Mogahed wants more Westerners to know that Islam does not motivate extremist or violent behavior any more than other religions do. Her work at Gallup gave her the opportunity to oversee numerous public opinion polls among Muslims. The findings confirmed that Muslim religiosity did not correlate with the tendency to sympathize with terrorism. If anything, higher levels of religiosity were linked to a propensity among Muslims to reject terrorism. “Islam as a net influence is the reason there is so little terrorism,” Mogahed argues. “Islam as a net influence is the reason we don’t have more hate and animosity between Muslims and the West.”

XREF: Connects to the broader literature debunking the religion-motivates-terrorism assumption, e.g., Gallup polling on Muslim public opinion. FICTION: Could inform a character who is wrongly presumed radical due to devoutness, when devotion in fact steers them away from extremism.

Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Intro…, loc. 674