From Arizona Public Radio
January 29, 2018
Muslims are set to become the second-largest religious group in the United States after Christians by 2040.
That’s according to a new report from the Pew Research Center that says, in 2017, there were nearly 3.5 million Muslims living in the U.S. And the population continues to grow by about 100,000 a year.
Pew found that the vast majority of this growth is coming from immigration and high fertility rates among Muslim families.
Now, Muslims still measure just over 1 percent of the population.
But Pew also reports that by 2050 the U.S. Muslim population is projected to reach more than 8 million, or more than 2 percent of the nation’s total population, so that’s nearly twice the share of today.
What does this growth mean for the Muslim community in the U.S.?
Arsalan Iftikhar is a human rights lawyer and a senior fellow for The Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University. He said one reason this growth might surprise you is because the Muslim population in the U.S. is so diverse.
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