A brief overview of the demographics of Muslim Americans currently living in the United States.
Muslims entered the United States at various points throughout history. There are some pieces of archaeological evidence to indicate that Muslims crossed the Atlantic to explore and colonize the Americas centuries before the first English colony was established. Following this, Muslims were brought from Africa along with the slaves, they migrated from Eastern European countries, Asian nations and elsewhere throughout the last few centuries in various waves. Today, Muslims in America are an interwoven part of the American tapestry and Muslim American culture crosses every ethnic and social line.
How Many Americans are Muslims?
There have been many studies over the years to try and answer this question. Every study to assess what percentage of Americans are Muslim has its own flaws. Some studies only look at immigrant Muslim communities based on country of migration. These studies stereotype the Muslim American culture as being exclusively Arab and South Asian whereas there are many African American Muslims that get ignored along with the immigrants from Eastern European Muslim nations, Asian nations such as Indonesia and Malaysia. Other studies have looked at all Muslim-Majority nations as an origin point but those studies miss a great deal of native born American Muslims and Muslims who immigrate from Muslim minority nations such as the Philippines, China, India, and others where the Muslim population is still large in numbers.
This is one time when the census, in attempting to prevent discrimination, causes a problem with identifying demographics. Estimations put Muslim American numbers anywhere between 3% of the population and 15% of the population. Anecdotally speaking, in the Charlotte, NC metro area (where Muslim American is based) we can see that 15,000 Muslims come together for Eid prayer. That alone is approximately .5% of the Charlotte Metro census area. To clarify, we know that there are many people who do not make it to the Charlotte Eid prayer since much of the census region is too far to drive, people have to work, some choose not to attend, etc. So it would be very safe to say that Muslims represent about 1% of our area population. In major cities like Chicago, we have found numbers of Muslims in the hundreds of thousands via voluntary census taken by mosques and Muslim organizations.
What does all this mean? What percentage of Americans are Muslims then? Due to the conflicting methods of calculating who is Muslim and where the counts come from; it is safe to assume that the low-end 3% number espoused by those who look at immigrant numbers is wrong. However, 15% is overblown and is often espoused with no solid evidence. Bearing all of this in mind, it is safe to assume that roughly 5% of the American population is Muslim in some form or another. That equates to about 16.2 million Muslim Americans as of January 2017.
What is Muslim American Culture?
First and foremost, Muslim American culture is the culture of Islam. That is, there are sets of rules and guidelines on life that every Muslim must abide by in order to be a faithful and practicing Muslim. These rules and guidelines come directly from the Qur’an and the Hadith (hadith are the collected sayings and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad). Following that comes the interpretation of the guidelines by the school of thought a Muslim follows. While the overwhelming majority of Muslims are Sunni; even that breaks down into further methods. The majority of these differences of view between the schools of thought, however, have more to do with how a Muslim practices his or her worship and little to do with how he or she relates to society outside of the Muslim community.
The next layer would be a Muslim’s ethnic culture. This is most common among immigrants and their children, but grandchildren and great-grandchildren shed most of these cultural practices from their ancestral origin and adopt the predominant aspects of American culture which do not conflict with the religion of Islam. A more interesting case study would be to examine the culture of African American Muslims as the community has evolved through the religion over the last century. African American communities embraced concepts of Islam through movements created by Noble Drew Ali which began as the Moorish Science Temple, then evolved into the Nation of Islam. After nearly 100 years of practicing these pseudo-Islamic movements; the African American community was led into Sunni Islam by Imam Warith Deen Muhammad. This century and a half of evolution from the time of Noble Drew Ali until the present day; has embedded the principles of Islam into the African American culture and has allowed a very organic form of Muslim American cultural identity to rise. While White Americans who convert to Islam are still very much struggling with their cultural identity, the African American community has a network of leadership and appears to have a high level of comfort with being both American and Muslim.
White American Muslims are not a new concept. The first recorded white convert to Islam was Alexander Russell Webb in 1888. He went on to write a Muslim news paper in the New York City area and established the first mosque in Manhattan before passing away in 1916. From that point until now we have seen many White Americans coming to Islam and attempting to make sense of the balance between Islam and American identity. Most White American Muslims who found Islam via intellectual pursuit have found little difficulty in choosing to either embrace Islamic identity as their local community reflects it, or to reject all cultural trappings (dress, custom, etc) in favor of American identity while adopting the principles of Islamic worship.
Native American Muslims have a different approach, many Native Americans who become Muslims have found that the guiding principles of Islam are so highly compatible with the core philosophies of their individual tribal customs that few find the need to shed much of their culture as they increase the worship in Islam. Obviously certain attributes of religious aspects of tribal custom would have to go away as they abandon the worship of many gods for one God. Additionally, those from tribes with customs to use intoxicants would abandon the use of those intoxicants as any convert to Islam would give up intoxicants.
Is there an American Muslim Center?
Since Islam does not have a hierarchy of priesthood or a structure of clergy; there is no true American Muslim center. Every community has their own center of worship and there are many organizations that Muslim American leaders look to as a central organization to coordinate intellectual resources. Organizations such as the Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic Circle of North America, the Muslim American Society, etc; still have divisions among them to cater to each community.
Every community around the country has a different set of needs just as every other community in the country has a different set of needs. The mosque of a given community acts as a center for the Muslim Americans surrounding it. The mosque will provide services needed by the individual community and will often hold services in the language of the immigrant community it serves (if any), in Arabic (the language of the Qur’an), and more often than not they will also offer services in English.
Some immigrant communities band tightly together and center around their mosque as a form of protection. These communities tend to only provide services in the native language of the community they serve and only evolve out of this as the community grows and the majority of the people adopt English as their primary language. This phenomenon is not unique among Muslims, but is echoed among many immigrant communities.
Are American Muslim Women Oppressed?
It is remarkable that only days after Linda Sarsour spoke loudly and clearly in public in Washington, DC that she was a proud Muslim American, a proud Palestinian American and proud to be the organizer of the Women’s march on Washington; that we would have to answer this question. Yet, true to form, people continue to ask if American Muslim women are treated harshly.
Rather than go into all the rights that women have in Islam, the legal position that women have to inherit, to be guaranteed protection by their husbands, fathers, brothers, etc. Rather than detail the numerous instances where the Prophet Muhammad commanded his followers to treat women with dignity and righteousness. One can just look at simple facts. Men abuse women worldwide with no respect to religious, cultural, ethnic, or national boundaries. There is no empirical evidence to prove that Muslim women are any more or less oppressed than any other women.
What is provable is that the religion of Islam does not tolerate violence against women. Islam compels men to support and defend women. Islam granted gender equity to women nearly 1500 years ago. Muslims in America such as Linda Sarsour, Asra Nomani, and many others continue to lead the charge for women’s rights in modern society.
Can Muslims be Good Americans?
Throughout the last 15 years, since 9/11/01, this question has been asked across media, social networking, interfaith meetings, and private conversations. People who have never met a Muslim often ask “Can a Muslim be a good American?” What does it mean to be a “good American?”
Does it mean to be law-abiding? If so then Muslim Americans are good Americans because they commit far fewer crimes than the median crime rate of America at large. Is it to be business owners and contribute to the economy? If so, then Muslims do make good Americans because the median income among Muslim communities is higher than the American median income. Additionally, Muslims are driven to be business owners to cater to the needs of Muslims since there are no major chain companies which do so. This means restaurants, groceries, event halls and even private swimming facilities all of which are still available for the rest of the community to use. A large number of physicians are Muslims, engineers and other professionals are Muslim. In fact, it is these highly skilled professions that bring Muslims to the USA every year.
Muslim Americans have established businesses, built infrastructure, served in our armed forces, and serve delicious food every day and have done so for generations. Muslim Americans can be just as good and productive as Americans as any other group of people in America.
So, Who ARE Muslim Americans?
There is no single story when it comes to the nature of Muslim American culture since there are so many different Muslims from so many different ancestries and experiences. Muslim Americans are as individual as any other American. American Muslim men and women generally want to same things as other Americans. Politically Muslims tend to be more liberal, but only by a margin slightly greater than the rest of America.
Muslim Americans are not really that different from other Americans. There is no centralized hub, no grand scheme to take over anything. Muslims in America are just people who are trying to claim their slice of liberty and build communities that reverberate with the promise that all people have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Resources and further reading:
1. Muslim-American Demographics Reveal A Diverse Group That Rejects Categorization
2. Countering Myths about American Muslims: Demographics
3. Muslims in America – A Statistical Portrait
4. Islam in the United States
5. Muhammad, Amir Nashid Ali, Muslims in America: Seven Centuries of History(1312-2000), Amana Publications, 2001.
6. Lo, Mbaye, Muslims in America: Race, Politics, and Community Building, Amana Publications, 2004.
7. Nimer, Mohamed, The North American Muslim Resource Guide, Routledge, 2002.