People should check this site out here for a bunch of information on religion in the United States. Media reports are emphasizing that the data shows that people in the U.S. change religions a lot. With regard to Muslims (where it seems a lot of this is data that was previously released) if one believes the Pew data there are a lot less Muslims in the U.S. than Muslims usually claim (around, but less than 2 million while Muslims like to say six or eight or ten million) and Muslims are the most diverse religious group racially/ethnically with large amounts of whites (Arabs counting as whites), Blacks, and Asians with some Hispanics. The only other religious group as diverse was Jehovah’s Witnesses.
I’ll keep chewing on the report to see if I come up with other stuff — but I really wish we as Muslims would stop (falsely) bragging about how many Muslims we are (numbers are not the most important thing anyways) and start working on really giving the message and creating functional communities. This is really a whole different post, but to remind myself to come back to it later, almost all really functional Muslim communities and even masjids are ones started, run by and composed largely of immigrant groups. The criticisms of this older generation are easy to make and they should by no means be ignored but the failure of those of us who are indigenous Muslims (of whatever ethnic group or minhaj) to succeed in offering real, functional alternatives are absolutely glaring. I know that this is what groups like MANA are trying to address, may Allaah (swt) make us successful.