Muslim numbers disputed

Christian Century, Nov 14, 2001 by John Dart

CONTRADICTING CLAIMS by Islamic organizations of a U.S. Muslim population close to 7 million, two new studies put the figure considerably lower--about 1.8 million adults and children. Though mosques are now more numerous in American religious life and U.S. Muslims have drawn sympathetic attention from non-Muslims after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the recent research affirms earlier beliefs by sociologists that the U.S. Muslim population was greatly overstated.

One study was by Tom W. Smith, director of the widely respected General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago. His review of two dozen Muslim population estimates and surveys over the last 20 years was done for the American Jewish Committee, which announced the findings October 23.

"The best adjusted, survey-based estimate puts the total Muslim population at 1,876,000," wrote Smith. "Even if the high-side estimates based on local surveys, figures from mosques, and ancestry and immigration statistics are given more weight than the survey-based numbers, it is hard to accept estimates that Muslims are greater than 1 percent of the population, or 2,814,000." Smith said that none of the earlier surveys he examined is "based on a scientifically sound or explicit methodology."

The other new research relies on a new poll from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, directed by Egon Mayer with fellow sociologist Barry Kosmin. Their survey, conducted by a marketing firm over six months this year, drew from a random sampling of 50,000 people by telephone. They estimated the U.S. Muslim population at 1.1 million adults and 650,000 children.

Their American Religious Identification Survey 2001 survey also found that Protestant and other non-Catholic Christians totaled 52 percent--down from 60 percent in a corresponding 1990 survey. Twenty-five percent said they were Catholic, 1.3 percent religious Jews and 0.5 percent Muslim. Another 14 percent said they had no religion--a finding that Mayer, a CUNY professor of sociology, said was the most surprising, according to the Los Angeles Times. It nearly doubled the 1990 survey figure of 8 percent with no religion.

Whether Muslim organizations will give credence to the studies was uncertain. The American Muslim Council, for one, said in an open letter that the American Jewish Committee "would deny the existence of four and a half million American Muslims." Muslims active in U.S. public affairs have maintained that telephone surveys miss many Muslims, especially new immigrants, because some hesitate to answer questions from strangers. Demographer Ilyas Ba-Yunus at the State University of New York at Cortland, contacted by the New York Times, said his study this year yielded a figure of 6.7 million Muslims.

But the Smith and Mayer reports cast doubt on commonly repeated assertions that the American Muslim population exceeds that of Jews, or that the U.S. adult Muslims outnumber Presbyterians and Episcopalians combined. Nevertheless, U.S. Muslim communities have taken on greater significance--despite their small numbers--because they are a part of the world's second largest religion, more than a billion strong.

The growth of mosques and Islamic centers in the U.S. is undoubted. A survey of mosques, a part of the large Faith Communities Today survey released in late April, counted more than 1,200 places of regular Friday worship--a 25 percent gain in the last six years.

That survey report, released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), also estimated that some 1,625 Muslims are associated with the average mosque in some way, which would give a figure of nearly 2 million people. Because Muslims may pray and fulfill religious obligations without ever visiting a mosque, some community spokesmen have extrapolated that figure into estimates of 6-to-7 million Muslims nationwide.

But the 7 million figure routinely used by CAIR and other Islamic groups was disputed last spring by pollster George Gallup Jr. "These figures they are reporting are much exaggerated," he said to the Detroit Free Press.