A recent Pew Research Center study on how people change religious identity around the world has produced a striking finding. Analysing movement into and out of Islam in 13 countries, Pew found that the United States has the highest proportion of Muslims who were not raised in the faith.
According to the study, one in five people in the United States who now identify as Muslim were not Muslim in childhood. In other words, 20 per cent of the country’s Muslim adults grew up following another religion or with no religious identity. On this measure, the United States ranks first among the 13 countries in the study.
Pew analysed religious switching in its report “Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions”, published on March 26, 2025. The report defines switching as the difference between the religious identity a person was raised in and the one they hold as an adult. That means taking part in any formal ceremony of conversion to Islam was not the study’s measure.
One in five was not raised Muslim
According to Pew, 80 per cent of Muslim adults in the United States were raised Muslim. Seventeen per cent were raised in another religion, and 3 per cent grew up with no religious identity. Altogether, 20 per cent of Muslim Americans come from families or backgrounds in which Islam was not their childhood religion.
The largest group among converts comes from a Christian background. Pew’s analysis found that 13 per cent of adults in the United States who now identify as Muslim were raised Christian, with the rest coming from other religious backgrounds or from no religion.
The figures highlight an important aspect of religious diversity and identity change in the United States. Islam is still the religious identity of only about 1 per cent of American adults. So although the share of converts within the Muslim population is notable, it does not mean a large part of the country’s population has recently embraced Islam.
Highest accession rate among 13 countries
Pew collected data on religious switching in 36 countries, but had large enough samples to analyse switching among Muslims in only 13. Among these, the United States had the highest rate of accession to Islam.
In the study, the accession rate means the percentage of a religion’s current adherents who were not raised in it. On this measure, the accession rate among Muslims in the United States is 20 per cent. Kenya, in second place, has a rate of 11 per cent, so the proportion of Muslims in the United States who were not raised Muslim is nearly double Kenya’s.
This comparison should not be confused with the countries’ total populations, however. About 11 per cent of all adults in Kenya are Muslim, compared with about 1 per cent in the United States. So although the proportion of converts is higher in the United States, Muslims remain a relatively small share of its total population.
Most converts come from a Christian background
That a large share of converts to Islam in the United States grew up in Christian families is not new; earlier Pew studies also showed the diversity of American Muslims’ religious backgrounds. The latest study likewise found that a large share of American Muslim converts were Christian in childhood, with a notable presence of people from Protestant and Catholic backgrounds. Conversions to Islam are therefore linked to the broader trend of religious switching in the United States.
Pew’s wider 2025 study on religious change shows that moving away from one’s childhood religious identity in adulthood is a widespread social trend in the United States. Some 20.2 per cent of American adults were raised in a religion but now describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, while 3.5 per cent who were raised with no religious identity now belong to a religion. In other words, religious switching in the United States is not limited to conversion to Islam: people leaving religions, joining new ones and taking no religious identity are together changing the country’s religious map.
Some also leave Islam
Another important finding of the Pew study is that alongside conversions to Islam in the United States, some people also leave it. About three-quarters of Americans raised Muslim still identify as Muslim as adults, the lowest retention rate among the 13 countries in the study.
Some Americans raised Muslim have gone on to have no religious identity, and a small share have become Christian. Religious switching involving Islam in the United States therefore runs in both directions.
The researchers see changes in religious identity as a long-term process tied to personal belief, family environment and social circumstances, and Pew did not identify any single reason as the main cause of conversion to Islam.
Technology and the flow of information
The internet, social media and readily available information have greatly increased people’s opportunities to learn about religion, which may play an important role in personal searches for religious identity in the United States and elsewhere. But the Pew study does not show directly that technology or the flow of information causes conversion to Islam in the United States. Its main aim was to compare the religious identity people were raised in with the one they hold now, so it would be wrong to cite technology, social media or anything else as a direct finding on why people convert.
Signs of a changing religious map
Pew’s data make clear that religious identity in the United States is not fixed. A significant number of people change their childhood religious identity at some stage of life — some leaving religious identity behind, others joining a new faith. The United States stands out in the case of Islam: in the comparison of 13 countries with sufficient data, it has the highest share of current Muslims who were not raised Muslim, with 20 per cent having grown up in another religion or none before becoming Muslim.
These figures should not, however, be read as a count of how many people embrace Islam in the United States each year. The Pew study is based on lifetime changes in religious identity and does not measure how many people formally converted in any given year. Overall, the findings show that a significant share of Muslims in the United States were not born into the faith, and that this is an important feature of the country’s fast-changing religious and social landscape.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report