Muslims in North America

SIGNIFICANCE: By the early twenty-first century, Muslim American communities of significant size and number had developed in the United States and Canada. However, some people felt threatened by the rise of Islam in North America.

Muslims in the United States

According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, 71 percent of foreign-born Muslims arrived after 1990. Throughout the 2010s, the number of Muslim American immigrants continued to grow. In 2016, the Pew Research Center estimated that approximately 3.3 million Muslims were living in America in 2015. Growth in the population was due to an increase of Muslims in America and to Americans converting to Islam. Exact figures are difficult to obtain, but the Muslim American population was estimated to be at least 2.7 million people in 2014, though some estimates placed the number as high as 7 million. By 2020, the estimated population reached 4.45 million.

According to a 2017 Pew survey, 58 percent of Muslim Americans were first-generation immigrants, though 69 percent of these were naturalized citizens, a higher proportion than in most immigrant groups. Although the majority of the world's Muslims live in South Asia, the survey found that 25 percent of the foreign-born US Muslim population came from the Middle East, 9 percent from North Africa, while 35 percent came from South Asia. Islam has also had a significant presence in the African American community since the 1930s, when the Nation of Islam was founded. In 2017, 20 percent of the US-born Muslim population identified as Black, but among Muslims who reported living in the US for three or more generations, 51 percent reported their ethnicity as Black. The percentage of males in the Muslim American population is typically higher than the percentage of females, due partly to single Muslim men being more likely to immigrate than single Muslim women and partly to American men being more likely than women to convert to Islam.

Many children of Muslim immigrants adopt mainstream American ways. Muslim women have active mosque and professional roles, and some young people dream of becoming Muslim American politicians. However, many retain a strong sense of Muslim identity—many think of themselves as Muslim first, American second, and most say that their religion is very important in their lives. The community is also fairly close-knit, with the majority of adult Muslim Americans living in entirely Muslim households (though this is less true of Black Muslims). Muslim Americans are not as economically disadvantaged as many minority groups; the median income of Muslim Americans and the percentage of Muslim Americans with college degrees are traditionally very close to those of the general population.

Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many Muslim Americans experienced increased discrimination due to a growing public perception of Islam as a violent religion. Systemic discrimination also increased, with those whose names or manner of dress suggested that they might be Muslim receiving greater scrutiny from police and security personnel, especially when boarding airplanes. Islamophobia spiked with the 2016 election of President Donald Trump. In the first months of his administration, President Trump proposed a temporary travel ban on visitors and refugee resettlements from various majority-Muslim nations in the Middle East. Several of these executive orders were blocked in court by ongoing lawsuits, but in 2017, the "Muslim Ban" (Executive Order 13769) was implemented. While most of these restrictions were blocked or eventually overturned in the 2020s during President Biden’s administration, the legislation reinforced negative stereotypes.

Muslims in Canada

Islam is the country's fastest-growing religion, growing from 2 percent in 2001 to 4.9 percent in 2021. As in the United States, Muslim immigrants are relative newcomers; although there have been Arab Canadian immigrants since the late nineteenth century, the majority of these earlier immigrants were Christians. Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist immigrants together made up only 2.9 percent of immigrants prior to 1971, whereas they accounted for 33 percent of immigrants between 2001 and 2011. Between 2011 and 2021, 18.9 percent of immigrants reported being Muslim, followed by Hindu at 9 percent and Sikh at 5.8 percent.

Unlike the US Muslim population, however, the majority of the Muslim immigrant population in Canada comes from South Asia, particularly Pakistan. Muslim Canadians tend to gather in metropolitan areas, with two-thirds of the population residing in Canada's three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. The Muslim population grew in the mid-2010s as the country took in thousands of Syrian refugees (displaced by the Syrian Civil War).

Although Muslim Canadians often encounter similar suspicion and hostility to their American counterparts, several non-profit, non-partisan organizations advocate for Muslim rights in Canada, including the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) and the Muslims in Canada Data Initiative (MiCDI).

Practical Problems

Being a practicing Muslim is not easy in the United States and Canada, though accommodations improved in the 2010s and 2020s. Muslims do not eat pork or pork products or consume alcohol and may find it challenging 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. Some schools and businesses do not recognize Islamic holidays, and not every community has a mosque. The practical problems that devout Muslims experience are, in many respects, similar to those experienced by Orthodox Jews.

During Ramadan (the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, which is a lunar calendar and means that Ramadan shifts each year), 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 may experience heightened isolation if they lack a community or family with whom to practice fasting and prayer.

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