The Numbers Game

In an article entitled “How Many Muslims Does it Take?”, Chicago Tribune reporter Manya Brachear presented further insight into quantitative mistake reported in the Tribune earlier in the week regarding the number of Muslim individuals in the United States. From the outset of the story, the focus is not made apparent. She begins by talking about the article published in the Tribune containing the mistake, which was about the lack of Muslim representatives in government positions, by asserting that readers were more concerned with miscalculation of the Muslim population than with the actual aim of the piece. She then gives several estimated population numbers of the Muslim community, as reported by private demographic researchers and Muslim institutions as well as one Jewish organization. At this point the focus seems to be on the contradicting numbers reported, and whether or not a national religious census should be issued to provide accurate numbers. She provides a credible source from the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, who said that the Muslim community should be able to report their own numbers. She fails, however, to provide a source with a contrasting perspective on this issue.
The flow of the article is majorly disrupted with an indirect quotation regarding the Union for Reform Judaism. Though Judaism is also a minority religion in the U.S., there is no logical connection between the previous paragraph and this quote: “Mujahid hopes an ongoing dialogue between the Islamic Society of North America and the Union for Reform Judaism will assuage anxiety about numbers. Religious minorities should see each other’s growth as positive, not counter-productive, he said.”
Brachear promptly shifts the focus to England, mentioning that the Muslim community was included in the British census, and reports the numbers. This irrelevant information is used merely for a rocky transition to report that the U.S. constitution restricts religious demographics from being included in a federal census. This information would have been better utilized earlier in the article, while the information regarding the Jewish population and the British Census should have never been included. Brachear ends by posing these questions: “What do you think? Should the U.S. Census settle the numbers question and survey faith? Or should religious groups be trusted to self-report?” These are questions which readers are in no way equipped to answer if given only the information in this article.