Washington Muslim Survey 2024 Report

As the region’s leading Muslim civil rights group, CAIR-WA is frequently solicited for data on Washington’s Muslims by media, government entities, and elected officials. There is a critical need for accurate demographic data, as well as data on experiences of discrimination. This information did not previously exist for Muslims in Washington.

The Washington Muslim Survey was administered between April 2 and May 1, 2024. CAIR-WA surveyed 684 Muslims who were 13 years of age or older and living in Washington state on the topics of demographics, experiences of discrimination, and policy engagement among Muslims 13 and older living in Washington state. This survey is the first of its kind, both for CAIR-WA and for Washington at large.

The findings from this survey showcase the diversity of Washington Muslims and contribute to creating a collective voice regarding the community’s experiences and priorities.

“The impact of the CAIR-WA Washington Muslim Survey cannot be overstated, as it serves as the initial blueprint for an essential tool and resource that can be refined and expanded upon. It showcases the rich diversity and contributions of Muslim-Americans and quantifies the impacts of discrimination and othering that affect the US Muslim community at large.”

—Basima Sisemore, the Global Justice Program Senior Researcher at the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley

Links to download and print materials

- Download a PDF version of the report here.
- Download survey questions here.
- Download data books here. (Updated 12/9/2024)

News Stories About the WA Muslim Survey

Front Page of Sunday’s Seattle Times: Local imam sues FBI over watchlist

by Nina Shapiro | The Seattle Times | Aug 16, 2023

Seattle Muslim leader Farid Sulayman said it was the usual drill for him last month when he flew to California to chaperone a youth basketball tournament. Checking in online proved impossible. At the ticket counter, he got a boarding pass with a special stamp — “SSSS” — indicating he would need an extra security screening.

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Guest Essay: A Critical Time for Muslim Americans

Basima Sisemore and Elsadig Elsheikh from the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, place the WA Muslim Survey in context: “This groundbreaking survey and report on Washington state Muslims by CAIR-WA comes at a critical time in the context of political shifts and events taking place on the national stage that are informing the realities of Muslim-Americans across the country. Notably, this survey is the first of its kind in the state, and a historic study of Washington Muslims, as it uplifts the voices, experiences, priorities, and diversity of the community.”

Guest Essay: Advocating for Palestine in the Face of Hate

Activist and Uncommitted WA leader Yazan Kader shares personal experiences about why this report matters to help understand experiences of those advocating for Palestine: “It takes incredible resilience to continue showing up every day in the face of discrimination and hate. As a Palestinian and a Muslim who has recently taken on an advocacy role in both the political and non-political arena, I’ve had to develop some very thick skin.”

Portrait of a Washington State Muslim

Based on this survey, Muslims in Washington live across the state, with a large concentration in King County and pockets in Olympia, Vancouver, and the Tri-Cities (Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland). Most live with children and multiple adults, have completed higher education, are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and are citizens or green card holders (lawful permanent residents) with immigration in the past few generations of their family’s history. A slight majority of respondents considered themselves visibly Muslim. Muslims in Washington are racially diverse, with no one racial category making up more than 30% of the survey’s sample.

Seven out of Ten Muslims in WA Experienced Discriminatory Policies or Practices in the Past Year

Overall, 69.2% of respondents experienced discriminatory practices or policies at work, school, or other public places in the past year.

Ten percent of all respondents (9.7%) reported experiencing discriminatory policies and practices at work once a week or more. Nine percent of all respondents (8.8%) reported experiencing discriminatory policies and practices at school once a week or more. Nine percent of all respondents (8.8%) reported experiencing discriminatory policies and practices in places other than school or work once a week or more.

WA Muslims Experiences when Interacting with Law Enforcement

In interactions with law enforcement, over a quarter of respondents reported being treated differently than those around them (25.6%) and were unfairly stopped, searched, or questioned (27.2%). Only 18.6% of respondents reported feeling safe and supported in encounters with law enforcement. These categories are not mutually exclusive: respondents could mark both being unfairly stopped and feeling safe and supported.

Gold: positive interactions, Dark blue: negative interactions

Feeling Unsafe and Likelihood of Voting

This survey found that respondents reported voting more often if they were older, not visibly Muslim, more educated, more proficient in English, and their families had been in America longer. Respondents who reported feeling unsafe more frequently were less likely to vote.

Women and Visibly Muslim People Feel Unsafe More Often

Visibly Muslim respondents were more likely to experience poor service, have their intelligence doubted, and experience people being scared of them in their day-to-day lives. They felt less secure around non-Muslim friends and family, and at work. They were more likely to report increased discrimination since October 7, be unfairly not hired for a position, be discouraged by a teacher from continuing their education, be prevented from moving into a neighborhood, be denied a bank loan, or have their lives made difficult by neighbors. Visible Muslims were also more likely to feel unsafe because of their personal characteristics, hear biased remarks targeted at themselves, and stay home from work or school due to safety concerns.

This analysis found correlations between being visibly Muslim, feeling unsafe due to personal characteristics, and being a woman.

Recommendations and Limitations

Recommendations

The findings in this report provide a wealth of information about the identities, experiences, and needs of Washington’s Muslim community. It is the sincere hope of the survey team and the CAIR-WA staff that the findings in this report will draw attention to this community and bring about change. Lawmakers, elected officials, media outlets, and other entities in positions of power can no longer use a lack of data as a reason for discrediting Muslim communities’ experiences of bias and discrimination, nor can any individuals or organizations use a lack of data as an excuse for not speaking out against Islamophobia or for delaying crafting and passing necessary laws and policies.

The most urgent and important recommendation for governmental leaders is simple: connect with the Muslim communities that you serve. This can be done by visiting mosques, hosting speakers, and making a concerted effort to engage this constituency.

Further recommendations are as follows.

Improving Connections to Elected Officials

Because of the diversity of this group and its intersection with other marginalized identities, it is imperative that policy makers and leaders take Muslims into consideration when developing policy solutions.

For state and federal legislatures as well as any policy-making body, it is the duty of those serving to listen to and represent their constituents.

However, the data shows that Muslims do not, on the whole, feel comfortable making asks of their representatives in government and do not know who represents them. It is vital to reach out to and engage Muslims in the democratic process and ensure that they are represented in decisions made by elected officials.

Voter Engagement

Over a third (36.1%) of respondents who are eligible voters said they were not or were unsure about voting in the 2024 general election. In addition, 11% are eligible but unregistered voters, and an additional 4.6% do not vote even though they are registered voters.

Increasing voter engagement in this group is paramount. It will be important to develop thoughtful programs which take into account the correlation between feeling unsafe in one’s day to day life and not voting (p. 22).

Increasing Representation

Muslim representation in government positions continues to be an important piece of the overall strategy necessary in order to mitigate the high levels of discrimination, bias, and hate experienced by Muslims in Washington state.

Education on and Enforcement of Anti-Discrimination Laws

Less than half of respondents to this survey marked that they feel safe and supported at work (44.7%), and even fewer marked feeling safe and supported at school (24.0%), online (23.2%), and with local government (11.7%). These findings should be taken as a call to action for workplaces, schools, and local governments to be prioritize inclusivity.

Although Washington state has anti-discrimination laws, this report makes it clear that Islamophobic discrimination is taking place in employment, housing, banking, schools, and other institutions. A multi-pronged approach is needed to fight discrimination, including public education campaigns,tightening enforcement, and passing new or updated policies.

In 2024, the Washington state legislature passed Senate Bill 5427, which created a new WA Hate Crimes Hotline, which will provide information and resources to Washingtonians who have been targeted by hate crimes. This new hotline may be beneficial as a safe and designated place to report hate crimes and bias incidents.

Palestine

Finally, CAIR-WA recommends that all institutions and individuals recognize that Palestine is the key issue of the moment and the human rights issue of this era. It is imperative for all institutions and organizations to be clear about standing with Palestine and Palestinians, if they do so. For employers, it is especially important to be clear about their stance in order to retain Washington’s Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians, who may feel, at best, a values misalignment and, at worst, unsafe if their employer is silent on the issue of Palestine.

Resources and Further Reading

CAIR-WA’s incident report form: cairwa.org/gethelp. Fill out if you or someone you know has experienced bias, hate, or discrimination because they are Muslim (or perceived as Muslim), or to reach our Immigrant Justice Project.

CAIR-WA’s Know Your Rights Website at knowyourrightswa.com

The Seattle Office of Civil Rights at seattle.gov/civil-rights

CAIR National Civil Rights Reports at cair.com

An Educator’s Guide to Islamic Religious Practices by CAIR National at cairwa.org/resources

Employer’s Guide to Islamic Religious Practices by CAIR National

CAIR’s Guide to Addressing Bullying and Bias in Schools by CAIR National

The Othering & Belonging Institute’s section on Islamophobia at belonging.berkeley.edu/islamophobia

CAIR California’s 2023 Bullying Report at ca.cair.com/publications/2023-bullying-report/

Limitations

This was the first time CAIR-WA has conducted a statewide survey of Muslim experiences. As such, the survey had a few mistakes in the design (see “Issues with Survey Design” below), alongside more general limitations. The team learned from this initial iteration of the Washington Muslim Survey and looks forward to improving upon it in future versions of the survey.

Possible Limitations

Anonymity and Self-Reporting

An initial limitation is that the survey was anonymous and self-reported. The survey was kept anonymous in order to ensure that respondents could answer truthfully and were not influenced by privacy concerns. The tradeoff of this is the possibility of inauthentic, misleading, or duplicate responses. Due to this survey’s disqualification criteria—respondents must be Muslim, living in Washington, and 18 years of age (or 13 years of age with parent permission), the likelihood of bot responses or inauthentic responses is minimal. For example, even if a response passed the qualifying page, any responses with zip codes outside of the state of Washington were excluded. The team double-checked IP address locations to ensure that they appeared to be local to Washington. The team also reviewed duplicate IP addresses and responses with similar/identical demographic information, in case a community member took the survey more than once. Ultimately, out of the 684 responses that are included in this report, we believe that the number of possible inauthentic or duplicate responses is very small (under 10 total).

Racial and Ethnic Categories

Making the question on racial identity as inclusive as possible was a priority in design of this survey. Respondents could select from 30 race/ethnicity options, self-describe, or select “prefer not to answer”. This created racial data which, while rich in information about the incredible diversity of Muslims in Washington, was difficult to analyze. The survey team manually sorted respondents into the 13 categories used in this report, using best judgment and discretion. In future surveys, questions on race and ethnicity will likely be updated, while continuing to balance ease of data analysis with ensuring that respondents can report their races and ethnicities in a way that reflects the fullness of their identities.

Language Access

Another major limitation was that the survey was conducted in English only. The low number of respondents who had limited or no English proficiency may be due to the lack of language accessibility and may not reflect the actual breakdown in Washington.

Location

Finally, most survey responses came from King County, which likely reflects the population make-up of Washington’s Muslims. However, since the CAIR-WA team is based in King Country and most outreach was done locally, this area may be overrepresented relative to true population levels.

Survey Design Issues

Age

In this survey’s question on age, both “13-18” and “18-24” were included, which may have led to confusion about which to pick for 18-year-olds. The question should have been written “13-17”, since that option prompted respondents to verify that they had parental permission to take the survey.

Race and Ethnicity

In the race/ethnicity question, North African was listed twice. This was corrected during data cleaning and had no impact on analysis.

North American was included as an option, in addition to Caucasian or American of Northern European Descent and Indigenous American/Native American/Canadian or Alaska Native. This created confusion during data-cleaning over the racial identities of respondents who selected only North American.

Languages

Some respondents who selected professional working proficiency or native proficiency in English did not include English when asked to list the languages they used. In future iterations of this survey, it will be important to adjust the questions on languages and language proficiency.

Citizenship Status

In the question about citizenship status, respondents were instructed to check all that apply, though some of the options were mutually exclusive. A few respondents checked multiple options which could be interpreted in multiple ways, which created a challenge in data cleaning.

Discrimination in Healthcare

A section of questions asked respondents about discrimination/bias faced in various areas, including the workplace, neighborhoods, and healthcare settings. For most questions, checking ‘yes’ indicated experiencing discrimination/hardship, except for the question on healthcare which was phrased such that ‘yes’ indicated being treated fairly. This inconsistency may have impacted the accuracy of responses.

Topics to Include in Future Surveys

Upon closing the survey and examining the results, the survey team has noticed new avenues for questioning, which, in future iterations of this survey, may give a more complete understanding of the identities and perspectives of Washington Muslims. This includes questions around income level, whether respondents were converts/reverts to Islam, and including law enforcement in the question about who respondents are likely to go to when asking for help.

If you have any questions, comments, or find any errors in this report, please contact Katie Walker, CAIR-WA Communications Director, at kwalker@cair.com.