First, we’ve begun to reach critical mass. By some figures, there are now more Muslims than Jews in the United States; by others, they will surpass Jews by 2010, making Islam the second-largest religion in the United States. And Muslims are increasing in prominence, as the high profile of Ellison and the Council on American-Islamic Relations indicates. (Or, for that matter, the tradition of inviting Muslim leaders to the White House to celebrate the start of Ramadan, begun by President Clinton and continued by President Bush.) And, as the principal of the Rockford Iqra School told us, September 11 itself led to a marked increase in visits of inquirers to the school and mosque.
Second, the massive increase in mosques in the United States over the past 15 years means that, as Mr. Ajjan puts it, there is likely a mosque within “reasonable driving distance” of many potential converts to Islam. As I wrote in the October 2005 issue of Chronicles (”Welcoming Muhammad: Abandoning That Which Is Our Own“):
Today, the U.S. State Department officially estimates the number of mosques in the United States at over 1,200, but that is based on a survey conducted in the late 1990’s; unofficial State Department estimates rise as high as 2,000. CNN notes that nearly 80 percent of those mosques have been built since 1990—after our first war with Iraq; of the rest, the bulk were built after the Islamic revolution in Iran.”
In other words, people who might have had a passing fancy in Islam in the past are now more able to convert that passing fancy to a real interest–and a real conversion.
Third, the heyday of the Nation of Islam has passed. This has had at least three effects: the migration of some NOI members, such as Shareef and Ellison, to traditional Islam; the tendency of new black converts to convert directly to traditional Islam; and, most importantly, an increasing sense among the general population that Islam in America is mainstream, not simply something that is confined to disaffected, predominantly urban blacks.
Fourth, the constant drumbeat by the Bush administration and the media that “Islam is a religion of peace” has made conversion (or even simply inquiry) much more socially acceptable.
None of this directly address Mr. Ajjan’s ultimate point, however, which I would summarize this way: Even if Muslim immigration were ended today, aren’t all the conditions in place to continue to encourage native-born conversions to Islam? The answer, sadly, is yes. What we need to look at, however, is the rate of conversion. If the presence of Muslims in America today is helping to drive conversions (as Mr. Ajjan concedes), why wouldn’t we expect that increasing numbers of immigrants (and the increasing number of mosques and schools that accompany them) would drive increasing numbers of conversions?
Or, to look at it from the opposite point of view: If American immigration policy treated adherence to Islam as grounds for automatic denial of entry to the United States, wouldn’t that be likely to counter the social acceptability of conversion to Islam, and thus decrease the number of converts and inquirers?
