Muslims with American citizenship have created a very positive image of their civic contributions in the United States, and studies rank them as the highest donors to charitable projects compared to other Americans.

Studies attribute American Muslims' superiority over others in the field of volunteering to their beliefs and not to any social status privilege, as their average individual income is lower than that of non-Muslims in the country.

Ramadan, the month of charity

A recent study, according to Al Jazeera Mubasher, showed that Muslims holding American citizenship donated about 1.8 billion dollars in charity funds during the year 2021.

According to the study issued last week by the Islamic Philanthropy Initiative at Indiana University in the USA, each Muslim family gave an average of $2,070 in charity last year.

The director of the Islamic Philanthropy Initiative, Shareq Siddiqui, said according to the same source that it is very likely that the largest part of the 1.8 billion dollars was donated during the blessed month of Ramadan as part of Zakat funds.

The study indicates that the largest portion of the amount donated by American Muslims, about 25.3%, was given to international non-profit organizations, while 21.7% was given to countries, mostly Muslim-majority countries, whose governments collect Zakat funds.

Local non-profit organizations said that 18.3% of the declared amount was not officially recorded, as it was given to relatives or other informal entities.

Siddiqui confirmed in a statement issued by the initiative the importance of organizations, charities, and non-profits innovating programs and plans to deal with American Muslim donors during Ramadan.

Donating more than other Americans

Muslims in the United States donated more to charitable projects during 2020 than the rest of the Americans in the country, according to a new study, and they are also the most volunteering people, according to Euronews.

The American society includes 11% Muslims, and their average individual income is lower than that of non-Muslims in the country, but according to the 2021 report, their donations represented 1.4% of the total donations made by individuals, according to the same source.

American Muslims are a very diverse and rapidly growing minority, contributing about 4.3 billion dollars of total donations to causes that are mostly non-religious throughout the year.

This study, according to the same previous source, was conducted in partnership with the Islamic Relief USA, a non-profit advocacy organization. The survey included more than two thousand Americans, during almost three weeks of March and April 2021, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Participants answered questions related to their religious habits, donation and volunteering practices, the causes they support, their concerns about COVID-19, and how economic and political uncertainty affect their giving and volunteering. Finally, the extent of people’s exposure to discrimination was examined, along with their opinions on the level of discrimination in society.

Support for civil rights

According to the same source, the average donation of American Muslims to charitable projects reached $3,200 compared to $1,905 for non-Muslims, and American Muslims’ contributions supported about 8.5% of civil rights causes. It is believed that this level of giving reflects efforts to combat Islamophobia.

American Muslims have challenged anti-Islamic stereotypes, through the charitable causes they support to the level of 84% of their total donations being directed within the American interior, which contradicts the false belief that Americans primarily support foreign causes.

Faith increases giving

Other charitable priorities for American Muslims included alleviating poverty and combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Muslims gave a large portion of donations, 14.3%, to causes related to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the study, this community pattern is attributed to American Muslims being highly represented in various professional categories, including doctors and frontline workers. Muslim doctors represent 15% in Michigan and pharmacists 11%, while in New York, doctors represent 10% of the city’s doctors, pharmacists 13%, and 40% of taxi drivers.

Muslims find in Zakat and charity an incentive that drives them to donate and give more, and it has been observed that the more religious, for example those who pray regularly, tend to give more charity than those who pray less frequently. Similar trends have also been noted among non-Muslims.

It is noteworthy that Islam is the third largest religion in the United States after Christianity and Judaism.

According to the latest statistics, according to Al Jazeera Mubasher, the number of Muslims in America in 2022 reached about 5 million Muslims according to estimates by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), while statistics from the non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies indicate that their number ranges between 3 to 4 million Muslims, equivalent to about 1.1% of the total population of the United States, which is 330 million citizens.

* Quoted from Al Jazeera Mubasher