Researchers from the Center for Urban Research and Policy and the Middle East Institute unveiled the findings of a three-year research project to document the growth of New York's Muslim communities on April 30, reported NEWSDAY (5/5/01).

The project, bringing together Columbia's researchers with leaders and activists from New York's Muslim communities, has drawn widespread attention, largely because Columbia is the first to examine this community in such detail.

Prior to 1970, there were fewer than ten mosques in the five boroughs. Columbia researchers estimated that as of 1999, the number had grown to130 to 150 mosques.

Lorraine Minnite, a Barnard political science professor and one of the project's principal investigators, said that within the Muslim community there is tremendous ethnic diversity.

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