A Year After October 7th, Understanding Jewish and Muslim Interfaith Connections
Summary: More in Common’s Executive Director, Jay Mangone, highlights four trends from our latest faith report, Promising Revelations, that showcase commonality within Jewish American and Muslim American communities in hopes of providing deeper understanding and a grounding for interfaith connection.
A year ago today, Hamas militants threw the Middle East into turmoil when they killed over 1,200 Israelis, took 251 hostages, and raped and tortured several more Israelis in their brazen attack. While Israel was in the midst of its own domestic political crisis at the time, the attack also scuttled ongoing talks between the Israelis and Saudis that represented the best chance of regional comity in a generation. Over the past year, tens of thousands of Palestinians—including women and children—have been killed in the ensuing war in Gaza.1 In the past several days, Iran has launched ballistic missiles into Israel. And today, as its troops stream into not only Gaza but southern Lebanon as well, Israel seems committed to breaking Iran’s axis of resistance, and a wider regional war seems increasingly likely.
Whatever one’s position on the war, its human toll is tragic, and its consequences of global import—the stakes are high. Especially in the midst of our own presidential election, then, it’s unfortunate but unsurprising that, in addition to substantive debates about international security, much of the conversation about Jews and Muslims in America has been refracted through the complementary lenses of horserace politics and culture wars: for whom will swing-state blocs of Jews and Muslims cast their ballots; speculation on whether Tim Walz was chosen over Josh Shapiro as Vice President Harris’ running mate because of Shapiro’s faith/record on Israel; and of course, the partisan rhetoric surrounding the campus protests.
More in Common recently released Promising Revelations: Undoing the False Impressions of America’s Faithful, a 6,000-person survey covering American perspectives on the relationship between faith, politics, and polarization. A key theme of our findings is that Americans vastly overestimate the importance of politics to communities of belief. In general, we find that faith informs politics, but that faith is not all about politics. And our tendency to view communities of faith through a political lens corrupts the power of faith as an institution.
Our organization’s mission is to understand the forces driving us apart, find common ground, and help bring Americans together to tackle shared challenges. Conflicts like the one in the Middle East today can drive Americans apart for various reasons. For one, our nation’s power means that our policy with regard to that war can have a meaningful impact on its outcome. Moreover, our country values the free expression of a diversity of beliefs over any belief in particular. The debate about how America should approach this conflict is critical, but I don’t think More in Common’s role is to contribute to that debate so much as it is to point out surprising areas of agreement and solidarity in spite of our differences.
With that in mind, this newsletter will focus on four of the most interesting findings about Jews and Muslims in America. There are certainly depths of richness within these particular faith communities beneath all of the newsy controversy, and we hope you’ll explore them if you’re interested.2 In this newsletter, we’ve chosen to highlight findings where trends within Jewish American and Muslim American communities mirror one another, in the hopes of highlighting some interfaith solidarity.
1. We vastly underestimate the importance of faith traditions to Gen Z
We found that this is generally true across all faith traditions in the US. For instance, Gen Z Americans of faith report attending religious services more regularly than Baby Boomers (35 percent of Gen Z reports attending religious services a few times a month or more, compared to 31 percent of Baby Boomers).
Within Jewish and Muslim communities specifically, faith is important to two times as many younger believers as older believers estimate. As is usual with perception gaps, a couple of graphs explain the phenomenon more clearly than words:
2. Relative to other faith communities, Jewish and Muslim Americans are much more likely to feel unsafe in their daily lives
Many faith groups in the US feel that their religion is generally “under attack,” but Jews and Muslims in the US are unique in the extent to which they feel unsafe as a result of their religious identity.
Additionally, the timing of our surveys of Jewish and Muslim Americans (from October 5 through October 30, 2023) allowed us to compare responses before and after the Hamas attacks and the subsequent outbreak of war. Surprisingly, perceptions of threats to safety for both Jews and Muslims remained similar before and after these world-shaping events.
3. Jews and Muslims feel they’re judged as “not American enough;” but of course being American is an important identity for most American Jews and Muslims
Compared to other faith groups, Jews and Muslims feel they’re seen as “not American enough.” In truth, being American is just as important to each of these groups as it is to the average American: 73% of all Americans say that “being American” is an important part of their identity, as do 74% of Jews and 73% of Muslims.
4. Local synagogues and mosques are less divided than faith communities broadly
A broad finding in our report was that, across all faith communities, local places of worship are not terribly polarized. 33% of Jewish respondents report that Jews in America are politically divided, whereas only 10% report that their local synagogue or temple experiences politically division. Similarly, 24% of Muslim respondents report that Muslims in America are politically divided, whereas only 15% report that their local mosque experiences political division.
There are many reasons for this trend. On the one hand, it is harder to feel a sense of division when you know someone interpersonally, and faith is one of the few institutions in American life where showing up often is an important part of engagement. On the other hand, people could be self-sorting into local communities of belief where people’s political views are more aligned than is the case in the broader community of belief.
I think this also points to something more subtle: that local places of worship, and the communities they bring together, are quite different from faith groups in the abstract. And so, while it’s important to cover campus protests and voting trends among communities of belief, I would argue that the quad and the ballot box shouldn’t be the only places to understand communities of belief. If you’re trying to understand Jews or Muslims in America, the temple or the mosque are among the best places to begin.
-- Jason Mangone, Executive Director of More in Common USA
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The Palestinian Health Ministry claims 41,500 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children. Israel estimates that it has killed between 17,000-18,000 Hamas militants, with approximately one civilian killed for every militant.