What Do Muslims Actually Believe? Ask Us Anything.

A Note to Our Supporters

Dear Friends,

For over thirty years, ING has held to a simple conviction: that most fear of Muslims and Islam in America is not born of malice, but of unfamiliarity, and that honest, face-to-face education and engagement remains the most effective antidote we have. Today, we write to share a major milestone in that work, and to be candid with you about the moment in which it arrives.

What We’ve Done:

Over the past few months, we completed the most comprehensive revision of our General Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on Muslims and their faith, growing it from roughly 100 questions to 200 organized across 9 sections. Every answer, new and old, is written for the reader who is curious, uncertain, or even skeptical, and who wants a straightforward answer.

Among the updates: 

• Expanded treatment of Sharia — what it actually is, how it differs from fiqh (human legal interpretation), and why claims of “creeping Sharia” misunderstand both Islamic law and American constitutional life.
• New questions on difficult and contested subjects, including blasphemy, apostasy, corporal punishments, gender, sexuality, interfaith marriage, and Muslim responses to extremism, answered with primary sources and the full range of scholarly and community opinions rather than false uniformity.
• A commitment to engaging hard questions without evasion. Where real tensions or debates exist within the tradition, we name them; our neighbors can tell the difference between an honest answer and a talking point.

Why Now:

The work we just completed wasn’t routine maintenance. Since October 7, 2023, Muslim American communities have lived through the most sustained surge of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry in a generation. In its 2026 civil rights report, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization recorded 8,683 complaints of anti-Muslim discrimination and hate nationwide last year, the most since the organization began counting in 1996. And the targeting of our houses of worship is accelerating. In a recent three-month period, it documented attacks on mosques and Islamic institutions amounting to 51% of the previous year’s entire total, a 183% increase over the same period last year, when it documented six such incidents.

At the same time, we are witnessing something historic: young Muslim Americans stepping into public life at levels previous generations could only have imagined. New York City inaugurated its first Muslim mayor; in Michigan, a Muslim American has won a major-party Senate nomination and, if elected, would become the first Muslim senator in our nation’s history.

ING is a nonpartisan educational organization; we do not endorse candidates or parties, and we celebrate civic participation across the political spectrum. But we cannot ignore what these milestones have provoked: not debate over policy, which is the lifeblood of democracy, but attacks on faith itself; invocations of 9/11 aimed at elected officials, claims that Islam is “not a religion,” and warnings of a “caliphate” in New York. In just the past week, the President told reporters that “jihadists” are being “elected all over the place,” a sitting senator branded the Michigan nominee a “terrorist,” and a member of Congress called every Muslim holding public office a “Trojan horse” and a threat to national security. The question “What do Muslims actually believe about violence, law, and loyalty to country?” is no longer academic. Millions of Americans are asking it, and someone will answer it. We intend that answer to be accurate.

What You Can Do:

The updated FAQs exist to be used. We ask three things of you:

1. Read them. Even lifelong Muslims and longtime allies tell us they learn from these answers. Visit www.ing.org/FAQS
2. Share them. Send them to a colleague, a teacher, a journalist, or a neighbor asking sincere questions; this resource was written precisely for the person who is not sure what to think. Visit www.ing.org/FAQS
3. Bring us in. Our speakers and panels across faiths and ethnic groups serve schools, universities, workplaces, congregations, and law enforcement agencies nationwide; education delivered person-to-person does what no document alone can. Visit www.ing.org/schedule-speakers

Fear shrinks in the presence of familiarity. That has been ING’s experience across tens of thousands of presentations, and it is truer now than ever. Thank you for standing with us, as supporters, as neighbors, and as fellow Americans committed to a country where no one’s faith makes them a stranger.

With gratitude and hope,

The ING Team

Islamic Networks Group (ING) is a nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) educational organization. Nothing in this message constitutes an endorsement of any candidate or party.