Losing Muslim Hearts and Minds: Religiosity, Elite Competition, and Anti-Americanism in the Islamic World

The battle for public opinion in the Islamic world is an ongoing priority for U.S. diplomacy. The current debate over why many Muslims hold anti-American views centers around whether individuals dislike “who Americans are” with respect to fundamental aspects of culture and government, or “what Americans do” policy-wise in international affairs. We propose, instead, that Muslim anti-Americanism is predominantly a domestic, elite-led phenomenon that intensifies when there is greater competition between Islamist and secular-nationalist political factions within a country. While more observant Muslims tend to be more anti-American, paradoxically the most anti-American countries are those with Muslim populations that are less religious overall, and thus more divided on the religious-secular issue dimension. We provide case study evidence consistent with this explanation, as well as an in-depth multilevel statistical analysis of public opinion data from over 12,000 Muslim respondents in 21 countries. Acknowledgements: The authors wish to thank Christopher Anderson, Ceren Belge, Giacomo Chiozza, Tom Clark, Jorge Dominguez, James Fearon, Nahomi Ichino, David Laitin, Monika Nalepa, Chris Reenock, Jeffrey Staton, Jonathan Wand, Carrie Wickham, and the audiences of the Notre Dame Kellogg Institute, the MIT Works-in-Progress Seminar Series and the Stanford Comparative Politics Workshop. Jana Marie Hutchinson, Ugur Pece, Jeremy Voss and Meredith Wheeler provided exemplary research assistance. The Pew Global Attitudes Project bears no responsibility for the interpretations presented or conclusions reached based on our analysis of the data.