Islam moving to the suburbs

By Wayne Parry
Associated Press

Men are joined by students from the Noor-Ul-Iman School for afternoon prayer at the Islamic Society of New Jersey in suburban South Brunswick. Many Muslims communities across the United States are spreading to the suburbs. Associated Press

The mosque of the Islamic Society of Central Jersey is tucked away amid the pine trees and flowering pink dogwoods along the booming high-tech corridor leading into Princeton, N.J. Next door, huge concrete water main pipes lie on the side of the road, ready to be installed as part of a new housing development.

The mosque's large parking lots fill up with minivans and SUVs, from which parents and kids emerge. They hurry inside for worship between work and classes.

Scenes like this are playing out across the United States as Muslim communities spread out from the cities to the suburbs. Definitive statistics are hard to come by, but some Muslim leaders and sociologists say the fastest growth of mosques is occurring in the suburbs.

In Hawai'i, the lot overflows at the mosque at Manoa for the Islamic Society of Hawaii, which has been on the lookout for bigger quarters.

A 2001 nationwide study of mosques by the Council on American Islamic Relations also found suburbs are where Islam is bustling.

"This is more and more where Muslims are living," said Ishan Bagby, a professor at the University of Kentucky who conducted the study.

As was the case with waves of European, Asian and Latino immigrants in past decades, Muslim immigrants settled in the cities. As they established businesses and prospered, they — or more commonly, their children — moved to the suburbs.

Of 800 mosques surveyed, Bagby found that 77 percent of those in suburban locations saw their congregations grow by 10 percent from 1999 to 2000, while 53 percent of urban mosques saw similar growth over that same period. The council plans a second study in 2005.

The suburban growth is not exclusive to Islam; major Christian and Jewish organizations also are growing in suburban areas as populations expand farther from the urban core. But the growth among Muslim congregations has been dramatic.

The $1.2 million mosque in Princeton, N.J., has about 500 families as active members, most of them recent immigrant professionals. Its school has more than 200 students and a long waiting list.

"Not everyone wished to live and educate his kids in Jersey City," said the center's imam, Hamad Ahmad Chebli. "They spread out to different areas."

Overall, no one knows exactly how many Muslims are in the United States — estimates vary dramatically, from 2 million to 6 million. CAIR's study of mosques found 63 percent were still in urban areas.

The urban-suburban contrast is beginning to draw the attention of religious scholars and academics studying the growth of Islam in America.

Professor Sulayman Nyang, chairman of African studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C., noted several principal differences between urban and suburban mosques.

While there are exceptions, he said the inner-city mosques tend to be predominantly African-American, more inward-looking and focused more on addressing neighborhood concerns like poverty, drug abuse and employment. Those in the suburbs are more likely to be populated by immigrant Muslims from the Middle East or South Asia.

Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, of the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque outside Washington in Falls Church, Va., said the next logical step for the suburban Muslim community is one that has happened with other waves of immigrants — assimilation.

"America has become the crucible for Islam," he said.

Advertiser staff reporter Mary Kaye Ritz contributed to this report.