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iTunes ChannelSome thoughts on the US Muslim Population
Tiny Url for this post: http://tinyurl.com/knz34u
Honestly, I’ve always thought that the Muslim population estimation given by Muslim organizations seemed to be bit inflated (especially in smaller areas). They usually come up with the number by multiplying by three the number of people or families that attend a mosque because they say that two thirds are not religious. So if there are 100,000 Muslims in a city at the Eid, they will multiply that by three and come up with 300,000.
Here are some estimates for the cities with the largest populations:
New York-NJ area: about 800,000
Los Angeles area: about 500,000
DC-Baltimore area: about 400,000
Chicagoland about 300,000
Detroit area about 300,000 (some estimate about 3% of Detroit’s metro population is Muslim)
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington area about 200,000 (according to some, 85% of that is African-American)
Just those 5 metro areas – according to those estimates – would give you around 2.5 million Muslims in the US and if you ask the average person if there – Muslim or non-Muslim – about those numbers, they would probably not dispute it because there are a lot of Muslims in those areas with a significant and visible presence.
Then the next tier of cities:
- Dallas-Ft Worth, Houston, Atlanta, San Diego, the Bay Area, and Seattle which all claim to have around 100,000 Muslims
These cities have pretty large Muslim populations, but most would be a little surprised at that large a number.
- St Louis and the Miami/South Florida areas claim to have around 70,000 Muslims
- Columbus, Memphis, Cincinnati, Nashville all claim to have around 20,000-25,000 Muslims
I can tell you that the average person in a place like Memphis would be shocked to see an estimate of 25,000 Muslims in their city and the first question that would come to their mind is: “Where are they??” and they just simply would not believe it. As a Muslim I asked the same thing about the number given for Memphis as a person can easily drive from one side of the city to the other everyday for weeks and not see a single practicing Muslim except at the masjid.
Memphis usually gets an Eid crowd of about 2,500 – 3,000 Muslims including all men, women and children. Even if you quadrupled that number, you still only get around 10,000-12,000 or so. I just don’t know how or where the number 25,000 came from by any stretch.
My point is that the numbers of Muslim in the smaller cities may be even more inflated which may skew the numbers nationwide.
We report this – and the unprovable ‘Islam is the fastest growing religion’ mantra – as if it is an article of Iman. Anyone who questions it, then his Iman is questioned.
Even if Islam is shrinking in size, this has no bearing on whether or not Islam is the truth. Even if there are only 1 million Muslim in the US this has no bearing on us.
So why the need to inflate numbers?
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salam.. its not a matter of inflating the number, it’s a matter of getting to the truth.
Numbers mean a lot… that is why Muslims need to fight for the conservatively ‘right’ number just as many Islamophobic organizations are trying to keep it low.
I will be addressing this question in Update#4 on the Pew Research report.
Assalaamu alaykum,
Wait a minute… Houston is only at 100k? and that’s an overestimate ?!?!?! (ahmad reconsiders move to houston….)
Just one second people… salatomatic.com says there are 50 masjids in the Greater Houston area… that number is HUGE compared to my experience in Baltimore area (maybe 10-20 masjids in total) and the Boston area (10+ masjids… 20 according to salatomatic).
How does Houston have soo many masjids and only 100K muslims??? And I have heard so much from SO many different people about the awesome Muslim community it Houston… from what I heard and from I saw at TXDawah… I expected only NYC/NJ to rival Houston.
Amad and Sh. Yasir, our local Houstonites, any idea what is going on here?
wassalaam,
ahmad
Houston is easily 200k. 80 Masajids…
My issue is mainly with the smaller cities like Memphis.
I don’t think the number of masjids is necessarily an indicator of the number of Muslims. They say that there are about 400K Muslims in the DC area and there are about 40 or so masjids. Masjids are easier (i.e., less expensive) to build in some areas of the country than others. Dar Al Hijrah – for example – draws about 3,000 Muslims on any given Friday. The four masjids in Memphis collectively draw about 1,200. So you have to consider the price of building masjids into consideration. Boston – for example – is much more expensive than many other places in the country
@Amad
I am not disputing your number, but how did you arrive at that number? Do we have anything other than anecdotal evidence?
Asalaamu alaikum.
Yes, the Houston Muslim community is awesome!
This is the only place I’ve been really involved in a Muslim community, so can’t meaningfully compare with elsewhere, but I can say that when I lived in Boston I found the number of masajid woefully small.
Tariq, my gut-feeling
I’ll try to dig up more evidence… I am still trying to finish Update#3 for the Pew Report.
i woudl say houston and dallas/ft.worth metroplex (my new second home) are about the same…..and I woudl eik to side with tariq’s estimate….Allahu ‘Alam…..
Hosuotn has 80-100 islamic institutions….even if we take that number as big huge masjid that can hold about 500 people
that woudl give us an estiamte of about 50,000…..and if we multiply that by 3 – it’s still at 150,000 -
considerign that hosuton has only about 10-20 maxx big masaajid the rest are small tiny ity bity masjids
i doubt houston has 200,000 ….highly unlikely even if you include the ismailis in 2002 the estimate according to them was about 15,000
please check detroit and its suburbs’ population too. Arabs, Desis and African-Americans…all of them have a very large concentration. Last time, I checked it was only after NY and Cali.
I have seen this mentality all too often amongst Muslims. As muslims we are concerned with truth, and not painting a pretty picture. If that involves people leaving islam, or that we are not the fastest growing religion, so be it. Islam relies on faith in God and the finality of the prophethood of our beloved Rasul (saws).
Houston’s muslim community is very large and diverse. The Houston metropolitan area easily has over 400k.
Los Angeles is one city but the surronding 87 other cities have significant numbers of Muslim. The County of Los Angeles has at least 1 million muslims. We have so many illegals it is hard to give an accurate figure because it is easy to blend in L.A.
Bay Area, CA has a big Muslim pop too, about 200,000 according to CAIR.
Allah knows best.
I think that when we are in a Muslim enclave we can get a very skewed picture of the reality. We see full Jumuahs, activities, Muslim businesses and Muslim everywhere and we think that there are more Muslims than there are in reality.
When this is the case, we can tend to live in a bubble to some extent and think of ourselves as larger than we actually are.
400,000 Muslims in Houston would mean that about 1 in every ten people are Muslim there. While there is a nice Muslim presence in Houston, masha Allah, one in ten people is a very significant figure and one would think that there would be around 1,000 masjids if that was the case.
I think that if there was an accurate way to census religion – with the way we are inflating our numbers – we would be a little disappointed in what we would find
Most take many of the smaller cities into consideration when calculating for Houston. So Galveston, pearland, Engellton (spelling?), Missouri city, SugarLand, Conroe, Baycity, Katy and a slew of other small cities are mashed in the numbers.
There are stlll neighborhoods in Houston that don’t have masjids: NE Houston, East Houston (well Uvalde is new), and the 5th ward and the area between downtown and north zone don’t have Masjids. So the community is definitely not 200K.
If I recall the Eid prayer at the G.R Brown center or the Astrodome only got to about 30,000 at its peak (including late people), with at least seven other Eid prayers happening in and around the city mostly with non-ISGH associated masjids. Ismailis and Shia communities counted as well, I doubt that the population goes over 120K.
The number of masjids in Houston has more to do with coordinating to build masjids where needed as opposed to the mentality in most cities where each group is trying to rival the other by building larger (and therefore, emptier) masjids, rather than trying to build modest-sized – but strategically located – masjids
New York-NJ has easily 1 million
Salaam…
I currently live in NY suburbs and want to provide a better Islamic environment for my family – esp school for my kids…would Houston be a good choice? Dallas? Thanks for your time.
i think both are good options. houston has an amazing community mashallah. dallas though i think may have some better schools at this point
ASA… having intimate knowledge of both Dallas and Houston (lived in Houston, uncle in Dallas)… I believe Iman Academy does pretty good for Islamic school and you cannot beat the community of Houston. Dallas is quite Dull(as) if you get the drift
waslaam
Dallas beats Houston, hands down as far as islamic schools are concerned as of right now…..in my opinion….
but as far as community activities and islamic environment…..houston blows dallas away
and houston community is far more structured and organized than dallas…..
Allahu ‘Alam
Possibly, those statistics may be/may not be inflated, but far as seeing the Muslim population in Atlanta, I wouldn’t suprise me if it was around that 100,000 number for a few reasons:
1) The biggest mistake that I come across with some non- Georgians is that they only focus on Atlanta the city opposed to the smaller cities around them. For example, the ” metro Atlanta ” area may be a small town 50 miles away from it, but yet, it’s part of the ATL.
2)The difference between most Northern cities and Southern cities like ATL is that their Muslim communities are older, more established, older and concentrated than in the ATL. Where you may find a ” Little Lebanon”, in a places like Dearborn, Michigan or Baltimore, the Muslim populations are spreaded and though they may not number those to that of the following cities, but there are some exceptions :
1)Clarkston, Georgia( a very diverse area where you will see many Somail/Ethiopian Bosnian and Iraqi Muslims)
2)Midtown Atlanta( Although it is known as a gay community, anybody lives there. There are also a lot of immigrant Muslims who live there, especially the young students attending Georgia Tech)
3) The West End-Whether it’s the N.O.I( yeck!) or just regular Muslims, they also live in this religiously diverse community.
4) East Lake- While you may not not see them as much as the other places I’ve listed on here, There is also a small community of Muslim in this golfing community.
5)Another thing to consider: In some Georgia towns/counties, they can be pretty populated areas. Fulton( Over 3,000,000) county is one of them, but another example would be it’s neighbor DeKalb County( Over 350,000) along with other counties/cities that make up the metropolitan Atlanta area. Those are two examples of counties/towns with a population of over 100,000 people in them but, there are several more as the Metro ATL consist of over 12 different counties/”towns”(I don’t know why they call it that when some of them resemble small cities)
Atlanta may not have the larger , more established Muslim neigborhoods like in other big cities, but they are not as invisible as people think. There are there , but they aren’t just confined to one area of the ATL. Maybe those imams could be inflating the numbers some, but it could be that possiblity(??)
Oops! I see a mistake in my post far as the ATL(metro Atlanta) area. I was also looking in the US Census Bureau quick stats concerning the general population of counties of the general populations in Georgia and some examples of the top ones, in which , in some ways I can believe that Atlanta , Memphis or any other small city can have Muslim populations reaching (or go over )100,000. For example(s)
1) Fulton-960,000( Example city ATL: 423,000+)
2) Dekalb-723,000( Example city: Decatur ,Ga over 18,000+)
3)Gwinnett-757,104( Example city: Duluth,Ga 22,000+)
4) Cobb-679,325( Example city: Marietta,Ga 58,000+)
5)Clayton-271,240( example: Riverdale, Ga: 12,000+)
6)Henry-176,033( example city : Stockbridge,Ga 9000+)
Including the cities( which are smaller than the counties) , the diverse populations( whether they be AA,Latino ,Arab or Asian who may be inclined to be of that or join the faith) that are here ( and still continue to come here), there could be a possibilty that the statisticans can come up with the 100,000 count( or more) from those and the other 22 other metro ATL counties.( I also say “example city” because they are the larger/largest cities in their counties as there is more than other cities in those counties).
In the past (1976), there wasn’t as many Muslim /Arab related stuff in the city of Atlanta,( though there were maybe a couple of store front Mosques at the time). In recent years, I’m able to see more than several Halal meat markets, restaurants shopping areas in some of these cities/counties, Pick up an Azizah magazines, An Nour newspapers( Both which are based in ATL) and other Arab/Muslim items. It’s not as predominate as it is in Maryland, but it’s getting there.
Thanks Peaches for the useful information.
I am tempted to join the debate about what size the muslim community is in top 10 metro areas like the Bay Area, ATL, Dallas and Houston but I see the larger point that was made in the argument. Is size all that matters?? How many are practicing Islam anyway? How many are part of community life in their respective cities?
Almost anywhere in the country you can find a hole in the bottom of the bucket. A lot of new muslims are coming in but we are loosing many.
Examples include: Children not being reared in Islam or not being reared at all, new muslims who are being failed by poor communities (as a result they leave the fold of Al-Islam before they ever got firmly rooted), muslims having babies out of wedlock with NON-MUSLIMS, populations that come to America to seek a better life only to forget that Islam is the best way of life.
These examples take a toll on our populations and if you were to count that in to the numbers you would see smaller numbers across the board, no exceptions. The debate is NOT how many Muslims or how many Masjids the debate should be over how to best maintain community life by cultivating the young, encouraging the new and supporting the existing muslim families. The numbers can only show you our true potential.
Assalamu alaikom everyone,
I’ve been searching for more than an hour now for “the Muslim population in Miami” alone,
but I couldn’t find anything specific to Miami.
Would anyone please help me?
Thanks a lot
Can anyone tell me where there are strong, predominately Sunni muslim communities in the US, preferably not in the large metropolitan areas. Suburbs are okay. I’m looking for masjids with new revert and children’s classes, and at least a small muslim neighborhood, so my son can be surrounded by muslim children 24/7.
ty