The Fastest Growing Religion in America Is...

The fastest growing religion in America is Islam.

That was the headline finding of the 2012 Religious Congregations and Membership Study (RCMS), the once-a-decade census of American houses of worship released in May 2012. Between 2000 and 2010, the Muslim population in the United States grew by 67 percent — about a million adherents — outpacing Mormonism (46 percent growth) and every mainline Christian denomination on a percentage basis.

David Roozen of the Hartford Institute, which produced the study, called Islam "probably the fastest growing major religion in the country," while cautioning that its influence is still limited: even with rapid growth, Muslims are probably 2 to 4 percent of the US population.

The growth is visible in the built landscape. Mosques are being built across the South and even in small cities of eastern Kentucky — "if the mountains of Kentucky can have mosques," the study's co-author Ihsan Bagby of the University of Kentucky noted, "then you'll find mosques everywhere." Bagby attributed the increase to immigration and natural population growth, and to a lesser extent to conversion, along with the growing financial resources of American Muslims.

The study also found a community settling into American civic life. Where in 2000 more than half of mosque leaders said American society was hostile to Islam, by 2012 only a quarter did. Fifty-six percent of mosque leaders said they took a flexible approach to the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad in order to take modern life into account. Researchers estimated 2.6 million Muslims pray in a mosque for Eid, the major holiday.

Local leaders see the change up close. Imam Muhammad Musri, senior imam and president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, has led the organization — which operates 10 mosques — since 1993, and also heads its Leaders Preparatory School, a full-time K-12 school, and a free health clinic for the poor and uninsured.

The RCMS numbers came with the usual caveats: for some religions, including Islam, the census authors estimate populations from samples of congregation responses, and Muslim population estimates vary widely. But the direction of travel was not in dispute — America, like the rest of the world, is getting more Muslim.