August 06, 2021
A new survey of American mosques shows an immense decline in attendance by Iranians and African-Americans.
A survey done a decade ago in 2010 of mosques that are Shiite showed that 26 percent of their attendees were Iranian, while the new survey done in 2020 found only 8 percent of those regularly attending were Iranian an immense decline of 70 percent.
The survey of all mosques done in 2010 revealed that 23 percent of all attendees were African-American. By last year, that had declined by a third to just 16 percent.
The survey takers acknowledged that the numbers could be impacted by the small numbers of mosques that participated in the survey one-sixth of all the mosques located. But with regard to African-Americans, other surveys have indicated that African-American converts to Islam have declined substantially and that fewer young adults in the African-American Islamic community are attending.
As for Iranians, the survey takers had no explanation, but acknowledged the problem given that the sampling of Shiite mosques was small.
The survey also noted that few full-time imams in Shiite mosques are Iranian, which might impact attendance by Iranians. It said none of the Shiite imams were born in the US, with 62 percent being Arab-born, 31 percent from South Asia and a mere 8 percent from Iran.
The survey was sponsored by a number of Islamic groups in the US, including the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). It was led by Dr. Ihsan Bagby of the University of Kentucky.
The survey found a total of 2,769 mosques in the US, an increase of 31 percent from 2010. But only 6.5 percent of the mosques are Shiite.
The survey asked the mosques how many people attended Eid services at the end of Ramadan (for Sunni mosques) and Moharram celebrations (for Shiite mosques). From the responses, the survey extrapolated that there are 4 million people in the United States who attend a mosque service at least once a year. (A Pew Research Center study in 2017 estimated the number of American Muslims at 3.35 million or 1.1 percent of the population then.)
The survey also asked the mosques if they had faced opposition from their local community when they tried to expand. A total of 35 percent of the responding mosques said they had faced opposition, a large jump from 25 percent in 2010.
The survey, however, did not ask if the resistance stopped their plans. Mosques faced a lot of opposition after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. But the federal government has increasingly stepped in to tell little towns and counties that they cannot block mosque plans willy-nilly.
The survey also found that imams are considered the leader of the mosque in only 30 percent of all American mosques. In the vast majority, lay leadership dominates copying the practice in most American Christian churches and Jewish synagogues.
