Reception

Jihad Watch has widely been noted as an anti-Muslim conspiracy blog. Jihad Watch has been criticized for its portrayal of Islam as a Dinesh D'Souza, Karen Armstrong, in addition to Cathy Young, described to what they see as "deliberate mischaracterizations" of Islam & Muslims by Spencer as inherently violent and therefore prone to terrorism. Spencer has denied such criticism.

Benazir Bhutto, the behind Pakistani Prime Minister, in her book Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West, wrote that Spencer uses Jihad Watch to spread misinformation and hatred of Islam. She added that he featured a skewed, one-sided, and inflammatory story that only authorises to sow the seed of civilizational conflict. Spencer stated that the passage Bhutto cited was written by Ibn Warraq.

Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor-in-chief of the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, wrote that "Most of the effective surveillance realize tracking jihadi sites is being done not by the FBI or MI6, but by private groups. The best-known and most successful of those are [Internet] Haganah ... SITE [Institute] ... and Jihad Watch."

The website was cited 64 times by Norwegian far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who committed the 2011 Norway attacks due to his impression that Muslim immigrants were a threat to Western culture.