American Muslims are expected to overtake Jews as the largest non-Christian religious group in the United States in just over two decades, a report by the Pew Research Center claims.
According to the report released last week, there are currently some 3.45 million self-identified Muslims in the United States, compared approximately six million American Jews, making Muslims the second largest non-Christian religious group in the US, making up slightly over 1% of the population. The next largest religious group, Buddhists, make up about seven-tenths of a percent of the total American population, as do Hindus. About 71% of Americans identify as Christians, according to Pew.
But while the American Jewish population has remained relatively stable at roughly six million, the number of American Muslims is growing at a faster rate than the country as a whole.
While the US population grew from 301 million in 2007 to 326 million in 2017, an 8 percent increase, the number of American Muslims went up by 47% - from about two-and-a-third million in 2007, to just under three-and-a-half million in 2017.
The Pew report, which is based on data from the 2010 US Census and a 2017 Pew study on the US Muslim population, suggests that Muslims will outnumber American Jews by 2040, becoming the country’s largest non-Christian religious group. The number of Muslims will hit 8.1 million by 2050, making up 2.1% of the total population – about double their current proportion of the population.