When Muslim extremists killed nearly 3,000 people on the morning of September 11, Americans awoke to the dangers of radical Islam. Though hardly the first instance of terrorism perpetrated by the hands of Muslims, nor the last, 9/11 was a crystallizing moment in the American psyche, and it led to intense debate about the nature of the “religion of peace.” Now, 25 years after 9/11, Americans are having a renewed discussion about Islam and whether the religion is compatible with Western values. While it may not come as a surprise that some on the Right do not believe Islam is compatible with the West, what you might find surprising is that many on the Left agree.
In our survey of 1,067 adults, conducted by Ipsos for the Institute for Governance and Civics, we find that many are skeptical of Islam. In the survey, we randomly assigned participants to receive a question with one key difference. Half of participants were asked to agree with the following statement: “Overall, Western civilization has done more harm than good in world history.” The other half received the same question, but the word “Western” was replaced with “Islamic.” While 6% strongly agreed and 17% somewhat agreed that Western civilization has done more harm than good, 22% strongly agreed and 22% somewhat agreed that Islamic civilization has done more harm than good. Replacing “Western” with “Islamic” increased total agreement with the statement by 21 percentage points.
Though interesting, this is not the most important conclusion to draw from the survey; that is — majorities on the Right and the Left believe that Islam is not compatible with the West.
We asked whether Western civilization bears responsibility for the world’s current problems, whether core traditions and values are worth preserving, whether Western societies are a force for good in global affairs, whether individuals have an attachment to Western civilization, and whether survey participants value Western civilization. Overall, Americans are generally pro-West. For example, 67% said they value Western civilization’s achievements compared to just 4% who said they did not. Fifty percent said they felt attached to Western civilization, while 9% said they did not.
Using these five items, we created a five-point pro-West index where 1 was low, and 5 was high. As you might expect, those who scored high on our pro-West index were less inclined to agree with the statement that Western civilization has done more harm than good and more likely to think Islam has done more harm than good. As my colleagues put it in their report, “Among respondents at the most pro-Western end of the index, with a score of 5, the estimated probability of agreeing that Western civilization has done more harm than good is just 3%, compared with 73% when the statement refers to Islamic civilization.”
The results on the left-hand side of the distribution are flipped: “At the most anti-Western end, with a score of 1, the pattern reverses: the estimated probability of agreeing that Western civilization has done more harm than good rises to 84% for Western civilization but falls to 9% for Islamic civilization.”
There are a couple of important threads to pull out here. First, people who are anti-West express negative views about the West more deeply than pro-West individuals do about Islam. In other words, the Left appears to hate the West more than the Right hates Islam. Second, those who dislike the West have a much higher view of Islam than they do of the West. On the Right side of our pro-West index, the difference in our experimental Western/Islamic question was 70 percentage points in favor of the West; on the Left, it was 75 percentage points in favor of Islam.
Current debates have been spurred by the surge of Democrat-Socialist candidates who happen to be Muslim. In New York, the site of the 9/11 attacks, Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor in November 2025. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination for Senate. New Jersey Democrats selected Adam Hamawy as their nominee for the 12th Congressional District, and throughout the country, Democratic Socialism seems to be in the political air. While the political ideology is certainly getting its due attention and criticism, so too is the fact that many Democratic Socialists are Muslim.
The criticism is not simply that Islam has radical extremist elements, but that Islam itself is extreme and contrary to the American way. Representative Brandon Gill (TX-26) put it plainly when he said Islam is “incompatible with our culture and our governing system.” In January 2026, Republican Congressmen Keith Self (TX-03) and Chip Roy (TX-21) founded the “Sharia Free America Caucus.” Congressman Andy Ogles (TN-05), a member of the caucus, said, “Islam is a religion of violence, abuse of women, and ruthless political conquest.” The caucus launched with 24 members in under a month.
It should shock precisely no one that the Sharia Free America Caucus has quickly been labeled “Islamophobic.”
If you ask people on the Right if Islam is compatible with the West, chances are, if our poll is to be believed, that about three-fourths of them would say that the two worldviews are not compatible. Whereas, if you ask the same question to those on the Left, they would likely tell you Islam is compatible with the West. Then again, they would tell you that the West is terrible and responsible for the world’s worst. So, in their own way, they are telling you they too do not believe that Islam is compatible with the West.
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James V. Shuls, Ph.D., is a Research Faculty member of the Institute for Governance and Civics at Florida State University
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