A Portrait of Religiosity of U.S. Muslim Immigrants

Catherine D. Tucker, Pennsylvania State University

In the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center, intensive media coverage has been devoted to radical Islamic extremists. However, these extremists groups may comprise only a small minority of Muslims in the US. Muslims have been immigrating to the United States in ever greater numbers. Currently, approximately eight percent of immigrants to the United States report they are Muslim, yet little is known about the religiosity and religious involvement of this group as a whole. Prior to the collection and release of the New Immigrant Survey (NIS) dataset, data about immigrants, much less about their religious preferences and practices, has been difficult to acquire. However, the NIS makes it possible to examine Muslim immigrants who were previously unidentifiable by other means. In this research, we use data from the first full cohort of the NIS to examine the differences in religiosity between Muslims and other immigrant groups.