This article was originally published on the Cato Institute website.
Last week’s column documented, primarily using polling data from Gallup and the Pew Research Center, that Muslim Americans are rapidly abandoning the widely held beliefs of their home countries and embracing the more liberal social and political beliefs of other Americans.
But what’s even more remarkable about this finding is that this shift has occurred at the same time as an increase in Muslim immigration — which means immigration may be facilitating these changes rather than hindering them.
Between 2007 and 2015, the number of Muslim immigrants and their children doubled from 1.4 million to 2.7 million, while the native Muslim population fell by more than a third, from about 917,000 to 594,000 – evidence that immigrants themselves are also participating in the recent changes.
Source: See below.
Sources: Pew 2007, Pew 2011, Pew 2015. Note that this figure uses Pew 2014, as Pew 2015 does not provide the ratio of immigrants to natives. Pew does not have surveys prior to 2007, but the best survey estimate from 2000 puts the total Muslim population at 1.9 million (Smith 2002).
Here are some examples with data for both 2007 and 2014: Figure 2 compares the rate of acceptance of homosexuality among Muslim immigrants and their children with the rate among Muslims overall, and also tracks the number of Muslim immigrants in the United States.
Pew Research Center did not report a breakdown of acceptance of homosexuality by place of birth in 2014, but as Figure 2 shows, their views are in line with changes in the views of all Muslims between 2007 and 2011, both of which increased by 12 percentage points.
Figure 2: Percentage of American Muslims who believe homosexuality is “morally acceptable” and number of first- or second-generation Muslims in the United States
Source: See Figure 1.
Given this departure from a strict interpretation of the Quran, one might expect that many Muslims in the United States may have adjusted their views of the Islamic holy book.
In 2007, the Pew Research Center found that 50% of American Muslims favored a “literal” interpretation of the Bible, while 33% opposed it. By 2014, literalists had fallen 8 percentage points, while non-literalists had risen 10 points, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 3: Percentage of American Muslims who believe the Quran should not be taken literally and number of first- or second-generation Muslims
Source: See Figure 1.
Here’s another, equally important point: these changes do not include people who have abandoned Islam, and it would not be wrong to assume that these people are likely to be the most liberal.
Thus, these studies exclude people who abandoned their faith as adults or after arriving in the United States, and may therefore underestimate the level of liberalization among people who were raised Muslim or among immigrants who first arrived in the United States as Muslims.
The phenomenon is significant: 23 percent of U.S. residents who grew up in Muslim homes left their faith in 2014, according to the Pew Research Center; other estimates put the figure at 32 percent. Two small surveys found that the number of Iranian Americans who identify as Muslim fell from 42 percent to 31 percent between 2008 and 2012.
A 2011 Pew Research Center survey of Muslims in the United States suggests that this figure may actually be higher. Using data from the American Community Survey, the figure suggests that the actual percentage is more likely to be around 22 percent. Ignoring this group would make any estimate of the impact of “Muslim” immigrants on the religious or political composition of the United States very misleading.
Ultimately, the fact that immigration has significantly increased the Muslim population in the United States has not stalled immigrant assimilation. Rather, it demonstrates Americans’ remarkable ability to encourage immigrants to adopt their ways.
David J. Beer is an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Freedom and Prosperity.