Muslim population growth is projected to intensify anti-Muslim hostility in the United States

Evidence

Understanding reactions toward Muslims and the religion of Islam is particularly important because the population of Muslims is expected to double in the United States and to increase by about 35% worldwide in the next two decades (Pew Research Center, 2011). Many individuals have recently reacted with hostility and fear to the building of new mosques and Muslim community centers (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 2011), and these reactions may become more intense with an increase in the Muslim population. — Sherman A. Lee, Chelsea A. Reid, Stephen D. Short, Jeffrey A. Gibbons, Ruth Yeh, and Matthew L. Campbell, Fear of Muslims, 141

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: ‘The demography of backlash’ — testing whether mosque-opposition flare-ups track local Muslim population growth rather than national rhetoric.
• XREF: The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Home Boy both dramatize post-9/11 suspicion of Muslim communities; this supplies the demographic backdrop those novels assume.