Survey: U.S. Muslim women liberated

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By Julia Duin

UPDATED:

American Muslims include some of the world's most liberated Islamic women and the largest percentage of young people of any religious community in the country, according to a new report issued Monday by the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.

The survey also coined a new phrase: "post 9/11 trauma" to apply to the country's estimated 2 million to 4 million Muslims.

Fifty-nine percent of Muslim-American women work; a greater percentage than women in other faiths, according to "Muslim Americans: A National Portrait." The survey, which polled 946 self-identified Muslims from January to November 2008, has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4 percent.

Whereas women in Muslim majority countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt are only half as likely to attend Friday prayers at a mosque, 40 percent of Muslim women attend mosque here, about par with 42 percent of Muslim men.

It's "not true" that U.S. Muslim women are oppressed, Ahmed Younis, a senior analyst for the center said. "Muslim women are roughly equal to men in education, income and mosque attendance."

The survey also revealed Muslims are the country's most ethnically diverse religious group: 35 percent are black; 28 percent are white, which includes ethnic Arabs; 18 percent are Asian; 18 percent are "other"; and 1 percent are Hispanic.

Muslims also have the largest households in the country at 3.81 persons on average compared with 2.9 in the general population, and the highest numbers of children, an average of 1.33 compared with 0.75 in the general population. This outstrips the next largest group — Mormons — who average 1.24 children per household. Forty percent have college degrees or postgraduate degrees, second only to American Jews, and much higher than the general public at 29 percent.

Seventy percent are employed compared with 64 percent of Americans overall.

They are the heaviest smokers, at 24 percent, among American religious groups. The next highest at 19 percent are Catholics.