Failed growth models
Some indications are that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may not be gorwing as much in the US as we think. However I always question the results of the Pew survey.
I question them even more on Islam. The Pew survey says that conversion is not a factor in the growth of Islam in the US. Why, because the number of former Muslims and converts to Muslims are both roughtly 20%. However with this being an adult survey and 58% of Muslim adults in the US being immigrants, I think the modeling involved here is flawed.
Why, for one thing, without converts Islam would be 20% smaller. However more to the point, we need more indepth studies on the former Muslims. For one thing how does someone like Peter M. Johnson show up in this study? Johnson became a Muslim when he was about 12. I think he was either Pentecostal or Baptists before that. When he was about 20 he joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is now a general authority. So does he count as a former Muslim or not if picked up by the survey. That is one problem of the Pew survey it assumes one childhood religion and its not well equiped to deal with people who changed religion while growing up, especially if they have moved to a new religion since.
A bigger problem though is the question, what percentage of former Muslims are immigrants? Is it 58%, or is it even higher than among adult Muslims. I know there are American former Muslims who are from Nigeria and left Islma before coming to the US. Probably from other countries as well. In some cases these people fled their old countries because they no longer wanted to be part of Islam. They were never American Muslims, so even though they would show up in the survey as former Muslims, if we want to understand what is happening over time to the number of Muslims in the US they are not a counter weight to Muslims converting in the US.
This rhetoric is all the more suspect because there are so many people who try to treat anti-Muslim sentiment as a racial animus. This is problematic in that it works best by downplaying choice in choosing Islam. It also leads to the classing of former Muslims as traitors to their people, in the same way some class former Jews. Both are problematic classifications.
My general guess is that conversion to Islam is a bigger part of the Islamic population in the US than some admit. On the other hand the fact is that many Muslims in the US today are the grandchildren of the converts to the Nation of Islam in the 1960s and 1970s. Also, what percentage of people who are Muslims and identified as black, which comes out to about 1 million people, are converts or their descendants, and what percentage are immigrants from Nigeria, Senegal, Mali and other parts of Africa is hard to say. If Somali immigrants are getting classed as black, that my guess is at least half are immigrant stock and not convert stock. If Somali immigrants get classed as Arab and thus white, then my guess is a much lower percentage. It also depends what percentage of Nigerian immigrants are Muslim as opposed to Christian, since Nigerians are the largest immigrant group from Africa. Considering there are 77 million Muslims in Nigeria out of 200 million people (although I am not sure how recent that figure is for the Muslim count, so it might be low), many Nigerian immigrants may be Muslim.
Most Muslim immigrants to the US are not Arabs but south Asians, from Pakistan, India or Bangladesh. There are more Muslims in south Asia, somewhere between 400 and 500 million, than in southwest Asia. Even in southwest Asia most Muslims are probably not Arabs. The Kurds, Turks and Iranians outnumber Arabs in southwest Asia, although what percentage of Arabs live in southwest Asia as opposed to north Africa is also worth considering.
Most Americans from southwest Asia are Christians or Jews, not Muslims. Even more so when we realize some Greek Americans have ancestors who were in southwest Asia a century ago, even if their families stayed in present Greece for a time before coming to the US. The majority of Arab Americans are Christians, plus then there are Chaldean from Iraq, Armenians and I guess people from the country of Georgia as well. There has also been at least some percentage of Iranian immigrants who have converted to various forms of Christianity.
One question worth considering is how long Israeli immigrants should have lived in Israel before coming to the US to count as southwest Asian in origin.
I question them even more on Islam. The Pew survey says that conversion is not a factor in the growth of Islam in the US. Why, because the number of former Muslims and converts to Muslims are both roughtly 20%. However with this being an adult survey and 58% of Muslim adults in the US being immigrants, I think the modeling involved here is flawed.
Why, for one thing, without converts Islam would be 20% smaller. However more to the point, we need more indepth studies on the former Muslims. For one thing how does someone like Peter M. Johnson show up in this study? Johnson became a Muslim when he was about 12. I think he was either Pentecostal or Baptists before that. When he was about 20 he joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is now a general authority. So does he count as a former Muslim or not if picked up by the survey. That is one problem of the Pew survey it assumes one childhood religion and its not well equiped to deal with people who changed religion while growing up, especially if they have moved to a new religion since.
A bigger problem though is the question, what percentage of former Muslims are immigrants? Is it 58%, or is it even higher than among adult Muslims. I know there are American former Muslims who are from Nigeria and left Islma before coming to the US. Probably from other countries as well. In some cases these people fled their old countries because they no longer wanted to be part of Islam. They were never American Muslims, so even though they would show up in the survey as former Muslims, if we want to understand what is happening over time to the number of Muslims in the US they are not a counter weight to Muslims converting in the US.
This rhetoric is all the more suspect because there are so many people who try to treat anti-Muslim sentiment as a racial animus. This is problematic in that it works best by downplaying choice in choosing Islam. It also leads to the classing of former Muslims as traitors to their people, in the same way some class former Jews. Both are problematic classifications.
My general guess is that conversion to Islam is a bigger part of the Islamic population in the US than some admit. On the other hand the fact is that many Muslims in the US today are the grandchildren of the converts to the Nation of Islam in the 1960s and 1970s. Also, what percentage of people who are Muslims and identified as black, which comes out to about 1 million people, are converts or their descendants, and what percentage are immigrants from Nigeria, Senegal, Mali and other parts of Africa is hard to say. If Somali immigrants are getting classed as black, that my guess is at least half are immigrant stock and not convert stock. If Somali immigrants get classed as Arab and thus white, then my guess is a much lower percentage. It also depends what percentage of Nigerian immigrants are Muslim as opposed to Christian, since Nigerians are the largest immigrant group from Africa. Considering there are 77 million Muslims in Nigeria out of 200 million people (although I am not sure how recent that figure is for the Muslim count, so it might be low), many Nigerian immigrants may be Muslim.
Most Muslim immigrants to the US are not Arabs but south Asians, from Pakistan, India or Bangladesh. There are more Muslims in south Asia, somewhere between 400 and 500 million, than in southwest Asia. Even in southwest Asia most Muslims are probably not Arabs. The Kurds, Turks and Iranians outnumber Arabs in southwest Asia, although what percentage of Arabs live in southwest Asia as opposed to north Africa is also worth considering.
Most Americans from southwest Asia are Christians or Jews, not Muslims. Even more so when we realize some Greek Americans have ancestors who were in southwest Asia a century ago, even if their families stayed in present Greece for a time before coming to the US. The majority of Arab Americans are Christians, plus then there are Chaldean from Iraq, Armenians and I guess people from the country of Georgia as well. There has also been at least some percentage of Iranian immigrants who have converted to various forms of Christianity.
One question worth considering is how long Israeli immigrants should have lived in Israel before coming to the US to count as southwest Asian in origin.
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