Findings · Post-Thesis Independent Analysis
The 257, the 66, and the 51
The 66 Blackamerican women within the Feeling Muslim study: 51 solely Black, 15 multiracial including Black, set against their true complement of 191 across nine within-cohort comparisons.
The term Blackamerican is used following Dr. Sherman Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection (Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 17 to 18, where he develops the argument for the term, which he credits to the late C. Eric Lincoln.
Method
Complement figures are derived by subtracting the cohort's verified counts from the study's full counts, so each comparison group excludes the women being compared. Where the thesis reports percentages rather than counts, the count used is the integer consistent with the published rounding; the affected measures shift by no more than half a point. Full derivations appear in the project's verification records. Welcome and community-needs measures await full-cohort tallies and will join this page when computed.
The survey asked: Have you ever thought about leaving Islam? Each bar shows the share answering Yes. Thought admitted in any form, published 2020 coding. The solely Black women and everyone else are statistically identical.
| Share |
|---|
| Full study | 42.8%of 257 |
|---|
| The 66 Blackamerican women | 40.9%of 66 |
|---|
| The 51 solely Black | 43.1%of 51 |
|---|
| All but the 66 | 43.5%of 191 |
|---|
The survey asked: Are you satisfied or content with your feelings of Muslimness? Each bar shows the share answering Yes. The cohort carries the highest contentment in the study, seven points above everyone else.
| Share |
|---|
| Full study | 72.0%of 257 |
|---|
| The 66 Blackamerican women | 77.3%of 66 |
|---|
| The 51 solely Black | 76.5%of 51 |
|---|
| All but the 66 | 70.2%of 191 |
|---|
The survey asked: Do you wear the hijab, or other attire that would make you outwardly identifiable as a Muslim to the American public? Each bar shows the share answering Yes. The largest divergence in the dataset: the solely Black women are the study’s most visible Muslims by more than twenty points.
| Share |
|---|
| Full study | 73.2%of 257 |
|---|
| The 66 Blackamerican women | 87.9%of 66 |
|---|
| The 51 solely Black | 90.2%of 51 |
|---|
| All but the 66 | 68.1%of 191 |
|---|
The survey asked: Is your choice of attire related to your feelings of Muslimness? Each bar shows the share answering Yes. Embodiment follows visibility: attire is tied to Muslimness most strongly among the solely Black women.
| Share |
|---|
| Full study | 60.3%of 257 |
|---|
| The 66 Blackamerican women | 63.6%of 66 |
|---|
| The 51 solely Black | 66.7%of 51 |
|---|
| All but the 66 | 59.2%of 191 |
|---|
The survey asked: Do Islamic gender roles play any part in your feelings of Muslimness? Each bar shows the share answering Yes. Half of everyone else locates part of their Muslimness in gender roles; two-thirds of the Blackamerican women decline to.
| Share |
|---|
| Full study | 45.1%of 257 |
|---|
| The 66 Blackamerican women | 31.8%of 66 |
|---|
| The 51 solely Black | 31.4%of 51 |
|---|
| All but the 66 | 49.7%of 191 |
|---|
The survey asked: Once you converted to Islam, did you instantly feel Muslim? Each bar shows the share answering Yes. A higher share of instant arrival, consistent with the cohort’s ownership voices.
| Share |
|---|
| Full study | 47.5%of 257 |
|---|
| The 66 Blackamerican women | 53.0%of 66 |
|---|
| The 51 solely Black | 49.0%of 51 |
|---|
| All but the 66 | 45.5%of 191 |
|---|
The survey asked: As an American convert to Islam, do you feel that you are an integral part of your Muslim community? Each bar shows the share answering No. A seven-point gap: 42.4% of the 66 report they are not an integral part of their communities, against 49.7% of the 191. The feeling of standing outside the community runs through every group, and it is measurably less common among the Blackamerican women.
| Share |
|---|
| Full study | 47.9%of 257 |
|---|
| The 66 Blackamerican women | 42.4%of 66 |
|---|
| The 51 solely Black | 41.2%of 51 |
|---|
| All but the 66 | 49.7%of 191 |
|---|
The survey asked: Would you like to be an integral part of your Muslim community? Each bar shows the share answering Yes. The longing is universal: nearly nine in ten, in every group.
| Share |
|---|
| Full study | 87.2%of 257 |
|---|
| The 66 Blackamerican women | 89.4%of 66 |
|---|
| The 51 solely Black | 88.2%of 51 |
|---|
| All but the 66 | 86.4%of 191 |
|---|
The survey asked: Is there a difference between being/becoming Muslim by taking the shahada, and feeling Muslim? Each bar shows the share answering Yes, there is a difference. Nine of the study’s twenty premise-declining responses come from the solely Black women: ownership in the response behavior itself.
| Share |
|---|
| Full study | 73.2%of 257 |
|---|
| The 66 Blackamerican women | 66.7%of 66 |
|---|
| The 51 solely Black | 70.6%of 51 |
|---|
| All but the 66 | 75.4%of 191 |
|---|
How to Cite This Research
APA (7th ed.)
Kovacik, K. N. (2026). The 257, the 66, and the 51: A Cohort Comparison. The Feeling Muslim Project. https://feelingmuslim.org/cohort-comparison.html
Chicago (17th ed.)
Kovacik, Karla N. “The 257, the 66, and the 51: A Cohort Comparison.” The Feeling Muslim Project, 2026. https://feelingmuslim.org/cohort-comparison.html.
ASA (7th ed.)
Kovacik, Karla N. 2026. “The 257, the 66, and the 51: A Cohort Comparison.” The Feeling Muslim Project. Retrieved Month DD, YYYY (https://feelingmuslim.org/cohort-comparison.html).
A Note on the Data
All figures presented here are drawn from the original 2014 to 2015 survey conducted as part of the M.A. thesis research at the University of Georgia under IRB-approved protocol. In total, 481 people responded to the survey. Of these, 459 were American women converts to Islam. The remaining 22 responses fell outside the parameters approved by the Institutional Review Board, which focused specifically on women converts born in the United States; those responses were received with gratitude and set aside from the women’s cohort. The comparisons on this page are computed within the 257 women who completed both strands in full, among whom the 66 Blackamerican women stand. Data collection, research design, and analysis were conducted by Karla Nicole Kovacik (formerly Evans). The survey remains the only known study of this scope focused specifically on the psychological and sociological dimensions of Muslim identity formation among American female converts. The comparison figures on this page were derived in 2026 by removing the Blackamerican cohort’s verified counts from the study’s totals, so that no group is compared against a pool containing itself; the Leaving Islam recode was first published in the author’s foreword to Project Lina (Daybreak Press). Underlying data: the 2014 Feeling Muslim survey, published in the author’s 2015 master’s thesis under her former name, Karla N. Evans (University of Georgia); the analyses on this page are published here for the first time and are not contained in the thesis. The term Blackamerican follows Dr. Sherman Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection (Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 17 to 18.