OldTimeRadio said:
If the statistics provided by Adherents.Com, quoted by me above, are accurate, Muslims account for approximately one-half of one percent of the total of the states with the LARGEST Muslim populations. It is LESS in other areas.
But even if we extend that one-half of one percent to the entire United States, the total Muslim population would be exactly what your Jewish organization claims - about 1-point-5 million. (One percent of the U. S. population is three million.)
I can't imagine what hat the 12 million figure got plucked from. If that were truly the case there would be considerably more Muslim Americans than Jewish! (Jews account for about three percent of the population, around nine or ten million.)
Many of these figures are based on the number of people active in Mosques--1.5 million active Mosque goers (would this be men only?) is probably the basis of that figure and any other number close to 2 million. It's like when fundamentalists count homosexuals--you have to be willing to tell a fundamentalist you are a homosexual and you're only counted if you are having sex at the time. I can tell you that there are a Helluva lot of homosexuals out there that aren't getting laid and don't talk to fundamentalist interviewers.
For one thing, I've seen an estimate that one in four American adults haven't had sex in the last year (before the poll). They can't all be Fugly or Priests. I suspect that closeted gays are a very large portion of this number, the rest being asexuals and the Great Unlaid.
For Muslims you have to figure out how many children, non-Mosque goers, etc., there are per identified Mosque goer and that is where the numbers become impressionistic.
Canada has no problem asking people's religious affiliation in the Census so the figures are more accurate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Canada
About 600,000 as of 2001, or 1.8 percent of the Canadian population.
Muslims thus have come to outnumber Jews in a few short years, which is bad news for the Conservative minority government, even though many Canadian Jews are non-Zionist Hassidic Jews in Montreal.
If you assumed proportionality between the US and Canada, you could reach the 12 million figure easily, but this is another moot point. Since September 11, 2001, many Muslims (and others, such as Lebanese Christians, etc.) have chosen Canada over the United States because of the political situation so basing US populations on Canadian populations would probably overestimate the former somewhat but not radically.
Counting Jews is another problem. Most would say about 6 million in the US but there may be as many as 6 million non-practicing Jews due to intermarriage, irreligion and also the high cost of participation in a fully Jewish religious life (Yeshiva, donations, etc.). The sociologist who made this estimate found that it cost $125,000 a year at the time to be a Good Jew. One reason Jews are associated with the professions and urban centres, not potato farming.
I would go with a figure in the neighbourhood of 6 million for "Middle Eastern plus Islamic converts". It's not as if the skinheads are going to think to ask if you are a Lebanese Marionite Christian or an Assyrian Christian from Iraq before they beat you senseless.
Islam is really making inroads in prisons--and America has more prisoners than any other developed country (although we can't absolutely be sure how many China has).
Islam is the fastest growing religion in Canada after "none of the above/atheism/unchurched" through immigration and a higher birthrate. Hassidic Jews have a healthy birthrate, also--Old World, in fact, but are not numerous. But I always say that the unofficial religion of Canada is lapsed Roman Catholic, seeing as Roman Catholics now represent 45% of the population but they're not turning up in church on Sunday and don't seem to be overwhelmed by the conservative social and sexual values of the Church.
Despite crozier-rattling by the Pope and top brass, it is likely that the Conservative Party's attempt to re-open the gay marriage issue will fall flat in the Autumn, if there's no election by then, and even devout Roman Catholics in Parliament will largely ignore the threat of excommunication, whatever they may think of gay marriage, in favour of party discipline.
