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Friday, May. 9, 2025

Does Phoenix have three times as many mosques as Detroit?

Carmela Guaglianone, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting
no

The most recent U.S. Mosque Survey, conducted in 2020, found that the greater Detroit area had the fourth-highest number of mosques—104—of any large metro. Phoenix was not among the top 10. 

The Mosque Survey counted 35 mosques in Arizona overall, a slight uptick from the 2010 survey but less than a third of the Michigan total. The number of mosques nationwide also climbed over the same period, an increase researchers attributed to the country’s growing Muslim population.

In 2018, Pew Research estimated that the number of people identifying as Muslim was increasing by about 100,000 annually, a trend expected to continue. Still, Pew surveys over the past decade show that Muslims consistently make up just 1% of the U.S. population. 

See a full discussion of this at Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

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The Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting is the state’s only independent, nonpartisan and collaborative nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. AZCIR's mission is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable by exposing injustice and systemic inequities through investigative journalism.

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