Arab) were significant factors associated with a reduction in the Islamophobia Index among Muslims. On the other hand, Muslims who experienced gender discrimination and sectarian discrimination were more likely to exhibit internalized Islamophobia. While Muslims are stereotyped as misogynistic, it is important to recognize that experiences with gender and sectarian discrimination can lead to higher levels of internalized Islamophobia. Younger Muslims are more susceptible to internalized Islamophobia. Thus, when addressing Islamophobia, it is important to note that Muslims are vulnerable as well.
According to the American Muslim Poll 2025, the general public respondent is 13% more likely to endorse anti-Muslim tropes if they identify as a conservative. Individuals with a high income ($75,000+ per year) are 12% less likely to score high on the Islamophobia Index. Religious devotion has no impact on Islamophobia in the general public. It is important to note that Islamophobia is not a partisan issue and that some scholars have highlighted how even within politically liberal spaces, Islamophobia exists but is covert in nature, taking the form of implicit bias.
Islamophobia is not just a problem for Muslim communities; it is a threat to democracy itself and affects all Americans. Research shows that Islamophobic attitudes are closely linked to broader authoritarian tendencies and other forms of bigotry, including antisemitism and xenophobia.
Islamophobia is a part of a larger web of bigotry: legislators who introduce anti-Muslim legislation are typically anti many other things, revealing a pattern of discrimination that extends far beyond one community. In 2014, ISPU conducted a study showing that policy makers who introduce anti-Muslim legislation often sponsored laws that restricted access to abortion, stripped immigrants of their rights, and limited voter rights, revealing the ways anti-Muslim policies are linked to other civil rights.
When we allow bias against Muslims, a religious minority whose rights should be protected under our democratic values, to enter our legal and political systems, we undermine constitutional protections for everyone. Once we permit discrimination against one group, we create a domino effect for the erosion of rights of other groups.
Islamophobia thus serves as a litmus test for our democracy. It is often easier for our nation to allow discrimination against religious minorities, so our response reveals our true commitment to protecting the most vulnerable populations. Democracy requires that we defend the rights of all, and dismantling Islamophobia is both a professional obligation and an ethical imperative that strengthens our institutions and our society.
This section is divided into different parts based on end users for ease of use and navigation; however, there is content throughout that may be useful to multiple audiences. Stakeholder groups should prioritize the sections designated for them and then utilize other sections to expand their understanding.
Each section includes three components:
Islamophobia is a form of discrimination, bias, and racism against Muslims and consequently those who appear to be Muslim that relies on stereotypes of Muslims and Islam that can result in their unequal treatment. Islamophobia is structural and can be seen in American social structures, laws and policies, media narratives, and ideologies. It also exists in interpersonal interactions between individuals that result in the unjust treatment of Muslims and those misidentified as Muslims in society.
