Islam in the Americas

rdf:langString Islam in the Americas

rdf:langString Islam is a minority religion in all of the countries and territories of the Americas, around 1% of North America population are Muslims, and 0.1% of Latin America and Caribbean population are Muslims. Suriname has the highest percentage of Muslims in its population for the region, with 15.2% or 85,637 individuals, according to its 2010 census. However, the United States, in which estimates vary due to a lack of a census question, is generally believed to have the largest population, with approximately 3.45 million Muslims living there, about 1.1 percent of the total U.S. population. Most Muslims in the former British Caribbean came from the Indian subcontinent as indentured servants following the abolition of slavery. This movement also reached Suriname, although other Muslims there moved from a separate Dutch colony, which is now Indonesia. In the United States, the largest Muslim ethnic group is of African Americans, who converted in the last century, including those who converted from the actions of the syncretic, radical and revisionist group known as the Nation of Islam. However, in South America, the Muslim population is mainly composed of upper-class immigrants from the Levant, including those from Lebanon and Syria.