Muslim American Heritage month recognizes the many contributions of Muslim Americans in American history up to today. The 2020 United States Religion Census estimates that there are about 4,453,908 Muslim Americans of all ages living in the United States, and in 2017, Islam was reported as the largest non-Christian religion in twenty states, primarily in the South and Midwest. Just this week I attended a Muslim Heritage month event in Paterson, NJ, the city with the largest population of Muslims in the state of New Jersey. Alongside food from my favorite Middle Eastern restaurant in the city, there was a performance of Dabke, a traditional dance from the Levant region of the Middle East. However, the most compelling aspect about the celebration was the incredible diversity of the Musim American community that was highlighted at the event. The Mayor of Paterson’s wife, Farhanna, who is Muslim of Indonesian background, welcomed the audience and public figures from my own Bangladeshi community, those from Arab American and African communities were also uplifted. The community in Paterson has the highest Palestinian American population in the nation as well as a substantial Turkish American community. This city is a microcosm of the diverse Muslim American community in the U.S.. Though no racial or ethnic group makes up a majority of Muslim Americans, according to Pew Research, a plurality (41%) are classified as white (a category that includes those who describe their race as Arab, Middle Eastern, Persian/Iranian), about three-in-ten are Asian (28%), including those from South Asia, and one-fifth are Black (20%). Hispanic populations make up 8%, and an additional 3% identify with another race or with multiple races.

People of Muslim background can be traced to before the founding of the U.S, all the way to the 16th century, where it is estimated that 15% to 30% of Africans kidnapped and trafficked by the transatlantic slave trade were Muslim. Those who tried to continue practicing and maintaining Islamic principles after enslavement were forcibly converted to Christianity. Among some of these early Muslims were Yarrow Mamout, a formerly enslaved entrepreneur and successful financier whose famous portrait (painted by Charles Peale, the same artist who painted George Washington and Benjamin Franklin) hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, whose memoirs were published as one of the earliest narratives of enslaved peoples of the Atlantic Slave trade. There were Muslims who fought on the American side during the Revolutionary War and there are estimates ranging from a dozen to two hundred and ninety-two Muslims who served in the Union military during the American Civil War. 

Muslim American immigration was severely hindered by racist immigration quotas in the 20th century, including legislation such the The Asiatic Barred Zone Act, also known as the Immigration Act of 1917, which restricted immigration from Asia and the Pacific. Despite this, Muslim American communities were established throughout the country, such as South Asian immigrants from current day Bangladesh who settled in Harlem in New York City in the 1920’s establishing civic organizations, restaurants and mosques as well building multiracial coalitions with Black and brown communities. Other early 20th-century Muslim communities settled primarily in Dearborn, Michigan; Paterson, New Jersey; Quincy, Massachusetts; and Ross, North Dakota, with some of these places now boosting some of the most substantial Muslim American populations in the country. The Muslim population in the U.S. increased dramatically after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 into law. This law, made possible by the activism of the Black Civil Rights Movement, abolished discriminatory quotas and expanded immigration from Muslim-majority countries.

Muslim Americans continued to be woven into the rich, painful and complicated tapestry of the American experiment with the Black Muslim movement of the early 20th century, which remains a significant part of the Muslim American population today and the activation of the Muslim civil rights movements after the enactment of the Patriot Act and extrajudicial actions taken against U.S. Muslim communities post 9/11. The growth of Muslim American populations over the years has been one fraught with both intercultural joy and heartbreaking adversity, a journey that continues up till this very day with an administration that has made its pro-white supremacy christian hegemonic stances starkly clear. Yet if there is one thing Muslim Heritage Month can demonstrate, it’s that the plurality of cultures in our country is not a recent phenomenon, but a core aspect of its being from the very beginning. Just this month, Senators Cory Booker and Representative Andre Carson introduced a congressional resolution recognizing January as Muslim-American Heritage Month. Though this resolution celebrates the contributions of Muslim Americans to the nation, it further notes the religious discrimination experienced by Muslim Americans and stresses the “need for public education, awareness, and policies that are culturally competent when describing, discussing, or addressing the impacts of being Muslim American in all aspects of the society of the United States.” Resolutions uplifting Muslim American Heritage Month have also been enacted by states and school districts throughout the country. 

In 2025, the Muslim American community is again facing so many painful uncertainties. The racist 2016 Muslim Ban, enacted by the current administration, set a troubling precedent of how this community is perceived by the regime in power and by those that support them. Yet Muslim Americans are not new to these sentiments, we have been here from before the foundation of this nation, continuing to overcome challenges, xenophobia, and the persistent 'otherizing' of our community. The spirit of Muslim Americans is bound up in the spirit of this country, a nation precipitously on the thin edge of failure, held afloat so precariously by hope. Join us in this hope, celebrate this month with us, because together we are so much more powerful than that which aims to divide us, and we always have been.