Prayer Times in United States

Muslims and mosques in United States

The United States census does not ask about religion, so every figure for American Muslims is an estimate. The Pew Research Center put the population at 3.45 million in 2017, 1.1% of Americans, and projected 8.1 million by 2050. A count based on congregations in 2020 reached about 4.5 million. Whichever figure is used, the community is among the most diverse of any faith in the country: the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found in 2017 that American Muslims are 26% white, 18% Asian, 18% Arab, 9% Black, 7% mixed race and 5% Hispanic, with no racial majority. Large communities live around Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, and Dearborn, Michigan is home to the largest Arab-American population in the country.

Islam in America is older than the country. Researchers trace it to the 16th century, when a large share of the people enslaved in West and Central Africa were Muslim, and the Moroccan-born explorer Estevanico was shipwrecked near Galveston, Texas in 1528. Bosnian Muslims founded a community in Chicago in 1906, Syrian Muslims built a mosque in Ross, North Dakota in 1929, and the mosque in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, completed in 1934, is the oldest standing building made as a mosque. African American movements such as the Moorish Science Temple (1913) and the Nation of Islam helped carry Islam into northern cities, and many of their members later joined mainstream Sunni communities.

The US Mosque Study 2020 counted 2,769 mosques, 31% more than in 2010, when there were 2,106, and more than double the 1,209 counted in 2000. Mosques in the United States are typically independent congregations funded by their own members, and many are in suburbs, in converted buildings or shared with other uses. The study found an average of 1,445 people connected to each mosque, and attendance at Friday prayers is far larger than on other days. National organisations such as the Islamic Society of North America, which helped sponsor the study, support local mosques with conventions, education and imam training.

For prayer times, the size of the country and the daylight-saving clocks matter. From March to November the clock moves forward an hour, so every prayer shifts on the clock face even though the sun has not changed, and cities in the same time zone can differ by half an hour or more between east and west. In the northernmost states twilight in June may not end at all, and a high-latitude rule is applied. Most American mosques use the ISNA method for Fajr and Isha, which is the default here, and the Standard Asr time. As elsewhere, communities do not all agree on the start of Ramadan and Eid, and each mosque announces its own congregation times.

Sources, checked 2026-10: Wikipedia: Islam in the United States; Institute for Social Policy and Understanding: US Mosque Study 2020, key findings; Christianity Today: US mosque survey (2021); Salaam Gateway: growth in the number of US mosques.