At the end of 2015, there were about 3.3 million Muslims living in the United States, making up about 1 per cent of the total US population. This figure is expected to double by 2050.
According to an analysis by the Pew Research Center released on Wednesday, the American Muslim population is projected to cross eight million in the next 35 years.
Aside from Pew’s estimates, there is no official estimate of the American Muslim population over the years.
The problem partially lies with the US Census Bureau’s methodology, which does not account for questions about religious identity. There is in fact no official government count of the US Muslim population.
According to Pew’s estimate, the Muslim population in America outnumbers the Hindu (estimated at 2.1 million) and Sikh populations, although it is fewer than the country’s Jewish population (estimated at 5.7 million).
By 2050, Pew expects American Muslims to outnumber all faith groups except for Christians. Pew, which first started tracking the American Muslim population in 2007, has observed a steady growth over the years.
Pew attributes the rise of American Muslims to increased immigration as well as natural increase— Muslims, they observe, typically have more children than people of other faith groups.
Muslim immigrants in the US consist of 10pc of all legal immigrants, as well a small percentage of unauthorised and undocumented immigrants. Muslim immigrants to America have particularly increased in the last two decades.
However, the presence of Muslim populations in different states and regions varies throughout the country. Some cities boast Muslim populations greater than 1pc of the city’s total population. State-wise as well, Muslims are not evenly distributed— New Jersey, for example, has two or three times as many Muslim adults per capita than the national average.
In addition, compared to other faith populations, the large majority of Muslims in the US are of a younger age, many of whom will soon be at a point where they can start having children.
Pew projects that the US Muslim population, therefore, will grow faster than the Hindu population, and much faster than the Jewish population in the coming decades By 2040, Pew estimates that Muslims would have become the second-largest religious group in the country. By 2050, the Muslim population will have doubled, making up 2.1pc of the United States’ population.
