What explains this geographical trend for Muslim Americans demographics?

[Capsicum]

It's not a really big trend that the average person might pick up on, but noticeable that proportionally (not the largest raw number) Muslim Americans are not so "bi-coastal" but a bit more concentrated not directly on the two coasts but a bit inland, like the Midwest and Texas, among other places.



It seems like there's some history there, of a great plains/midwest regional concentration. The Detroit area connection is pretty well known, but it's not just there.

The oldest standing mosque in the US is in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and a few of the other old mosques historically have been in the midwest/plains.

"The Al-Sadiq Mosque in Chicago is older by a decade but was converted from an existing building to be used as a mosque. The Mother Mosque of America is also slightly older than the Al-Rashid Mosque in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The oldest purpose built mosque was torn down in the 1970s near Ross, North Dakota. Recently a smaller mosque was built near that site to commemorate its history."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Mosque_of_America

The top 2 metro areas with the highest % Muslim are Chicago and Detroit, at 3.7%, with NYC's metro third, at 2.9%.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/...e-cities/4227/

I know there's also a history of homegrown African American Muslim communities, but for the Muslims who arrived from voluntary immigration, be it the Middle East, Asia, Africa, in addition to them, why does it appear that the relative proportion seems a bit higher in the middle of the country?

This contrasts a bit with other non-Christian faiths whose immigration history had more a concentration on the coasts (eg. Jewish on the East coast, Buddhists on the west coast). Why would the Muslim populations be concentrated just a bit more inland than them?

[MonkeyRonin]

I don't know the whole answer, but it may be at least in part because it's a generally more recent demographic. And without any established communities in the traditional immigrant gateway cities, there's no greater incentive for them to head to those high-cost cities than there is for them to go to the same cheap, relatively prosperous middle American regions that get all the domestic migrants.

[jd3189]

I heard somewhere in some other threads that a lot of Middle Eastern immigrants prefer to settle in the Midwest when they come to the US, which could explain the high numbers in Chicago and Detroit.


I know there is a significant Muslim community in South Florida and in Chattanooga, TN. My first visit to a mosque happened in the latter and it was interesting to see that worshipers there were pretty diverse. There were of course Arab worshipers, but also African American, European, and Hispanic adherents. The Iman was Somalian as well.


In my opinion, Islam in the US is similar to Christianity in that it's not so much a religion limited to a few ethnic groups. Buddhism is probably similar in that respect too since I see a lot of white Buddhists as well. Because of that, in addition to the cheapness of interior urban areas, you will find Muslims in a lot more areas.

[Crawford]

There are relatively few Muslims in the U.S. Most ME immigrants to the U.S. are Christian.

If you look at the map key, these are really tiny increments. The few counties in red appear to be rural. Even Wayne County (Detroit) isn't red.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There are relatively few Muslims in the U.S. Most ME immigrants to the U.S. are Christian.

If you look at the map key, these are really tiny increments. The few counties in red appear to be rural. Even Wayne County (Detroit) isn't red.

Buddhists and Hindus in the US don't show as much of their population concentrated in the more interior locales using the same scale though (compared to the Muslim population map which has lots of small, rural higher concentration areas), and they probably have a large percentage of them also being recent immigrants or children of immigrants.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

The few counties in red appear to be rural.

Dupage County (Chicagoland) is red and it certainly isn't rural. It's home to 930,000 people.

And all other chicagoland counties are orange.

I had no idea that chicagoland was one of the two most Islamic metros in the nation.

I wouldn't have guessed that. You learn something new everyday.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Dupage County (Chicagoland) is red and it certainly isn't rural. It's home to 930,000 people.

And all other chicagoland counties are orange.

I had no idea that chicagoland was one of the two most Islamic metros in the nation.

I wouldn't have guessed that. You learn something new everyday.

I'm certainly not surprised. Tons of Muslims out here!

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

I don't know the whole answer, but it may be at least in part because it's a generally more recent demographic. And without any established communities in the traditional immigrant gateway cities, there's no greater incentive for them to head to those high-cost cities than there is for them to go to the same cheap, relatively prosperous middle American regions that get all the domestic migrants.

Not sure this works as an explanation

[Shawn]

Does Nation of Islam membership count? If so, that might explain Chicagoland's numbers? Maybe?

[jd3189]

^^^ It should if it doesn't already. Much of the Muslim community in the US that is African American also have some previous connection to the NOI. After all, Malcolm X was apart of that before he became Sunni later in life.

[Capsicum]

Could a large African American Muslim population explain why you have lots of Muslims in the inland north?

Historically (though metro Detroit has had a large Middle Eastern population for generations), prior to large amounts of immigration in the last couple generations, most Muslims would have been native-born converts. Then, later African, Asian, Middle Eastern immigration added to the population.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Does Nation of Islam membership count? If so, that might explain Chicagoland's numbers? Maybe?

No, I doubt that’s a big contributor

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Could a large African American Muslim population explain why you have lots of Muslims in the inland north?

A lot of ignorance in this thread.

Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis, etc. we have lots of them. It’s called immigrants.

[Capsicum]

There are small pockets of rural Muslim communities away from the big cities though. I just found it interesting that away from the bigger immigrant population cities like Chicago, Detroit, the Texas cities etc., there's still a slight clustering of Muslims from the Great Lakes area from upstate New York to downstate Illinois, among other places.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There are relatively few Muslims in the U.S. Most ME immigrants to the U.S. are Christian.

If you look at the map key, these are really tiny increments. The few counties in red appear to be rural. Even Wayne County (Detroit) isn't red.

not all of the muslims in the midwest/upper south are from the middle east. theres sizable populations of muslims from eastern europe, who really fly under the radar. they are often muslim like most american catholics are catholics.

[LMich]

[Docere]

^ The Census Bureau does not have data on the Muslim population or what percentage of Arab Americans are Muslim.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Does Nation of Islam membership count? If so, that might explain Chicagoland's numbers? Maybe?

nation of islam membership is said to be 20,000 - 50,000 globally.

even if we take the high estimate, and even if we generously assume that half of those people are in chicagoland, that's only 25,000 people, or roughly 0.25% of chicagoland. or 10,000 people and 0.1% of chicagoland for the low estimate.


0.1 - 0.25%; we're talking about some really small percentages here.

even if they are included in the broader islamic category (as dubious as that may be), i don't think the nation of islam would move the needle very much in terms of muslim percentages in chicagoland.

[Docere]

Does the 1/3 "African American" figure include Somali and other African immigrants?

[jpdivola]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There are relatively few Muslims in the U.S. Most ME immigrants to the U.S. are Christian.

If you look at the map key, these are really tiny increments. The few counties in red appear to be rural. Even Wayne County (Detroit) isn't red.

Yeah, I would be a little cautious about making too much of these county level estimates. These figures appear to be based on a voluntary data collection effort by a non-profit. The margin of error is likely to be fairly large for small counties.

http://www.usreligioncensus.org/methods.php