Finding Faith, Keeping Their Roots: The Psychology of Belonging Among Latino Muslims

By Darya Bailey | October 4, 2026

Fatah Research Hub | Psychological Science Research Hub

Faith can bring new meaning to a person’s life while opening questions about identity, family, and belonging. At Maryam Tree Center, the Quran Learning Center provides a place to request a copy of the Qur’an, supporting access for those interested in reading and learning. For Fatah Research Hub, this commitment to knowledge also invites psychological inquiry: What draws Latino Americans toward Islam, and how do people make sense of a new faith while maintaining connections to their cultural roots?

Research documents an increasing Latino share of mosque-reported conversions in the United States. Understanding that development involves more than counting religious changes. It means considering how people understand themselves, what gives their lives meaning, and where they experience acceptance. This brief brings a psychological perspective to demographic and religious-studies research, distinguishing documented findings from interpretations that invite further investigation.

A growing presence, carefully measured

The U.S. Mosque Survey 2020 found that Latinos accounted for 6% of mosque-reported converts in 2000 and 15% in 2020. Their share increased by nine percentage points, reaching two and a half times its earlier level. The study included completed questionnaires from 470 mosques, with leaders describing conditions before the COVID-19 pandemic (Bagby, 2021).

These figures establish an increase in Latinos’ share of reported converts, not the percentage of all Latinos becoming Muslim. The report also found that conversions overall had plateaued. The evidence therefore supports a growing Latino presence within mosque-reported conversion, but it does not establish a current annual conversion rate or demonstrate that Latinos are the fastest-converting ethnic group (Bagby, 2021).

A separate source reports a related demographic shift. According to American Muslim Poll findings summarized by Mogahed and Ikramullah (2023), 9% of American Muslims identified as Latino in 2020, compared with 5% in 2017. These estimates concern population composition; they do not isolate conversion from other explanations for change.

Psychologically, these findings open questions rather than settle them. What makes a religious commitment personally meaningful? How does someone incorporate it into an existing sense of self? What responses from family and community help that person feel understood? Population figures establish the context, while individual experiences help explain its human significance.

The search for meaning and closeness to God

Espinosa et al. (2017) surveyed 560 Latino Muslims across 33 states in 2014. Among respondents, 95% described Islamic monotheism—the belief in one God—as very or somewhat influential in embracing Islam. A desire for a more direct personal experience of God was influential for 94%, and daily prayer was influential for 76%. These influences could overlap. Recruitment occurred online through community networks, so the findings should not be generalized to every Latino Muslim.

Read through a psychological lens, these responses invite attention to meaning: how people connect beliefs, values, and everyday actions into an understanding of their lives. For these participants, religious teachings and practices were reported attractions in their own right. Their accounts deserve consideration without assuming that conversion must arise from crisis, pressure, or dissatisfaction (Espinosa et al., 2017).

This interpretation does not demonstrate that conversion improves mental health, nor does the survey establish that prayer caused psychological benefits. It identifies questions for further study: whether participants experience greater consistency between their values and actions, how that experience develops, and what challenges accompany it. Psychology can investigate these experiences while respecting that believers understand faith as more than a psychological process.

Identity: Making room for more than one belonging

A new religious commitment can raise questions about continuity: Am I still the person my family knows? Can I remain connected to my heritage? Will others recognize both parts of my identity? These questions offer a way to study how people bring different aspects of themselves together.

Morales’s (2018) scholarship examines Latino Muslims’ intersecting ethnic and religious identities through their narratives, media representations, and community networks. His work challenges the assumption that being Latino and being Muslim belong to separate social worlds. It places people’s own accounts at the center of understanding how these identities are expressed together.

The psychological implication is an invitation to examine identity integration: how people understand different commitments as parts of one life. This is an interpretive lens, rather than a claim that every convert experiences an identical process. Some people may emphasize continuity; others may describe substantial change. Research should make room for both without deciding in advance what an authentic Latino or Muslim identity must look like.

That approach also guards against treating ethnicity as a personality profile. Latino identity alone cannot tell us someone’s language preference, immigration history, family relationships, or reasons for believing. Understanding a person requires listening beyond the category.

Belonging depends on how people are received

The question of identity is also interpersonal. A person may understand their cultural and religious commitments as compatible while encountering people who question that compatibility. This makes acceptance, recognition, and exclusion important subjects for psychological investigation.

Chitwood’s (2025) research on Puerto Rican Muslims draws on more than 100 interviews and ethnographic work in Puerto Rico, Florida, New York, Texas, New Jersey, and online. The publisher’s account describes how participants negotiate belonging while facing questions about their authenticity as Puerto Ricans or Muslims. This brings Florida into the scholarly picture without establishing a statewide conversion rate.

A psychological reading directs attention to what happens after a person embraces a faith. Do they feel able to ask questions? Are their experiences taken seriously? Can they participate without repeatedly defending their cultural identity? These are research questions about the social conditions surrounding religious life, not assumptions that every convert struggles or that every community responds alike.

For community organizations, they also suggest a practical responsibility: welcoming someone should include respecting the history, relationships, and experiences they bring with them.

Everyday contact and the possibility of understanding

Research on Latino attitudes toward Muslims offers another relevant perspective. In interviews and focus groups, Mogahed and Ikramullah (2023) identified perceived common experiences and everyday interactions as themes associated with more positive attitudes toward Muslims. Participants sometimes recognized similarities involving discrimination, migration, and aspirations for their families.

These findings invite psychological questions about how people revise their impressions of others. A person encountered through conversation may be understood differently from a group encountered only through labels. However, this qualitative research does not establish that contact causes conversion, and favorable attitudes toward Muslims should not be confused with adopting Islam.

The distinction matters because understanding has value without requiring religious agreement. Public education can support accurate knowledge and respectful relationships while leaving belief to the individual.

Learning, curiosity, and personal agency

Accessible religious education is relevant to this discussion because people need opportunities to examine ideas for themselves. Maryam Tree Center’s Quran Learning Center offers a place to request a copy of the Qur’an. From an educational perspective, that access can be approached as an opportunity for inquiry, with room for questions, reflection, and an individual pace of learning.

Respect for personal agency should guide this work. Someone’s curiosity should not be treated as a promise of conversion, and a private request should not become a public story. Readers deserve clear information without assumptions about their background, intentions, or eventual decisions.

For psychological science, these distinctions help separate curiosity, learning, religious identification, and sustained participation. They may be connected in a person’s life, but they are not interchangeable outcomes.

A human story worth understanding

The growing Latino presence in American Islam presents a valuable opportunity to study meaning, identity, and belonging together. Future psychological research could follow participants over time, include varied cultural and religious backgrounds, and examine both supportive experiences and difficulties. Such work could clarify how personal conviction and social relationships interact without assuming that religious change produces the same outcome for everyone.

The existing evidence already supports a thoughtful message: Latino Muslims deserve to be understood through their own accounts of faith and cultural belonging. Their lives offer questions that matter well beyond a single religious community—how people develop commitments, maintain continuity through change, and find acceptance without having to erase part of themselves.

Behind every statistic is a person whose inner life cannot be reduced to a demographic trend. Advancing understanding begins with careful evidence, honest questions, and the willingness to listen.

References

Bagby, I. (2021). The American mosque 2020: Growing and evolving. Report 1 of the US Mosque Survey 2020: Basic characteristics of the American mosque. Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. [https://ispu.org/reports-and-analysis/report-1-mosque-survey-2020/](https://ispu.org/reports-and-analysis/report-1-mosque-survey-2020/)

Chitwood, K. (2025). Borícua Muslims: Everyday cosmopolitanism among Puerto Rican converts to Islam. University of Texas Press. [https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477332436/](https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477332436/)

Espinosa, G., Morales, H., & Galvan, J. (2017). Latino Muslims in the United States: Reversion, politics, and Islamidad. Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion, 8(1), 1–48. [https://latinodawah.org/latino-muslims-in-the-united-states-reversion-politics-and-islamidad/](https://latinodawah.org/latino-muslims-in-the-united-states-reversion-politics-and-islamidad/)

Mogahed, D., & Ikramullah, E. (2023). Latino attitudes toward American Muslims and Islam. Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. [https://ispu.org/reports-and-analysis/latino-views/](https://ispu.org/reports-and-analysis/latino-views/)

Morales, H. D. (2018). Latino and Muslim in America: Race, religion, and the making of a new minority. Oxford University Press. [https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190852603.001.0001](https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190852603.001.0001)