Islam, according to newly released data from the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, is now the fastest growing religion in America, verifying President Barack Obama's claim that the United States is "no longer a Judeo-Christian country."
How many Muslims now live within the country remains anyone's guess, since the U.S. Census Bureau neglects to collect data on religious identification. A 2008 study by Cornell University projected that the number of Muslims in America had climbed from 1.6 million in 1995 to 7 million.[i] A U.S. News and World Report survey, which was conducted at the same time, placed the figure at 5 million,[ii] while the Pew Research Center set the number at 2.35 million.
But Pew researchers admit that their survey was not thorough since it neglected to take into account immigrant and poor black Muslims.[iii] What's more, these researchers only contacted Americans with telephone landlines and failed to take into account the fact that nearly 50% of U.S. residents and age 18-35 and the nearly 100% of the illegal immigrants who communicate exclusively by cell phones.[iv]
Muslim organizations, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), supported the Cornell University projection of 7 million -- based on mosque attendance.[v]
In any case, all demographers agree that throughout the coming decades, the faith of the Prophet Mohammed will continue to impact and transform all aspects of American life: social, political, and economic. They further maintain that, save for a cataclysmic sea-change in population trends, Islam by 2050 will emerge as the nation's dominant religion.
Such an assertion may seem hyperbolic, save for these findings:
- The US fertility rate is now below 2.1 per woman, meaning Americans are no longer giving birth to enough children to keep the population from dwindling.[vi] But this statistic does not hold true for the average Muslim American woman who displays a robust fertility rate of 2.8.[vii]
- Muslims continue to pour into the country to occupy positions vacated by aging Americans as physicians, engineers, and scientists. Others arrive here to perform tasks that American workers are unwilling to perform in food processing plants, agricultural facilities, and telecommunications. In addition to the Muslims who come here with employment visas, thousands more arrive with student visas to enroll in colleges throughout the country. Still others arrive with "diversity" visas to enrich America's racial composition. In 1992, nearly 50,000 Muslims arrived in the US and received permanent residency status. In 2009, that number soared to 115,000.[viii] In truth, no one knows for certain how many Muslims immigrants are presently living in the country. A GEO report released to the press released by Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) and Ranking Member Susan Collins (R-ME) show that half of the 12 million US illegal immigrants have entered the country legally but have overstayed their visas. Many of the over-stays are from Islamic countries. Five of the 9/11 hijackers overstayed their visas, and GAO found that 36 of the roughly 400 people convicted of terrorism-related charges since September 2001 had overstayed their visas.>[ix]
- In addition to the legal and illegal Muslim immigrants, 80,000 refugees enter this country under resettlement programs. Nearly, 75,000 come from Islamic countries.[x]
- As the now defunct Christian Church militant, America is witnessing the mosque militant. Muslims, unlike main-line denominational Christians, are fervent in their beliefs and are eager to spread the faith. Islam, at present, is the most rapidly growing religion in the country with outreach programs on college campuses, in prisons, and within the military.[xi]
- Islam provides an antithesis to secular America. It offers a return to the country's "traditional values" with a vengeance. The vast majority of US Muslims oppose abortion and same-sex marriage. They call for a curtailment of women's rights and a return to "law and order" (as mandated by sharia). They are enterprising, hard working, and deeply devoted to their families.[xii]
- Unlike America's political leaders, Muslims do not recognize the legitimacy of all faiths. Their religion, according to Bernard Lewis, divides the world into two: the House of Islam (dar al-Islam), where Muslims rule and the law of Islam prevails, and the House of War (dar al Harb), comprising the rest of the world. "Between these two," Lewis writes, "there is a morally necessary, legally and religiously obligatory state of war, until the final triumph of Islam over unbelief."[xiii] For this reason, Muslims are unlikely to relinquish the cherished claims of their tradition before the prevailing Zeitgeist.
The belief that America could be transformed into an Islamic state was first expressed by a small group Muslim missionaries in 1922, who declared to a gathering of disgruntled city blacks in Syracuse, New York: "Our plan is: we are going to conquer America."[xiv] The audacity of this remark provoked the following commentary in the Syracuse Sunday Herald:
To the millions of American Christians who have so long looked eagerly forward to the time the cross shall be supreme in every land and the people of the whole world shall have become the followers Christ, the plan to win this continent to the path of the "infidel Turk" will seem a thing unbelievable. But there is no doubt about its being pressed with all the fanatical zeal for which the Mohammedans are noted.[xv]
Ninety years later, the remarks made by the early Islamic missionaries no longer seem audacious but prophetic. The transformation of America into an Islamic nation, Muslim scholars say, is a matter of destiny. It is kismet (quisma). The words of the country's future, such scholars contend, have been written -- and these words no mortal man may alter or erase.
[i] "Michigan Has Largest U.S. Muslim Population," Psychiatric News, The American Society of Psychiatrists, Vol. 40, Number 2, January 21, 2005.
[ii] Susan Headden, "Understanding Islam," U.S. News and World Report, April 7, 2008.
[iii] Paul M. Barrett, American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion (New York: Faraar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), pp. 8-9.
[iv] Kathleen Parker, "Pew Study of U.S. Muslims Isn't ‘Largely' Reassuring," The Scranton Times-Tribune, February 28, 2008.
[v] http://www.cair.com/Portals/0/pdf/The_Mosque_in_America_A_National_Portal,pdf The most rigorous estimate was from the Mosque Study Project 2000 (Bagby, Perl, and Froehle, 2001) which combined seven lists of mosques, eliminated duplicates, and attempted to verify the existence of each place. This generated a final list of 1209 mosques in 2000. The researchers then drew a sample of 631 and were successful in obtaining information about 416 of the mosques. They found that 340 adults and children regularly participated in the average mosque, and that 1629 were "associated in any way with the religious life of the mosque." This converts to a national estimate of 1,969,000 mosque-associated Muslims nationally. The study supports the projection of 6 to 7 million Muslims in the U.S. by assuming that for every Muslim associated with a mosque, three remain without association.
[vi] Rob Stein, "U.S. Birth Rate Falls Again: A Possible Effect of Economic Downturn," Washington Post, August 27, 2010.
[vii] "A Demographic Portrait of American Muslims," Pew Research Center, Auguhttp://www.people-press.org/2011/08/30/section-1-a-demographic-portrait-of-muslim-americans/
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Jim Kouri, "Almost Half of Illegal Aliens Entered U.S. Legally, But Overstayed Visas, Senators Say," Family Security Matters, May 20, 2011, http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9562/pub_detail.asp
[x] "Presidential Memorandum - - Refugee Admissions," The White House, Press Release, October 8, 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/10/08/presidential-memorandum-refugee-admissions
[xi] "The Future of the Global Muslim Population," Pew Research Center, January 27, 2011, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1872/muslim-population-projections-worldwide-fast-growth
[xii] "A Demographic Portrait of American Muslims."
[xiii] Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 73.
[xiv] Daniel Pipes, Militant Islam Reaches America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003), p. 113.
[xv] Ibid.
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Author Paul L. Williams’ latest book is Crescent Moon Rising. He is a frequent guest on such national news networks