ISLAM IN AMERICA: Despite becoming part of the fabric of American life, Muslims face increasing hostility and attacks on their faith.

AuthorSmith, Patricia
PositionCover story

In many ways, 19-year-old Ameenah Habib is a typical American teen. She often spends Friday nights hanging out at Chick-fil-A with her friends or going to the mall or the movies.

But as an observant Muslim, she also prays five times a day, as Islam requires. She wears a head scarf to cover her hair in public and struggles to find modest clothes at the mall. Habib, who graduated last June from Briar Woods High School in Ashburn, Virginia, doesn't go to parties where she suspects there might be drinking or smoking because Islam forbids those things. And she doesn't date.

Islam, she says, affects every aspect of her life. "I like to think of Islam as a lifestyle; it gives my life purpose," says Habib, who was born in the U.S. to Bangladeshi immigrants.

Largely because of immigrant families like Habib's, Islam is one of the fastest-growing religions in the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, there are about 3.5 million Muslims in America--up from about 2.5 million 10 years ago.

While Muslims are becoming more a part of the fabric of the U.S. in many places, a substantial percentage of Americans still view them with suspicion. And many Muslims in the U.S. feel under attack in the current political climate.

"The Muslim community is thriving in many ways," says Farid Senzai, an expert on American Muslims at the Center for Global Policy in Washington, D.C. "But we also see this intensifying animosity toward Muslims."

That's true in the U.S. and abroad. Last month, a gunman attacked worshippers at two mosques in New Zealand, killing at least 50 people. American Muslim leaders say they see those attacks as part of a rising tide of intolerance toward Muslims.

70 Different Countries

In the U.S., the Muslim community is incredibly diverse. According to a 2017 Pew survey, immigrants from South Asia (including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) are the largest group of Muslims in the U.S., followed by Arabs and African-Americans. (In the 1960s, a significant number of blacks in the U.S. converted to Islam.) Forty-two percent of American Muslims were born in the U.S., and 58 percent come from more than 70 different countries (see charts, p. 16).

There are significant populations of Muslims in urban areas such as New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Detroit, but there are also parts of the country where so few Muslims live that many residents have never met one.

As a group, U.S. Muslims are more educated than Americans as a whole and they tend to vote in higher numbers. More than 80 percent of Muslims in America are U.S. citizens--about half of those were born in the U.S. and half have become citizens after immigrating. In addition, they're increasingly contributing to American culture, forming, for example, Muslim Scout troops, comedy groups, and publications.

Not Fully Accepted

The recent Pew survey found that more than 90 percent of U.S. Muslims say they're proud to be American. But that study also identified an important contradiction.

"On the one hand, we see Muslims are broadly well integrated and committed to the American ideals of working hard and succeeding," says Besheer Mohamed, a researcher at Pew. "On the other hand, they feel they're not fully accepted by American society."

The numbers bear that out, and it highlights some of the particular challenges that Muslims face in the U.S.: Fewer Americans--just 48 percent--have positive feelings about Muslims than about any other religious group, including atheists, a recent Pew study found. And 50 percent of Americans believe that Islam isn't part of mainstream American society.

Those tensions can be traced back to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Carried out by Al Qaeda, a radical Islamist group, those attacks killed almost 3,000 people in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania; prompted the war in Afghanistan that continues to this day; and left a deep wound on the American psyche. More recently, a series of smaller attacks in the U.S. by individuals who say they were inspired by the Islamist terrorist group ISIS have made more people fearful of Muslims.

These feelings have been intensified by the political environment in the U.S. President Trump promised as a candidate to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., and his administration has implemented a controversial ban on travelers from sue majority-Muslim countries. The president and his supporters say the restrictions are necessary to protect the country from terrorism.

"We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas," Trump said when he signed the executive order.

Amaney Jamal, a professor at Princeton University in New Jersey, says all this adds up to a "much more hostile, Islamophobic environment. Most Muslims will say it's worse...

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