Muslims in the United States

History in the United States
Islam is the third largest religion in the United States, after Christianity and Judaism. A 2017 study estimated that 3.45 million Muslims were living in the United States, about 1.1 percent of the total U.S. population. Pew Research Center has subdivided the Muslim community and their percentages into three subsets, namely Sunnism (65%), Shi'ism (11%) and non-denominational Muslims (24%).

American 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. 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 25 percent black, 24 percent white, 18 percent Asian, 18 percent Arab, 7 percent mixed race, and 5 percent Hispanic”.

In addition, 50 percent of Muslims are native born while the other 50 percent are foreign born, and 86 percent are citizens. Many native-born American Muslims are African Americans who make up about a quarter of the total Muslim population. Many of them have converted to Islam during the last seventy years. Conversion to Islam in large cities has also contributed to its growth over the years as well as its influence on black culture and hip-hop music.

While an estimated 10 to 20 percent of the slaves brought to colonial America from Africa arrived as Muslims, Islam was severely suppressed on plantations. Prior to the late 19th century, most documented non-enslaved Muslims in North America were merchants, travelers, and sailors.

From the 1880s to 1914, several thousand Muslims immigrated to the United States from the former territories of the Ottoman Empire and the former Mughal Empire. The Muslim population of the U.S. increased dramatically in the 20th century, with much of the growth driven by a comparatively high birth rate and immigrant communities of mainly Arab and South Asian descent. About 72 percent of American Muslims are immigrants or "second generation".

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. In 2009, more than 115,000 Muslims became legal residents of the United States.