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.

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/

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.