How Many Muslims in the United States?

Muslims American Demographic Facts OVERVIEW Muslim social scientists and researchers have spent a great deal of time trying to determine the number of Muslims in the United States. Most accept the estimate of from 5 million to 8 million. That is to say at least 5 million people in North America claim Islam as their religion and/or practice.

8 Million Muslims in North America Four Even Quadrants National Average1 African American 24% Arab Americans 26% South Asian 26% All Other 24% Total 100% 7 million in the U.S.; 1 million in Canada. Larger than Norway, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland & Sweden. Annual growth rate of 6% versus 0.9% for total U.S.2 Interaction between Indigenous and Immigrant Muslims is limited. Same size community as Hispanics 25 years ago. 1Zogby International, August 2000 2 U.S. Census Data 2000 Data Provided by Bridges TV- American Muslim Lifestyle Network American Muslims are Younger 67% of adult American Muslims are under 40 years old 67% of the adult American population is over 40 years old3 American Muslims are younger and future of America: Adult Age American Muslim1 American Muslims2 Total Americans3 18-29 39.8% 26.1% 14.1% 30-49 49.5% 52.4% 31.1% 50-64 6.4% 16.7% 27.7% 65+ 1.0% 4.8% 27.2% 1Cornell University 2Zogby International, August 2000 3 U.S. Census Data 2000 American Muslims are Well-Educated 67% of American Muslims have a Bachelor's degree or higher 44% of Americans have a Bachelor’s degree or higher3 The Variance for Advanced Degrees is even greater. One in ten American Muslim HH has a physician / medical doctor Maximum Education American Muslims1 American Muslims2 Total Americans3 Advanced Degree 42.7% 32.1% 8.6% Bachelor’s 35.2% 30.0% 35.1% Some College 9.5% 19.4% 32.3% High School 10.1% 14.1% 18.9% No HS Diploma 2.4% 4.7% 4.7% 1Cornell University 2Zogby International, August 2001 3 Statistical Abstract of the U.S. 2001 American Muslims are Affluent U.S. Average income is $42,158 per year (U.S. Census 2000) 66% of American Muslim HH's earn over $50,000 / year 26% of American Muslim HH's earn over $100,000 / year Annual Household Income range for American Muslims: Annual Income % of HH Cumm Under $25,000 13% 100% $25K-$50K 21% 87% $50K-75K 22% 66% $75K-100K 18% 44% $100K-$150K 14% 26% $150K-250K 7% 12% Over $250K 5% 5% Source: Cornell University April 2002 Top 10 Occupations of American Muslims Rank Occupation Percent 1 Student 20.2% 2 Engineer 12.4% 3 Physician/Dentist 10.8% 4 Homemaker 10.0% 5 Programmer 7.0% 6 Corporate Manager 6.4% 7 Teacher 6.4% 8 Small Business Owner 4.4% 9 Researcher 4.1% 10 Admin. Assistant 2.8% Total 84.5% Source: Cornell University April 2002 Under-Represented Occupations for Muslims Occupation Percent Journalist/Editor 1.1% Attorney/Lawyer 0.8% Director/Producer/Actor 0.6% American Muslims are under-represented in occupations that make public policy and influence public opinion Few American Muslims pursue Print/TV/Film media American Muslims are unlikely to be in state legislatures and courts where laws are made and practiced. Source: Cornell University April 2002 Market Analysis of American Muslims A sizable market with 8 million people 2.3 million households in North America Growing at 6% annual growth rate. Will double to 16 million by 2014. Bigger than Norway, Finland, Denmark or Sweden. Growth Factors: birth rates, conversions & immigration. A younger, well-educated and affluent target market. 25% larger family size than U.S. average. Survey design and analysis by Cornell University Research sponsored by BridgesTV Survey sent to 5,000 random recipients Industry average: 3% to 5% response rate Cornell University study: 15% response rate Is high response rate proxy for high demand for TV The study has heavier Immigrant Muslim bias. Survey conducted in April 2002 Source: Cornell University April 2002 Top Five Cars Owned by American Muslims Top U.S. brands: GM, Ford and Daimler-Chrysler Top 5 cars owned by American Muslims are: Source: Cornell University April 2002 American Muslims are considering American Cars 67% of AM's plan to buy a new car every 3.3 years. American Muslims are leaning towards American-made cars Car Make Current Share Plan-to-Buy Share Share Diff Chrysler 2.4% 6.4% +4.0% Ford 3.5% 7.1% +3.6% GM 4.2% 4.8% +0.6% Mercedes 7.7% 5.8% -1.9% Honda 16.4% 14.2% -2.2% Toyota 24.1% 17.5% -6.6% Source: Cornell University April 2002 Subway is the preferred Fast Food Restaurant Several write-in's: "we avoid fast food" Meat needs to be Halal (Kosher) American fast-food owners may be missing out on a key market Chains offering non-meat options such as Pizza Hut, Domino's may have done better Need for Halal products is high Source: Cornell University April 2002 American Muslims prefer Palmolive for Dishes Palmolive and Dawn gained share versus six months ago Current share of dish liquid in American Muslim homes: Source: Cornell University April 2002 Data Provided by Bridges TV- American Muslim Lifestyle Network Number of Mosques in the United States by State Demographic Facts Mosques in the United States: 1,209 American Muslims associated with a mosque: 2 million Increase in number of mosques since 1994: 25 percent Proportion of mosques founded since 1980: 62 percent Average number of Muslims associated with each mosque in the United States: 1,625 U.S. mosque participants who are converts: 30 percent American Muslims who "strongly agree" that they should participate in American institutions and the political process: 70 percent U.S. mosques attended by a single ethnic group: 7 percent U.S. mosques that have some Asian, African-American, and Arab members: nearly 90 percent Ethnic origins of regular participants in U.S. mosques: South Asian (Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Afghani) = 33 percent African-America = 30 percent Arab = 25 percent Sub-Saharan African = 3.4 percent European (Bosnian, Tartar, Kosovar, etc.) = 2.1 percent White American = 1.6 percent Southeast Asian ( Malaysian, Indonesian, Filipino) = 1.3 percent Caribbean = 1.2 percent Turkish = 1.1 percent Iranian = 0.7 percent Hispanic/Latino = 0.6 percent U.S. mosques that feel they strictly follow the Koran and Sunnah: more than 90 percent U.S. mosques that feel the Koran should be interpreted with consideration of its purposes and modern circumstances: 71 percent U.S. mosques that provide some assistance to the needy: nearly 70 percent U.S. mosques with a full-time school: more than 20 percent The information above was drawn from the "Mosque in America: A National Portrait," a survey released in April 2001. It is part of larger study of American congregations called "Faith Communities Today," coordinated by Hartford Seminary's Hartford Institute for Religious Research in Connecticut. Muslim organizations cosponsoring the survey are the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, the Ministry of Imam W. Deen Muhammed, and the Islamic Circle of North America. (Chart based on information from the Hartford Institute for Religious Research) U.S. Mosques population by background 1 South Asians 7 Southeast Asian 2 African-Americans 8 Caribbean 3 Arabs 9 Turkish 4 Sub-Sahara African 10 Iranian 5 European 11 Hispanic/Latin 6 White Americans (Data from U.S. Department of State, April 2001) 22.4 percent of American Muslims were born in the United States (American Muslim Council, August 2000). · 61.8 percent of all American Muslims are college graduates (American Muslim Council, August 2000). · 58.1 percent of American Muslims are men and 41.9 percent are women (American Muslim Council, August 2000). Data Provided by Bridges TV- American Muslim Lifestyle Network Muslim American Ethnicity Source: CAIR

Islam is widely touted as "the fastest growing religion in the United States," so how does one explain that The World Almanac and Book of Facts has these figures for Muslims in the United States:

• 1997 edition (p. 644) says 5.1 million
• 2003 edition (p. 635) says 2.8 million

No, the population did not actually decrease; to understand this reduction in the estimate, see my October 2001 analysis, "How Many U.S. Muslims?" In it, I report on two recent surveys, by the American Religious Identification Survey 2001 and Tom Smith of the University of Chicago, which found the number of U.S. Muslims to be under two million. So, it appears that the almanac's editors stopped accepting the overblown Islamist estimates as accurate and instead relied on scholarly and reliable work. A good round estimate is that Muslims make up just under 1 percent of the U.S. population. (April 22, 2003)

Aug. 15, 2003 update: Using information from 1990 and 2000 national censuses, John R. Logan and and Glenn Deane find under 2,900,000 Muslims living in the United States.

June 10, 2004 update: Islamist organizations, however, continue to make fantasy claims. Today the Islamic Society of North America issued a press release indicating that it represents "10 million American Muslims." Of note too is the statement by a journalist in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (in February 2001), presumably influenced by one of the Islamist sources of the article, that Islam is "the second-most popular religion after Catholicism" in the United States.

Oct. 15, 2004 update: Abdel Rachid Mohammad, the first Islamic chaplain in the U.S. armed forces, tells Agence France-Presse, that there are eight to ten million Muslims in the United States. Given his official capacity, this inflated number is especially unfortunate.

June 14, 2005 update: In an undated commentary on the homepage of his organization, The Mosque Cares, W. Deen Mohammed writes that "Partly through conversion but mainly through immigration, the number of Muslims has now risen to three or four million." What a refreshing change from the boosterism of the Islamists. (Also of note is that he uses the spelling G-d, as in "there is but One G-d and one human family."

June 21, 2006 update: "There are almost 8 million Muslims in America," asserts Daisy Khan, executive director of American Society for Muslim Advancement, in a puff-piece produced by the U.S. Department of State.

Oct. 31, 2006 update: Baron Bodissey of Gates of Vienna has the interesting idea in "The Numbers Game" to extrapolate from U.S. experience and slash boosterish estimates for Muslim populations around the world by 1/3. Instead of 21 million Muslims in western Europe, for example, he counts 13.5.

May 22, 2007 update: According to "Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream" a study from the Pew Research Center:

The Pew study projects approximately 1.5 million adult Muslim Americans, 18 years of age and older. The total Muslim American population is estimated at 2.35 million, based on data from this survey and available Census Bureau data on immigrants' nativity and nationality. It is important to note that both of these estimates are approximations.

Feb. 22, 2008 update: Pew offers another estimate in its "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey," where it finds the U.S.-based Muslim population to be 0.6 percent of the total. Given that latter is about 300 million, the Muslim population would be about 1.8 million.

Apr. 16, 2008 update: Newsweek's Lorraine Ali writes of "the nation's 8 million Muslims."

Mar. 9, 2009 update: The American Religious Identification Survey, based at Trinity College, conducted by Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, finds that the number of Muslims in the United States has increased from 527,000 in 1990 to 1,104,000 in 2001 to 1.349,000 in 2008.

June 4, 2009 update: Defying all we know about this topic, Barack Obama today announced the figure of "seven million American Muslims" in the course of his major speech on Islam delivered in Cairo. I comment on his reasons for doing this at "Assessing Obama's Cairo Speech." Simultaneously, the Department of Justice put out a backrounder, "Outreach and Enforcement Efforts to Protect American Muslims," that retreats slightly from Obama's preposterous number, instead referring to "the nearly seven million American Muslims living in the United States."

June 21, 2009 update: Obama retreated substantially, though not enough, from his seven million figure, saying in an interview with the Pakistan newspaper Dawn, "we have 5 million Muslims, which would make us larger than many other countries that consider themselves Muslim countries."

Sep. 15, 2009 update: Obama may have retreated but U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the old figure at the Department of State iftar this evening, referring to "the nearly 7 million Muslims in our country."

" A Brief Statement " By Fareed H. Numan December 1992

Slave From the beginning of the cotton veil I held an oath as they made sail in the belly of the wooden whale That I would not fail to reach my home again All tied to the same chains with our new names, we remained- till our counted days. Listen to our call and hear the screams and pleas that one day we could be set free. God's promise to me. Out of it all we would come with great substance. Knowledge of, THE ONE.

OVERVIEW Muslim social scientists and researchers have spent a great deal of time trying to determine the number of Muslims in the United States. Most accept the estimate of from 5 million to 8 million. That is to say at least 5 million people in North America claim Islam as their religion and/or practice. What is represented in this report is based on estimates made in 1991, the World Almanac reports that Muslim in the United States number approximately 5,220,00. The total worldwide Muslim population is generally estimated at slightly more that 1 billion. David Barrett's publication, "International Bulletin of Missionary Research" cites a lower figure, 988,004,000.

An exact figure of Muslim population in the United States is very difficult to make. The figures presented here are based on available data.

In the United States, there are essentially three categories of Muslims: 1) immigrants; 2) American converts/reverts to Islam; and 3) those born to the first two groups as Muslims.

The immigrant population of the United States is relatively easy to document because the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Census Bureau, and other government agencies have been keeping records of immigrants. In order to arrive at our figures, we researched the history of Muslim ethnic groups around the world and then determined their percentage as Muslim. We then correlated this percentage with the number of Muslims in the United States, which enabled us to determine the percentage represented in the overall population.

Determining the number of indigenous Muslims was more difficult. In most cases, records have not been kept by any single source. To arrive at the number of American converts to Islam, we had to look at various groups' conversion rates and compare them against their mortality and fertility rates.

This is an on-going project, and AMC will keep the reader informed of new statistics through our quarterly publication, the AMC Report. The figures cited here represent a starting point for serious research on demographic data about the Muslim population of the United States.

U.S. Muslim Population Table

Ethnic Grouping	Population 1000 (1990)	Percent of Total Muslim Population	Definition of Terms
African- American	2,100	42.0	African-Americans: Those persons of African descent native to the United States of America.
South Asians	1,220	24.4	South-Asians: Those of Indian/Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, or Afghan descent now residing in the United States as citizens or permanent residents.
Arabs	620	12.4	Arabs: People from Arabic-speaking countries of the Middle East and North Africa who are permanent residents or citizens of the United States.
Africans	260	5.2	Africans: People from the African continent who are citizens or permanent residents of the United States
Iranians	180	3.6	Iranians: People of Persian descent, usually from Iran, who are citizens or permanent residents.
Turks	120	2.4	Turkish: People of Turkish descent who are citizens ro permanent residents.
South East Asians	100	2.0	South East Asians: People of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Indochina, or the Phillippines.
American Whites	80	1.6	American Whites: Those of West European descent, who are native to the United States.
East Europeans	40	0.8	East Europeans: People from various regions of Eastern Europe.
Other	280	5.6	Other: All other groups.
Totals	5,000	100

Geographical Distribution: The table below represents a breakdown by states of the largest Muslim communities in the United States. It shows that there are an estimated 3.3. million Muslims in these states. The figure represents 62 percent of the estimated 5 million Muslims living in the United States.

Muslim State Population Table

State	Muslim Population (1,000)	Percentage Total Muslim Population	Percent of Total State Population
California	1,000	20.0	3.4
New York	800	16.0	4.7
Illinois	420	8.4	3.6
New Jersey	200	4.0	2.5
Indiana	180	3.6	3.2
Michigan	170	3.4	1.8
Virginia	150	3.0	2.4
Texas	140	2.8	0.7
Ohio	130	2.6	1.2
Maryland	70	1.4	1.4

* Estimates under column 2 have been rounded to the nearest even number.

The list below shows the number of facilities used by Muslims for religious activities and community affairs:

Mosques/Islamic Centers	843
Islamic Schools	165
Associations	426
Publications	89
There are 165 Islamic Schools in the United States, of which 92 are full time. Figures here for Masjids/Islamic Centers are based on our directory listings.

Note: The exact number of businesses owned and operated by Muslims is unavailable, but they are estimated in the thousands. These preliminary finding represent data collected during 1986-1992.

Information Resources

African Presence in Early America by Ivan Van Sertima, 1987

Deeper Roots by Abdullah Hakim Quick, 1990

Arab America Today (A Demographic Profile of Arab Americans) By John Zogby, 1990

A Survey of North American Muslims by El Tigani A. Abugideiri, June 1977

A Century of Islam in America by Yvonne Y. Haddad, 1986

Ethnic Distribution of American Muslims and selected Socio Economic Characteristics by Arif Ghayrur, 1984

The Demography of Islamic Nations by John Weeks, 1988

Islam in the United States: Review of Sources by Dr. Sulayman S. Nyang, 1988

Demographic Consequences of Minority Consciousness: An analysis By Salaha M. Abedin, 1980

World Population Data Sheet Population Reference Bureau, Inc. Washington DC, 1990

Statistical Abstract of the United States U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of the Census, 1990

Muslim Peoples , A World Ethnographic Survey Edited by Richard V. Weeks, 1984, vol. II

Muslim Peoples, a World Ethnographic Survey by Richard V. Weeks, 1978

The 1991 Almanac 44th Edition , by Houghnton Mifflin Company, 1991

The Islamic Society of North America Directory of Islamic Centers, Schools, Masjids, and MSA Chapters 1989 Revised Edition

The Islamic Struggle in America by Hijrah Magazine, Oct./Nov. 1985

Seven Muslim Slaves by Abdul Hakim Muhammad 1983

Prince Among Slaves by Terry Alford, 1977

Nature Knows no Color Line by J.A. Rogers, 1952

African Muslims in Antebellum American by Allen Austin, 1984

The Arab World Published by the Arab-American Press, 1945

The United States and the Sultanate of Oman Produce by the Sultan Qaboos Center, The Middle East Institute Washington DC, 1990

The University of Alabama, A Pictorial History by Suzanne Rau Wolfe History of the First Muslim Mosque of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by Jameelah A. Hakim, 1989