Can the U.S. Census tell us exactly how many Muslims live in Texas?

No. The Census counts people living in Texas, but it does not produce a count of Texans by religious affiliation. That distinction matters because the word “census” gets used casually for numbers that actually come from surveys, directories or estimates.

What the Census Bureau actually says

The Census Bureau’s faith-community materials for the 2020 Census answer the question directly: the decennial census did not ask respondents to identify their religion. Its ancestry guidance makes a related point. Ancestry is about ethnic origin or descent, not religious affiliation, and the Bureau does not tabulate religious groups in its ancestry products. A birthplace, ancestry or language table therefore cannot be relabeled as a count of Muslims. [1][2]

So where do Texas Muslim numbers come from?

The figures most often repeated for Texas come from other kinds of records. The Handbook of Texas gives a figure of 421,972 for 2010. Introduced HCR 18 in the 2025 Texas Legislature cites an estimated 500,000 Muslims. Those records are useful when they are identified for what they are and dated correctly. Neither is a federal religion census, and the difference between them cannot be treated as a measured growth rate without compatible methods. [3][4]

How to cite the number responsibly

Name the source, keep its date attached, and describe the method or document type. If the source is a survey, call it a survey estimate. If it is a directory, call it a directory count. If a legislative resolution repeats an estimate, say that the resolution states it rather than implying the Legislature conducted a count. For a current exact number of Muslims in Texas, the public sources checked here do not provide one. The companion record on what the Texas estimates measure works through the individual figures, and the methodology page explains how we date and label them.