Most white evangelicals don't view Islam as part of American society, Pew survey reveals

Two-thirds of white evangelicals do not view Islam as part of mainstream American society, according to a new study conducted by Pew Research Center.

According to the report released on Wednesday, 72 percent of white evangelicals see a natural conflict between Islam and democracy, compared with 44 percent of Americans overall. Among Muslims, 30 percent agreed that the two are in conflict. Six percent of Americans and five percent of Muslims attribute the tension to the belief that America is a Christian nation.

As many as 62 percent of Muslim respondents believe that the rest of America does not see them as part of society, and 68 percent said they were worried about President Donald Trump due to his immigration policy.

The report noted that half of Muslims said they have experienced discrimination over the past year and as many as 75 percent of Americans believe that Muslims face a lot of discrimination.

However, almost half of Muslim respondents said they received expressions of encouragement from non-Muslims in the past year. Muslims remain optimistic about their future, and 70 percent believe that they can achieve success through hard work.

"There's a sense among the American Muslim population that others are beginning to understand them and beginning to sympathize with them," said Amaney Jamal, a Princeton University political scientist and adviser to Pew researchers. She contended that prejudice against Muslims has "pushed the average American to say, 'This is really not fair. I'm going to knock on my neighbor's door to see if they're all right.'"

The findings further indicated that eight in 10 American Muslims were concerned about Islamic extremism in the U.S. while over 70 percent said they were very or somewhat concerned. However, three in 10 believe that most of those arrested on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks have been tricked by the authorities and did not represent a real threat.

The Pew survey of 1,001 adult respondents is the third on American Muslims since 2007, and the first since Trump took office on Jan. 20. The study was conducted by phone between Jan. 23 and May 2 in English, Arabic, Farsi and Urdu, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.8 percentage points.

Pew estimated that the number of American Muslims has been growing by 100,000 a year, reaching 3.35 million, or one percent of the American population. A little over half of American Muslims identify as Sunni, compared with 16 percent who are Shiite.