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See Also

See also

Arab American intergroup relations;

Arab American stereotypes;

Arab immigrants;

Asian Indian immigrants and family customs;

Iranian immigrants;

Israeli immigrants;

Jews and Arab Americans;

Middle Eastern immigrant families.

Issues in U.S. Immigration

Muslims

by Susan A. Stussy

Identification: Immigrants to North America who adhere to the Islamic religion

Immigration Issues: Demographics; Middle Eastern immigrants; Religion

Significance: As early as the late nineteenth century, Muslim American communities of significant size and number were forming in the United States and Canada. However, some people felt threatened by the rise of Islam in North America, and these fears reached unprecedented levels toward the end of the twentieth century.

It is difficult to determine the number of Muslims living in America, because the U.S. Census does not track religious affiliation. However, various estimates are available that indicate the growth of this population over time. In March, 1998, Newsweek magazine estimated that six million Muslim Americans were living in the United States. It found that 42 percent of these Muslims were African Americans, 24.4 percent were South Asian Americans, 12.4 percent were Arab Americans, and 21.2 percent were of other ancestry. According to that article, although the Muslim community faces many hostile stereotypes, it had enough political clout for First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to host a Ramadan party for Muslims, who overwhelmingly supported her husband over Senator Robert Dole during the 1996 presidential election.

Muslim women praying in New York City during the month of Ramadan.

iusi_p0616.jpg

(Frances M. Roberts)

Newsweek found that the children of Muslim immigrants were adopting mainstream American ways. Muslim women have active mosque and professional roles, and some young people are dreaming of becoming Muslim American politicians. Muslims actively opposed the U.S. bombing of Iraq, and the American Muslim Council organized a lobbying campaign against this bombing.

In December, 1997, the Muslim crescent and star, the Christian cross, and Jewish Hanukkah lamps were featured in Washington, D.C., holiday displays. However, vandals painted a swastika—the Nazi symbol—on the Muslim display. Like the Muslim symbols in the display, the religion of Islam has gained some level of recognition and influence in the United States but has not yet gained acceptance. Many Americans and Canadians see Islam as a threatening, foreign religion that inspires vicious acts of terrorism. This impression, reinforced by the 1993 bombing by foreign-born Muslims of the World Trade Center in New York, led many Americans to suspect that Muslims were behind the April, 1995, bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Some committed hate crimes against innocent Muslim Americans. Later it was determined that the Oklahoma bombings had been committed by a nonMuslim American man, Timothy McVeigh.

By the late 1990s, many American Muslims feared that their civil rights might be compromised if further acts of terrorism were committed in the name of Islam. That fear was realized after the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and New York City's World Trade Center of September 11, 2001. In the tightening of immigration rules and inroads into civil liberties that followed those events, Muslims—and even immigrants, such as Sikhs, whom many Americans thought looked like Muslims—suffered disproportionately.

According to a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center, 77 percent of Muslims living in the U.S. are citizens,including 65 percent that are naturalized citizens. Almost two-thirds (65 perceent) are first-generation immigrants, and 61 percent of those born outside the U.S. came to the U.S. in the 1990s or later. The U.S. Muslim community is diverse, including, among others, Turks, Iranians, Bosnians, Malays, Indonesians, and Nigerians, but the fastest-growing Muslim community in the U.S. is made up of South Asians. Most Muslims live in major metropolitan areas or in communities near state universities, with the largest populations being in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and the Detroit/Dearborn (Michigan) area.

Practical Problems

Being a practicing Muslim is not easy in the United States and Canada. Muslims do not eat pork or pork products or consume alcohol and often find it hard to obtain meat butchered according to Islamic tradition. Required to pray five times per day, Muslims sometimes find it difficult to fit their prayers into schedules designed for non-Muslims. Schools and businesses generally do not recognize Islamic holidays, and not every community has a mosque. The practical problems that are experienced by devout Muslims are in many respects similar to those experienced by Orthodox Jews.

During Ramadan (the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, which falls in the spring), Muslims and their families fast during the day. This makes it difficult for Muslims to entertain non-Muslim business clients and social guests. During their holiest month, observant Muslims suffer from heightened isolation.

Future Projections

The Muslim population in North America is increasing. Muslim Americans will almost certainly outnumber Jewish Americans within the first quarter of the twenty-first century, and the Muslim Canadian population is also growing rapidly. Therefore, both Muslims and the larger society have a strong interest in Muslim participation in interfaith relations. In addition, religious scholars are beginning to document New World changes in Islam to illustrate the impact of democracy and multiculturalism on a nearly fourteen-hundred-year-old religious tradition.

Further Reading

1 

Afzal-Khan, Fawzia, ed. Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out. New York: Olive Branch Press, 2005. Collection of inter views with Muslim immigrants to North America.

2 

An-Naim, Abdullahi Ahmed. What is an American Muslim? Embracing Faith and Citizenship. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. A discussion of issues of identity and assimilation among American Muslims, written by an Islamic scholar and human rights activist.

3 

Cole, David. Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism. New York: New Press/W. W. Norton, 2003. Critical analysis of the erosion of civil liberties in the United States since September 11, 2001, with attention to the impact of federal policies on immigrants and visiting aliens, particularly Muslims.

4 

Ghanea Bassiri, Kambiz. Competing Visions of Islam in the United States: A Study of Los Angeles. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997. Scholarly community study by a Muslim author that covers the African American, Arab, Pakistani, and Iranian elements of the Los Angeles Muslim community and the differences in belief and practice among the groups.

5 

Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck. Not Quite American? The Shaping of Arab and Muslim Identity in the United States. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2004. Examination of issues of Arab American identity and challenges to their rights after the terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001.

6 

Hassoun, Rosina J. Arab Americans in Michigan. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2003. Study of one of the largest concentrations of Arab immigrants in North America.

7 

Kaldas, Pauline, and Khaled Mattawa, eds. Dinar zad's Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2004. Collection of short stories focusing on themes of great interest to immigrant Arab children.

8 

Koszegi, Michael A., and J. Gordon Melton, eds. Islam in North America: A Sourcebook. New York: Garland, 1992. Impressive collection of essays on Islam in the United States and Canada. Chapter 7 includes a useful directory of Islamic organizations.

9 

Leonard, Karen Isaksen. Muslims in the United States: The State of Research. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003. Perhaps the most useful starting point for further research, this study contains a historical over view of Muslim immigration to the United States, as well as chapters on various aspects of Muslim immigration and adjustment to living in America.

10 

Mar vasti, Amir B., and Karyn D. McKinney. Middle Eastern Lives in America. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. Study of Middle Eastern families living in the United States.

11 

Mir, Shabana. Muslim American Women on Campus: Undergraduate Social Life and Identity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. An ethnographic study of young women college students in the Washington DC area, illuminating their lives and their process of constructing their adult identities.

12 

Nordquist, Joan, comp. Arab and Muslim Americans of Middle Eastern Origin: Social and Political Aspects—A Bibliography. Santa Cruz, Calif.: Reference and Research Services, 2003. Comprehensive bibliography of diverse aspects of Middle Eastern immigrants.

13 

Orfalea, Gregory. The Arab Americans: A Quest for Their History and Culture. Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2005. Study of the special challenges faced by Arab immigrants in the United States.

14 

Turner, Richard Brent. Islam in the African American Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Traces the development of Islam in the United States from colonial days, when Muslim slaves tried to preserve their religion in the African diaspora, to the present Muslim expressions of faith in the African American community.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Stussy, Susan A. "Muslims." Issues in U.S. Immigration, edited by Carl L. Bankston III, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=IUSI_0165.
APA 7th
Stussy, S. A. (2015). Muslims. In C. Bankston III (Ed.), Issues in U.S. Immigration. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Stussy, Susan A. "Muslims." Edited by Carl L. Bankston III. Issues in U.S. Immigration. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.