Estimating the Muslim Population in the United States Using Census 2000 Data

Abstract

Although the number of Muslims in the United States is now large and growing, it is difficult to know how large and at what rate the population is increasing, since there are no official statistics on religious identification. For this reason there have been few serious attempts to quantify the geographic distribution of the Muslim population within the United States. Several recent surveys have provided a narrowing range of estimates of the likely size of the national U.S. population and, importantly, have provided a means for estimating the percentage of African Americans who are Muslim. Using these survey data in combination with 1990 PUMS data and recently released Census 2000 data on ancestry, language, and place of birth, I have produced estimates of the Muslim population by state. My overall national estimate based on this technique is 3.4 million Muslim as of 2000, which is slightly higher than, but close to the range of estimates generated from all recent surveys except one. The Muslim Population is currently growing at a rate of about 3.5 percent per year which is almost three times the national rate. I use these estimates at the state level to show that there are clusters of Muslims in the New York-New Jersey region, the Washington, D.C. region, the Great Lakes region, and large populations also in California and Texas. The Muslim population in Texas appears to be growing rapidly, whereas the California population is not.