FIGURES ON FAITH - MUSLIMS AIM TO GATHER BETTER COUNT OF POPULATION

By Robert King

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Muhammad Ndiaye is halfway through his Friday sermon when he realizes his Northwestside mosque is so crowded that men are listening from a kitchen in the back.

He halts his lecture -- about the narrow path to heaven -- to urge the men and boys already seated on the floor to scoot up.

"Make room for others," Ndiaye said, "and Allah will make room for you."

Making room for others has been an ongoing task around Indianapolis in recent years, as existing local mosques have swollen in size and other fledgling prayer groups have blossomed into full-blown congregations in need of bigger quarters.

In Indianapolis and across the country, though, efforts to gauge the size of the Muslim population seem to miss that sense of growth. Muslims are particularly concerned that surveys have vastly underestimated the real size of their population, which could undermine their political clout.

So, beginning this week, Muslim organizations have taken it upon themselves to start an ambitious new census: an attempt to account for every mosque and Muslim in America.

A key sponsor is the Plainfield-based Islamic Society of North America, which hopes data from the count also will help Muslims better understand where mosques and Islamic schools are needed. That could be especially helpful in ISNA's effort to build an "American Islam" that avoids the sectarian or ethnic lines that divide Muslims elsewhere.

Numbers raise questions

Muslim advocacy groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations routinely cite a span of 6 million to 8 million people in describing the size of Islam in America.

That would be between 2 percent and 3 percent of the U.S. population and make Muslims greater in number than Mormons or Jews.

That claim stands in sharp contrast to the results of a survey last year by the Pew Research Center, which found the population was 2.35 million, or 0.6 percent of the U.S. population, based on phone surveys.

In fact, Pew's finding means Muslims are fewer in number than Buddhists or Jehovah's Witnesses, and only slightly more numerous than Hindus.

The number matters to Muslim leaders who have watched their community bear a burden of suspicion since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Being able to show a big number, they hope, might give Muslims more clout in Washington.

"If you are 4 percent of the population in a small district or a small state -- or in a large state where the race is close -- voting as a bloc could sway the election," said Shariq Siddiqui, executive director of the Muslim Alliance of Indiana.

Yet Muslim leaders admit this census isn't without risks.

If it verifies a low number, Muslims could remain in political obscurity; a high number could cause anti-Muslim critics to sound warnings of alarm.

"The idea of 20 million Muslims would be frightening to some people," said Muneer Fareed, secretary general of the Islamic Society in Plainfield.

Back home

Questions about the size of Indiana's Muslim population echo the national debate.

Siddiqui, the executive director of the state's Muslim Alliance, cites the number of Hoosier Muslims as 280,000, or 4.4 percent of the population. But Pew put Muslims at less than half a percent of the population, or fewer than 32,000.

Pew Forum researcher Greg Smith said his study's findings are consistent with past surveys, which have never put the Muslim population higher than 0.5 percent of the American populace.

But Muslim leaders say Pew's reliance primarily on residential phone numbers would have missed the many Muslims who use cell phones or the easily overlooked enclaves of Muslim immigrants -- such as Darfuris in Fort Wayne or Yemenis in Dearborn, Mich.

Muslim leaders say their survey will go further than previous attempts because it will glean numbers from interviews with leaders of all 1,500 mosques in the United States.

"It is historic in that all other studies have been sample surveys," said lead researcher Ihsan Bagby, an associate professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky. "Now we are going to try and identify the total universe of mosques and not do a sample survey but a complete survey of every mosque."

Bagby admits the Muslim census will have its weaknesses: It will rely on imams to report mosque attendance and, more subjectively, estimate the size of their communities. Still, he says it should be better than relying on residential phone lists.

"Each methodology has its pluses and minuses," Bagby said.

Beyond the numbers

Aside from asking for head counts and estimates of community size, surveyors will ask questions about how women are involved in mosque governance and where they sit during services; about whether the mosque has a full-time imam; and whether the mosque engages in voter drives.

The treatment of women and the presence of professional leadership have been key issues for ISNA. The society, for example, has pushed to ease strict separation of the sexes during prayer. Political involvement has been a higher priority for the Council on American Islamic Relations, the survey's co-sponsor and the loudest voice for Muslim civil rights.

Whatever the count turns up, evidence of growth is clear at places such as the Al-Haqq Foundation, where the overflow crowd of 400 on Friday included men who spilled out onto sidewalk and women who jammed the "sisters" section.

"Each time I come here it is more and more packed," said Sulaiman Ariff, a 23-year-old student at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

Ndiaye, Al-Haqq's imam and a native of Senegal, said Islam often is purported to be among the fastest growing religions in the United States. But there are no solid numbers to back that up. He said it is good that the census will try to put a sharper point on the subject. And he is not worried that non-Muslims might find a big number alarming.

"I think it could bring some ease to their hearts, and comfort," Ndiaye said. "They could understand that all this time we have been living with all these Muslims and we have never had a problem with them. That means these are people of peace."