By: Abdirahman Aynte
Fellow, The Center for Independent Media
Minneapolis, MN (HOL) - A new survey finds that Minnesota is one the most popular destinations for U.S. Muslims. The state comes in at number 12 of the top dozen states that are home to more than 80 percent of U.S. Muslims.
Conducted by the California-based Genesis Research Associates in August, the survey was paid by the Washington-based Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). It is the "first scientific survey of American Muslims," CAIR said.
No exact figure is available, but estimates of U.S. Muslims range from six to eight million.
The survey finds that California, Illinois, New York, Texas, New Jersey each has more Muslims than Michigan, which is generally thought to be home to the largest population of Arab Americans.
Other states that have more Muslims than Minnesota are: Florida, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
According to the survey, Minnesota is home to 2.8 percent of U.S. Muslims. That number does not include "Muslims with non-common Muslim names or those with no Muslim-sounding names—especially converts," the survey reads.
One such person, evidently, would perhaps be America's most well-known Muslim—Rep.-elect Keith Ellison.
Ethnic break down of U.S. Muslims shows that 5.7 percent of respondents are of African descent. But the number is likely higher in Minnesota, where more than half of its estimated 150,000 Muslim population comes from Somalia and Ethiopia.
Recently, Minnesota has been the subject of high profile controversies involving Muslims. A group of taxicab drivers in Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport refused to carry alcohol-toting passengers, citing religious concerns. Also at the airport, six Muslim clerics, who attended a nationwide Imams conference in Minneapolis, were removed from a US Airways flight, after a passenger voiced a concern over their behavior.
And the controversy around the first Muslim elected to Congress, Ellison, is hardly over. Ellison declared that he'll swear of the Qur'an, Islam's holy book, at his private, photo-op ceremony with the speaker of the House, this January.
Abdirahman Aynte can be reached at [email protected]
Source: HOL, Dec 12, 2006