NEW YORK (AA) — Roughly half of Americans believes at least “some” U.S. Muslims are anti-American, according to a new research released Wednesday.

The Pew Research Center said its survey of 2,000 people, conducted Jan. 7-14, found that many Americans think a substantial segment of the U.S. Muslim population bears anti-American sentiments.

More than 10 percent of Americans believes “most” or “almost all” Muslims are anti-American and 14 percent think “about half” of the Muslim population is anti-American, the research said.

The report also said about 40 percent of Americans want the next U.S. president to speak bluntly about Islamic extremism even if the statements are critical of Islam as a whole.

Blunt talk is preferred by two-thirds of Republicans, while about 70 percent of Democrats express the opposite view, according to the survey.

Nearly half of respondents said the next president should be careful not to criticize Islam as a whole when speaking about Islamic extremists.

In December, another Pew Research study found that 46 percent of Americans thought Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence and roughly half of the public said they were “very concerned” about the alleged rise of “Islamic extremism” in the country.

The role of Islam in the U.S. has become a hot button issue in the current presidential race with one Republican candidate going as far as to demand a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”.

Mosques and Islamic centers have been the targets of vandalism, harassment and other anti-Muslim acts at least 63 times ın 2015, according to a study by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The figure marks the highest since the U.S.-Muslim advocacy group began in 2009 to track anti-Muslim attacks.

Author Mustafa Çağlayan

[Photo: Turkish American Community center in Lanham, Maryland. Photograph: Samuel Corum/AA]