Bin Gregory Productions

Official Organ of an American Muslim in Malaysia

1. Lan 05.20.03 / 8pm

   Alhamdulillahi ladzi bi ni’matihi tatim-musholihaat
2. m 05.21.03 / 9am

   wa maa bikum min ni3matin fa-min Allah!
3. Bill Allison 05.21.03 / 5pm

   Actually, it probably won’t. The U.S. Census Bureau doesn’t collect information on religious belief. I think estimates of the number of Muslims in the U.S. are done by extrapolating from country of origin for the non-native population. There are perils in doing it this way — for example, Coptic Christians from Egypt might be wildly over-represented among Egyptian immigrants as opposed to their numbers in Egypt at large.

   I read an article on the subject somewhere — I’ll try to track it down.
4. Bin Gregory 05.21.03 / 9pm

   Yeah, that’s a problem, since converts are often estimated as comprising a third of the muslim population. Country-of-origin methods aren’t gonna catch me. But I guess my point is that if the numbers are too close to call now, for the US, by 2010 there should be no doubt.
5. Al-Muhajabah 05.24.03 / 12pm

   Yeah, country of origin stats wouldn’t catch me either, lol.

   Unfortunately, much of the criticism I’ve seen of CAIR’s estimates comes from groups that I do not consider unbiased. I’ve also been receiving their email alerts for almost four years and their estimate has remained constant during that time at about six million. If they’re playing a political game, it’s something they did a long time ago and apparently haven’t updated. *shrugs*
6. Bin Gregory Productions 05.25.03 / 9am

   Not to imply that it was political necessarily, simply that their survey was not carried out in a rigorous way. I beleive numbers were based on a questionaire sent to Imams asking for an estimate of attendance at the ‘eid or something like that, which amounts to a WAG estimate. Like I say in the post, I think 6mill is about right. In fact, I tell it to everybody I can here in Kuching, heheh. I just wish the numbers were a bit more firm. *shrugs back*
7. Ikram Saeed 06.10.03 / 12pm

   Canadian numbers are about 580K. The normal ratio for Canada to the US is 9:1 or 10:1. That gives between 5 and 6 million US Muslims.

   Some caveats. Muslims make up 15% of the annual immigrant intake in Canada. (That’s 15% of around 250K.) Canadian immigration is more heavily wieghted towwards South Asia, the Middle East, and China than US immigration (which has a much much larger hispanic element). So I doubt Muslims make up 15% of US immigrants. This factor would probably lower the US proportion — maybe less than a 9:1 ratio.

   On the other hand, Canada has a negligible African-Canadian population (large numbers of West Indians –that’s different). In the US, some 30% to 40% of Muslims are African-Americans. That would raise the US proportion — maybe more than a 9:1 ratio.

   Altogether — it might net out. So a US muslim figure between 5 and 6 million is not unreasonable. Note that this is not far from the CAIR figure (6 million) and very very far from the figure given by the AJC sponsored study (and trumpeted loudly in the Weekly Standard, etc) of 1.5 to 2.5 million.

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