Muslim stats highballed, says AJCommittee data

NEW YORK -- In the run-up to the 2000 presidential elections, Jewish leaders fretted about the perceived surge in influence of American Muslims -- both politically and numerically -- and how it might affect U.S. support for Israel.

Now Jewish leaders have statistics contradicting earlier claims that said Muslims make up more than 2 percent of the American population.

The American Jewish Committee this week released a new survey, commissioned soon after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, that its author describes as "the most credible estimate" to date of the size of America's Muslim community.

While the media routinely cites a population of 6 million to 7 million U.S. Muslims -- in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, estimates have been as high as 10 million -- University of Chicago researcher Tom Smith says the real number is anywhere from 1.9 to 2.8 million.

"The Muslim community is an important part of the American mosaic, but they are not as large a part as the figures cited in the media and by others would lead some to believe," said Smith, who directs the General Social Survey at the university's National Opinion Research Center.

Smith said it is "common that groups overestimate the size of their community since they are very involved with the community, and tend to see themselves as larger than an objective standard can verify," he said.

An American Muslim leader immediately denounced the survey as inaccurate and the AJCommittee as politically motivated.

The report is a "desperate attempt to discount the role of American Muslims," Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told the Associated Press.

"Very often the representatives of the extremist wing of the pro-Israel lobby, such as the American Jewish Committee, seek to block Muslim political participation," Hooper reportedly said.

The AJCommittee denied the charge. Spokesman Kenneth Bandler said his organization "was not seeking to diminish [Muslim] influence in this country, but it's important to know accurately what their population is. We're anxious to develop ties with Muslim groups with whom we can seriously have a relationship, meaning groups that don't endorse terrorism."

The AJCommittee also was eager to give guidance to media that it believes unwittingly publish inflated population figures.

When the report was completed last week, the AJCommittee passed it along to both the New York Times and the Associated Press.

The 6- to 7-million figure appears as "an established fact, even in the pages of the New York Times," Bandler said. "We wanted to set the record straight on these numbers, and that's it."

Smith, for his part, said he is not concerned about rising Muslim political influence.

"I'm only interested in scientifically bad numbers," said Smith, who is not Jewish. "If one is given wrong information, one will be guided inappropriately."

For the past decade, Smith said, he has read publications that printed Muslim population estimates that didn't jibe with his research.

He said he wrote to editors of USA Today and American Demographer, a trade journal, contesting their population estimates, but neither letter was published.

The U.S. census tabulates national origin and language use, but not religious affiliation. Without it, a range of faulty methods have been used to calculate the Muslim population, Smith said.

For example, one researcher figured that an immigrant group from a given country would accurately mirror the ethnic and religious composition of the home country, discounting persecution as a motivation for emigration, Smith said.

Smith poked holes in that method with two examples: Lebanon is a Muslim-majority state, but most Lebanese emigres over the years have been Christians.