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Number of U.S. Muslims to Double
Muslims will be more than one-quarter of the earth's population by 2030, according to a new study.
Muslims will be more than one-quarter of the Earth's population by 2030, according to a new study.
The number of U.S. Muslims will more than double, so you are as likely to know a Muslim here in 20 years as you are to know someone Jewish or Episcopalian today.
Those are among key findings in The Future of the Global Muslim Population, the first comprehensive examination of Muslims, whose numbers have been growing at a faster rate than all other groups combined.
"We're not surprised. Our mosques and schools are already overflowing," says Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, outreach director of a mosque in Falls Church, Va.
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life analyzed statistics from United Nations data and census material from more than 200 countries and studies by 50 international demographers.
If immigration patterns and Muslims' comparatively higher birth rates continue, Pew projects:
- U.S. Muslims will go from a tiny minority now, less than 1% of the nation, to 1.7%. That's a jump from 2.6 million people in 2010 to 6.2 million.
- Muslim immigration to the USA and Muslims' share of all new legal permanent residents will continue to rise. Most of the immigrants will arrive from South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
- Though 64.5% of U.S. Muslims today were born abroad, that percentage will fall to 55% as the number of native-born Muslims rises.
- Worldwide, Muslims will climb from 23.4% to 26.4% of the population, going from 1.6 billion people in 2010 to 2.2 billion in 2030, concentrated in Muslim-majority countries.
Just as now, about 3% of the global Muslim population will live in the world's most developed regions.
In several northern and eastern European nations, the percentage of Muslims will near or pass 10%, raising their political and cultural clout, particularly in urban areas.
Alan Cooperman, Pew Forum associate director of research, says the Muslim rate is "growing but slowing" and political and economic uncertainties can make dramatic shifts in projections.
"The study does not project Muslims' religiosity or their politics," Cooperman says. "People will say, 'I don't care how many Muslims there will be, I care how many radical Muslim terrorists there will be.' But no one knows that."
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says, "We Muslims need to redouble our outreach efforts because of growing challenges from the vocal minority who see us as suspect."
Mustafa Qureshi, a Cub Scout, holds an American flag and his sister, Aisha, joins in reciting King's "I Have a Dream" speech at a community center.
These are the people U.S. Muslims want people to see as their neighbors — not shadowy radicals envisioned by anti-Islamic voices heard coast to coast.
Muslims and those who fear them have news to consider: A study projects the U.S. Muslim population will double in the next two decades.
They will still make up less than 2% of the U.S. population, scattered across a vast continent. Yet this tiny minority gets massive attention.
In August, during the height of controversy over Park51, an Islamic community center and prayer space proposed for two blocks from Ground Zero, 52% of 1,029 Americans surveyed by Newsweek said they were worried about "radicals within the U.S. Muslim community."
Last fall, opponents of a mosque planned for Murfreesboro, Tenn., tried unsuccessfully in court to claim Islam is not a religion entitled to constitutional protections.
Robert Putnam and David Campbell, authors of American Grace, a book on U.S. religious diversity, found that among all the faith groups, "Muslims were a stand out for unpopularity."
However, in the Newsweek poll, 61% said they had a favorable view of Islam, although most (58%) said they don't personally know any Muslims.
"Unfortunately, many just think Muslims are living in caves somewhere in the world. They don't realize their own neighbors already are Muslims or there are Muslims praying in their neighborhood," says Wajahat Qureshi, a computer consultant who came to the USA with his family in 1997 and lives in Herndon, Va.
His wife, Shafaq, a physician in their native Kashmir in northern India, is a stay-at-home mom for Mustafa, Aisha and Umaid.
Like their neighbors who pray in evangelical megachurches or massive Catholic parishes, they belong to one of the nation's largest mosques, although Qureshi makes his weekday prayers at one of several Washington-area churches and synagogues that rent to Muslims.
"If Americans get to know Muslims, there won't be any issues, they won't hear about this report and say, 'My God, this should not happen,' " Qureshi says.
That outreach door swings both ways, says Haroon Moghul, director of Maydan, a Manhattan-based Muslim business and government communication group.
Moghul says, "If anything, this report will add to the pressure Muslims feel to prove Islam is part of America. People will do more to put themselves out there in a positive way to widen the American conversation about Islam. More numbers mean more chances to be a positive force."
Rizwan Jaka agrees. He is a lay leader in the All Dulles Area Muslims Society(ADAMS), in Herndon, Va., who marched with the Qureshis last week.
The ADAMS mosque, which includes nearly 7,000 families using 10 prayer locations, is a snapshot of Muslim diversity.
The ADAMS Center serves immigrants from dozens of nations and both major branches of Islam: Sunni and Shiite.
Like the younger Qureshi children, Jaka's children attend ADAMS Islamic school.
Jaka says, "99.99% of Muslims want what all people of faith want — to have a job, to have food on the table, to have respect and to be good people."
Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, director of Community Outreach for the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., sees confrontations over mosques and Muslim civil rights issues as "thresholds we have to cross like others did before us."
Animosity toward Muslims echoes U.S. history: Each new wave of immigrants has been grossly disparaged by those who came before, says political scientist Campbell, co-author of American Grace.
Campbell says, "Much of what we see and hear about Muslims today is what was once said about U.S. Catholics or Jews."
American Grace ends on an up note — 84% of Americans say "religious diversity is good for America."
(end of article)
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