Number of Muslims in US Unknown and Growing

November 3, 2005

Source: The Miami Herald

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13067012.htm

On November 3, 2005 The Miami Herald ran a feature article by staff writer, Donna Gehrke-White, who chronicles inconsistencies between the reported numbers of Muslims in America. "As I researched my book, The Face Behind the Veil: The Extraordinary Lives of Muslim Women in America... I found the Muslimah, as Muslim women are called, from coast to coast... Their numbers keep growing. Yet, we do not know exactly how many Muslims are in America. The U.S. Census does not ask people to name their religion. Many traditional religious studies still count the U.S. Muslim population at only one million or two million... However, Ihsan Bagby, an associate professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Kentucky who has studied U.S. mosques, believes that the number of U.S. Muslims may actually reach up to six million... All this suggests that traditional religious studies may not have the most accurate count on Muslims in America. Indeed, it is not easy to find these new Muslims. Counting heads at a worship service is not the most effective way -- as researchers have traditionally done for Christians and Jews."

See also: Islam, Statistics