American Muslims often face Islamophobia and racialization due to stereotypes and generalizations ascribed to them. Due to this, Islamophobia is both a product of and a contributor to the United States' racial ideology, which is founded on socially constructed categories of profiled features, or how people seem.
Advocacy groups like the Center for American Progress (CAP) explain that this social phenomenon is not new; rather, it has increased its presence in American social and political discourse over the last ten to fifteen years. They cite the fact that several organizations donate large amounts of money to create the "Islamophobia megaphone". CAP defines the megaphone analogy as "a tight network of anti-Muslim, anti-Islam foundations, misinformation experts, validators, grass root organizations, religious rights groups and their allies in the media and in politics" who work together to misrepresent Islam and Muslims in the United States. As a result of this network, Islam is now one of the most stigmatized religions, with only 42 percent of Americans having a favorable opinion of Islam, according to a 2021 Associated Press/Norc Center for Public Affairs Research poll. Similarly, Muslims are one of the most negatively viewed religious groups in the United States, with atheists being the only other group seen in a comparable negative light. This biased perception of Islam and Muslims manifests itself into the discrimination of racially perceived Muslims in the law and media, and is conceptually reinforced by the Islamophobia network.
A report by the University of California, Berkeley, and the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) estimated that was funded to 33 groups whose primary purpose was "to promote prejudice against, or hatred of, Islam and Muslims" in the United States between 2008 and 2013, with a total of 74 groups contributing to Islamophobia in the United States during that period. This has been referred to as the "Islamophobia industry" by scholars Nathan Lean and John Esposito.
NBC News reported that "the Council on American-Islamic Relations said it received 774 reports of bias incidents and requests for help from Muslims across the U.S. from Oct. 7 to Oct. 24, a 182% jump from the average 16-day period in 2022." On November 9, CAIR reported that it had received 1,283 complaints in the months time between October 7 and November 7. On February 16, CAIR reported that it had received 3,578 hate crime complaints in the last three months of 2023. On November 1, 2023, the Biden administration said it was trying to combat the increase in Islamophobia. In March 2024, the U.S. president condemned "the ugly resurgence of Islamophobia in the wake of the devastating war in Gaza". A 2025 CAIR report says the 8,658 complaints about anti-Islam and anti-Arab incidents in 2024 — representing a 7.4 percent year-over-year increase — was the highest number since the group began collecting data in 1996.
Mosque vandalism also reached a 10-year high in 2026, with over 50 documented cases of mosques being vandalized, burned, or defaced. Mosques in most cities of the US work under the same legal framework as churches and pose no tax burden on the local population.
At places of worship There were 221 publicly reported hate incidents targeting mosques during the April 2013-June 2017 period, according to a ProPublica review. ProPublica notes, "Most of the incidents are threats to worshipper's lives or acts of vandalism." A Council on American-Islamic Relations staffer who collected the data that ProPublica verified noted that the organization saw spike both "during election years and after news coverage of major terrorist attacks." It is not known with certainty if the spikes were related to a greater number of incidents, or that more people were taking the time to report the incidents.
One high-profile example features the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, which faced a years long campaign opposing its construction and expansion. While a local Muslim community maintained space in an office park to pray since 1997, when plans for a 52,000-sq. ft. facility became public there was immediate backlash. Subsequently, the site was "vandalized multiple times" including an arson attack and a bomb threat. An attempt to stop the mosque from opening ended in 2014 when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Lawyers had asserted in the case that Islam is not a religion and thus not protected by the First Amendment. The new building opened in 2012.
A second high-profile example was Park 51, originally known as Cordoba House and branded by opponents as the Ground Zero Mosque. Park 51 was a proposed Islamic prayer space in lower Manhattan, two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center. It became a national controversy during the 2010 mid-term election, with some public figures defending the project as religious freedom and other insisting its proximity to the site of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack was a provocation. At the time, the New York Times reported, "Polling shows that a majority of Americans oppose building it near ground zero."
Academic analysis has argued that media coverage of the Park 51 controversy relied heavily on imbalanced sourcing and the repeated use of "terrorism" and "Sharia," which reinforced Islamophobic narratives and undermined the inclusivity of American religious pluralism.
Religious freedom According to 2020 AP/NORC Poll, slightly more than half of Americans (52%) believed that the religious freedoms of Muslims are being threatened. However, one-third of respondents perceived the claims of religious freedoms by Muslims to be a threat to others, higher than the other religions in the survey.
The government has disproportionately engaged in surveillance and infiltration of Muslim religious spaces and programs. These issues have led some Muslims to distrust those around them and their motives. A notable example of governmental surveillance include the Mosque crawlers, where informants dispatched by the New York Police Department monitored and spied on Muslims. The program lasted from 2001 to 2011, until it was exposed by the media.
Recent surveys have shown that significant amounts of respondents are comfortable with some restrictions on Islamic practices like the governmental surveillance of Muslims.
Denial of religious freedom Americans Muslims face disproportionate issues in regards to their religious activities and liberties. Muslim Americans' religious liberties have been increasingly excluded and even ignored in discussions surrounding religious freedoms. Once considered a fringe belief, numerous anti-Muslim entities that advocate for the denial of religious freedoms for Muslims have witnessed growing public and political influence, especially among the political right and conservative Christians. Claiming that Islam is not a religion but a dangerous political ideology, these figures than contend that Islam does not qualify to be protected. These arguments and other ones like it have been used to justify anti-Muslim rhetoric among politicians or commentators and efforts by local communities to block the construction or expansion of Muslim religious spaces. According to religious scholar Asma Uddin, the mentality of disqualifying Islam as a religion can be used to justify anti-Muslim violence and prejudice.
In the political sphere, religious lawmakers (typically Republicans) that advocate for religious freedoms frequently omit the religious liberties of American Muslims and some even call for restrictions or discriminatory practices towards Muslim religious activities. The first Trump administration included many anti-Muslim politicians, activists, and religious figures that held the view that Islam is a dangerous political ideology that doesn't deserve religious liberty protections.
Censorship and representation Writing for Religion News Service, children's author Hena Khan wrote that books written by Muslim writers or books containing Muslim stories are targets for recent book bans and censorship throughout the country. Such a title, "Under My Hijab" written by Khan was banned in school or public libraries in a few Republican states under laws barring the teaching of or promotion of topics surrounding diversity or equity. Khan also wrote that such censorship harms not just Muslim children but all children, along with stifling discussions around race and identity.
In employment In hiring A 2013 Carnegie Mellon University study found that, nationally, Muslims had "13% fewer callbacks" than Christians after submitting identical job applications to the same establishments. The study also concluded that discrepancies between callbacks for Muslims and Christians were larger "in counties with a high fraction of Republican voters," with Christians getting almost four times as many return calls in these constituencies. On the other hand, there was no discernible hiring discrimination against Muslims in Democratic counties. Biases were larger on the state level, with Christians getting more than seven times as many callbacks than Muslims in Republican states. Democratic states, once again, showed "no significant callback biases." The study added that "employers in older counties are significantly less likely to call back the Muslim candidate compared to the Christian candidate"
In the workplace Protection against religious discrimination in the workplace is found in the context of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Employees claim religious discrimination when it involves any of the following: disparate treatment, religious harassment, failure to reasonably accommodate religious beliefs, and retaliation against an applicant or employee who alleges religious discrimination. Disparate treatment can be defined as someone receiving different treatment regarding recruitment, hiring, promotion, discipline, compensation because of their religion. Religious harassment involves employees who are forced to participate in or abstain from religious practices if they want to stay employed. Accommodation claims involve the employer's failure to reasonably accommodate any change to the work environment that would enable the employee to remain compliant with their religion. Retaliation happens when an employer resorts to punitive action against an employee for seeking out religious accommodations, threatening or filing a claim, assisting in someone else filing for discrimination, or testifying in discrimination proceedings.
After the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or EEOC reported that religion-based discrimination against Muslims had increased by nearly 250%. Moreover, the number of discrimination claims made by Muslims over a four-year period, from 2001 to 2005, nearly doubled when compared with another 4-year period.
Religious harassment