Diverse Populations: Muslim Americans Muslim Americans are not a large part of the U.S. culture, but their numbers are growing. These are people who moved to America from Muslim countries and kept their religious and cultural beliefs, or people who were born in America and raised with or converted to that religion and set of cultural beliefs. If someone lives in America and considers himself or herself Muslim, he or she is a Muslim American. In the United States, being Muslim is far in the minority, and it is believed that only one percent of the American people identify themselves as Muslim (GhaneaBassiri, 2010). In Georgia that number is even smaller, with estimates of one half of one percent or less (GhaneaBassiri, 2010). Michigan is the state with the highest percentage of Muslims, followed by New Jersey (Smith, 2009). Georgia does not appear anywhere in the list of top states with a Muslim population.

The poverty rate for Muslim Americans is similar to the poverty rate for other Americans, as are the statistics on lifespan. In other words, being Muslim in America does not discriminate between people who are rich or poor, or between people who live a long time...

Since it is a religion and not a racial or genetic issue, there is no correlation between being Muslim and a particular lifespan or financial demographic. However, it is important to point out that the majority of people who are Muslim or who convert to the Muslim religion are African-American, followed by South Asian (Melton, 1992; Smith, 2009). Within the African-American demographic in America there is much poverty, but the majority of African-Americans who convert to the Muslim religion are either middle-class or wealthy (Curtis & Edward, 2007). This shows that the demographics that are normally seen for the African-American community may not be as applicable when it comes to those who are Muslim.
Alcohol and drug abuse statistics for Muslim Americans indicate that most Muslim people do not drink or use drugs (Haddad, Smith, & Moore, 2006). The majority of people who convert to or find a religion in prison, though, convert to being Muslim (GhaneaBassiri, 2010). That is worth pointing out, because it indicates that the prison culture may somehow draw people to the Muslim religion. Determining why this is the case would be worth studying,…