According to a 2017 study done by the Institute for Social Policy, "American Muslims are the only faith community surveyed with no majority race, with 26 percent white, 18 percent Asian, 18 percent Arab, 9 percent black, 7 percent mixed race, and 5 percent Hispanic". Īmerican Muslims come from various backgrounds and, according to a 2009 Gallup poll, are one of the most racially diverse religious groups in the United States. In 2009, more than 115,000 Muslims became legal residents of the United States.
In 2005, more people from Muslim-majority countries became legal permanent United States residents-nearly 96,000-than there had been in any other year in the previous two decades. About 72 percent of American Muslims are immigrants or "second generation".
increased dramatically in the second half of the 20th century due to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished previous immigration quotas. įrom the 1880s to 1914, several thousand Muslims immigrated to the United States from the former territories of the Ottoman Empire and British India. Prior to the late 19th century, the vast majority of documented Muslims in North America were merchants, travelers, and sailors. Nearly all enslaved Muslims and their descendants converted to Christianity during the 18th and 19th centuries. ĭuring the Atlantic slave trade, an estimated 10 to 20 percent of the slaves brought to colonial America from Africa arrived as Muslims, however Islam was suppressed on plantations. Religion Census found there to be 4.45 million Muslim Americans, or roughly 1.3% of the population. In 2017, twenty states, mostly in the South and Midwest, reported Islam to be the largest non-Christian religion. A 2017 study estimated that 1.1% (or 3.45 million Americans) of the population of the United States are Muslim. Islam is the third largest religion in the United States (1%), behind Christianity and Judaism, and equaling the shares of Buddhism and Hinduism.