At a lecture last week at La Salle University, Haverford College political science professor Harvey Glickman stated that Muslims now constitute the largest non-Christian religious group in the United States. Jews had held that distinction for some time, but Glickman says population studies show Muslims have recently surpassed them.

Glickman, also a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said that estimates as to the number of Muslims residing in America range from between 3 million to more than 6 million, though he believes the true figure to be closer to the higher end of the spectrum. According to the 2000-01 National Jewish Population Survey, an estimated 5.2 million Jews live in the United States.

He said that American Muslims — the majority of whom are not Arab, but hail from South Asia or are African-American — are going through an assimilation process, complete with certain discrimination, similar to what Jews and Catholics before them experienced. In addition, the entire process has been complicated by the war on terror and the American presence in Iraq.

“Muslims are a large and growing minority in the United States, and they will probably begin to assert their interests. The larger they are, the more people have to pay attention,” Glickman explained in an interview following his talk.

Glickman’s was the first segment in a multi-day program on Muslims in post-Sept. 11 America; the remainder of discussions took place during Passover.

During the lecture, the Haverford scholar found himself being scolded by a Muslim man in the audience over his pronunciation of the word ‘Muslim.’

During the question-and-answer period, a Muslim man in the audience reiterated that Glickman was, in fact, Jewish, then asked if he read or spoke Arabic. “No — and I don’t speak Hebrew either,” answered Glickman.

The man chided the speaker for apparently mispronouncing the word Muslim — making the “s” sound like a “z” — thereby changing the Arabic connotation and making it sound, he said, like the word for “oppressor.”

Eventually, Cornelia Tsakiridou, a philosophy professor who helped organize the program, interrupted for another question.

After the program, alluding to the exchange, she noted that for many Muslims, it’s impossible to separate themselves from their religion, and difficult to understand that Glickman spoke as a scholar and not as a Jew.

She added that, in a civil society, “you have to be able to separate yourself.”