How many Muslims live in the United States?
Until now, basically, no one has had any idea. By law, the U.S. Census cannot
ask questions about religion. There are also plenty of other difficulties in
coming up with a number, starting with the problem of defining who is a Muslim:
Does one include non-standard believers like Louis Farrakhan and the Druze?
Uncertainty has generated some wildly divergent numbers. A large 1990
demographic survey counted 1.3 million Muslims. In 1998, a Pakistani newspaper
put the number at 12 million. Even the usually authoritative Yearbook of
American and Canadian Churches found 527,000 American Muslims in 1996 and six
times as many (3.3 million) in 1998.
Needing some kind of consensus figure, Muslim organizations came up with a
self-acknowledged "guestimation" of 6 million, which this year they
decided to raise to 7 million.
These numbers were so widely adopted (even by this writer) that they acquired a
sheen of authority. But repetition does not transform a guess into a fact.
The trouble is a generic one; religious organizations commonly inflate their
membership to enhance their voice in the public square.
Fortunately, the smog of imprecision finally lifted last week, with the
appearance of two authoritative studies by highly regarded demographers. (Each
study relied on respondents' religious self-identification.) Interestingly, they
agreed on a very similar number, one much smaller than the old guestimate.
The American Religious Identification Survey 2001 carried out by the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York polled more than 50,000 people and
found the total American Muslim population to be 1.8 million.
Meanwhile, the University of Chicago's Tom Smith reviewed prior national surveys
and (in a study sponsored by the American Jewish Committee) found that the best
estimate puts the Muslim population in 2000 at 1,886,000. (With a nod toward
figures supplied by Islamic organizations, he allowed that this number could be
as high as 2,814,000 Muslims.)
In other words, two authoritative studies carried out by scholars found that
American Muslims number under 2 million - less than a third of the
hitherto-consensus number.
To this, the militant Islamic groups in Washington - widely but erroneously seen
as representative of American Muslims - responded with predictable hyperbole.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) furiously accused Smith's
report of working "to block Muslim political participation."
The American Muslim Council (AMC) charged Smith with nothing less than trying to
"deny the existence of 41/2 million American Muslims" and
blamed him for "tearing at the very heart of America."
The AMC also amusingly claimed that its own estimate of "more than 7
million" Muslims came from the 2000 Census figures - erroneously thinking
that the Census asks about religion.
Oh, and that's the same AMC which in 1992 pressured a researcher named Fareed
Nu'man to find 6 million Muslims in the country; Nu'man later testified that he
counted just 3 million and was fired by the AMC when he refused to inflate his
number above 5 million.
Why does the militant Islamic lobby insist on the 6-7 million figures? Because a
larger number, even if phony, offers it enhanced access and clout. Convincing
the Republican Party that Muslims number 8 million, for example, led to urgent
calls from its chairman for "meeting with [Muslim] leaders," something
which becomes less of a priority when the Muslim population turns out to be much
smaller.
Knowing the real number of Muslims will, most immediately, likely impede two
militant Islamic efforts now underway: one (pushed by The Minaret magazine) to
get Americans to acknowledge that their own misdeeds partially caused the
atrocities of Sept. 11; and another (led by CAIR) to halt the U.S. military
campaign in Afghanistan. The longer-range implications will be yet more
significant.
All material on this site ©1980-2001 Daniel
Pipes.