WASHINGTON (RNS) Muslim consumers are growing in the U.S. and they have money to spend. Now, businesses are starting to take notice.

“The emerging American Muslim market is perhaps the new area that a lot of businesses … are starting to look into,” said Rafi-uddin Shikoh, managing director and founder of DinarStandard, a marketing research firm specializing in the emerging Muslim market.

Shikoh said his New York-based firm conducted research in 2011 on the Muslim marketplace and found that, while Muslims are just as hard to categorize as other groups, there are plenty of opportunities for different industries — food, retail and finance — to reach them.

With an estimated disposable income of between $107 billion and $124 billion, Muslim Americans are realizing they can use their size to influence the market, he said. If a business offers halal food products, for example, Muslim consumers will pick that business over the others. “There are these unique things that businesses are not realizing but there’s an opportunity for that,” he said at a recent forum sponsored by the American Islamic Congress.

More