Growing Number of Mosques in New York City

In wake of the recent controversy over plans to build a mosque near the site of where the World Trade Center towers once stood, we pulled some stats on just how many mosques New York City has on the whole:

"New York City has more than 100 mosques, compared with 10 in 1970, and more than 800,000 of its 8.21 million residents are Muslims, said Philip Banks III," chief of the NYPD Community Affairs Bureau.

Here are some numbers on the Muslim Community in New York City, taken between 1998 and 1999: 28 mosques in Queens, 27 in Brooklyn, 20 in the Bronx, 17 in Manhattan and eight in Staten Island; however, all participants said they thought they had underestimated the number of mosques, because worshippers often set up small mosques in their apartments that are not visible from the street.