The Good News About American Muslims
At Reason, Radley Balko reminds us of the big picture. Relative to other parts of the world (ahem, Europe), we've got it pretty good in America -- in no small part precisely because of what America is:
In contrast to many of the minority Muslim populations in Europe, American Muslims embrace modernity, are better educated, and earn more money than their non-Muslim fellow citizens. A 2007 Pew poll suggests American Muslims are also doing just fine when it comes to assimilating and viewing themselves as part of America. According to the poll, just 5 percent of American Muslims express any level of support for Al Qaeda, and strong majorities condemn suicide attacks for any reason (80+ percent), and have a generally positive image of America and its promise for Muslims.
According to the poll, the only subset of American Muslims where support for Al Qaeda and suicide attacks gets unccomfortably high is among native-born African-American converts, many of whom converted in prison.
Via Conor, Reihan Salam shares his revealing personal story at National Review:
the observant Muslims I know best are my parents. Both of my parents have lived in New York city for over thirty years. Both of them worked in the World Trade Center in the 1980s, when I was a kid. Some of my fondest memories of growing up involve visiting them at work, and watching the 4th of July fireworks display from my dad’s office window. They were born in a country (Bangladesh) where Islamist terrorists have killed a large number of people in bomb attacks and acid attacks, and they lived through a savage and mostly forgotten war in which over 1 million Bengali Muslims were tortured and killed in part because they were accused of being “polytheists,” etc. That is, armed cadres of proto-Islamists were killing Muslims who had a different way of seeing the world and practicing their religion.
So that’s part of where I’m coming from: the idea that Islam is one thing or that all Muslims are the same strikes me as highly unlikely.
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Jul '10
Re: The Good News About American Muslims
I'm sorry, but I take no comfort.
Pew estimates the US Muslim population at 2.5 million. That works out to 125,000 who think Al Qaeda is hunky-dory and 500,000 who think suicide bombing is a pretty darn good idea.
And Pew also reports that 50% of respondents believe the government holds them to much higher levels of scrutiny than non-Muslims. So why would we believe that those folks would be forthcoming if they did hold extreme views?
And finally, it is, after all, a Pew survey.
Jul '10
Re: The Good News About American Muslims
I'm not terribly excited about the results either. 5% support for al-Qaeda, while certainly an improvement on European statistics, does not cause me to sleep any better at night. And 20% can conceivably see suicide bombing as okay? Yikes.
Jul '10
Re: The Good News About American Muslims
You're quoting Al-Jazeera? Got other sources for that?
May '10
Re: The Good News About American Muslims
Ya, those "pretty good" stats are pretty darn relative. As for the article itself, the author seems to miss the point of why Europe's in such worse shape. He says, "It's worth condemning the 'GZM' demagoguery for the naked pandering to fear that it is" that could "shake loose more potent factions of European-style Muslim radicalism in America." So Europe's Muslims are more radical because they've been the victims of fear-mongering and hyperbole, similar to our GZM reaction? Don't think so. They've become progressively more radical because each baby-step toward radicalization has been ignored or accommodated rather than confronted. It's precisely Europe's Radley-Balko-like willingness to endure affronts that has it in its present fix.
Jul '10
Re: The Good News About American Muslims
Give 'em an inch and they'll take Paris. Or Oslo.
Or Dearborn.
Jul '10
Re: The Good News About American Muslims
Sorry gentlemen, but I have got to agree with the article and with the quote of Mr. Salam. Change the part about my parents working in WTC and the part about being from Bangladesh to being from Pakistan, and that quote applies to my life 100%. I am an Ahmadi and because of my sect's views on the coming of the Messiah, we are labeled heretics and persecuted throughout the Islamic world.
I understand and share grave concern over the number of Muslims who sympathize with Al-Qaeda and those who do not see suicide bombing as a problem, but what Mr. Polous has said is true: American Muslims are better integrated and more moderate than Muslims in other parts of the Western world.
May '10
Re: The Good News About American Muslims
Agreed (my criticism was of the Reason article, not the NR one). And, yes, in there is some good news about American Muslims, relative to the rest of the Western World. I'd love to know what you'd say accounts for this. Is it the type of immigrants that America attracts? Or our more energetic efforts to assimilate? Our standing up to extremism?
Appreciate your thoughts.
Jul '10
Re: The Good News About American Muslims
That certainly is relative. Muslims are still fairly segregated in the U.S. and the protective environment of some of these communities allows for the enforcement of sharia.
Jul '10
Re: The Good News About American Muslims
Michael Tee
That certainly is relative. Muslims are still fairly segregated in the U.S. and the protective environment of some of these communities allows for the enforcement of sharia. · Aug 19 at 4:23am
It's early days. Muslims are less than 1% of the U.S. population. As Europe demonstrates, the larger the Muslim population, the less they integrate and the more they agitate for Sharia. Strength in numbers.
May '10
Re: The Good News About American Muslims
Perhaps it depends on degree of ghettoization.
It's common in America, as anywhere else, for ethnic and cultural groups to prefer the company of those with shared origins and values. Even in the suburbs, one can often find a Mexican or Vietnamese area with shops titled in foreign languages. In Texas, we still have many small towns that are almost exclusively Czech or German.
Some degree of ghettoization is human and acceptable. But there is a point at which immigrants are made to feel as unwelcome outsiders or make themselves unwelcome by refusing to accept a reasonable degree of cultural conformity. Is there a difference in the patterns of ethnic communities between here and Europe?
Re: The Good News About American Muslims
Aaron Miller: Perhaps it depends on degree of ghettoization.
It's common in America, as anywhere else, for ethnic and cultural groups to prefer the company of those with shared origins and values. Even in the suburbs, one can often find a Mexican or Vietnamese area with shops titled in foreign languages. In Texas, we still have many small towns that are almost exclusively Czech or German.
Some degree of ghettoization is human and acceptable. But there is a point at which immigrants are made to feel as unwelcome outsiders or make themselves unwelcome by refusing to accept a reasonable degree of cultural conformity. Is there a difference in the patterns of ethnic communities between here and Europe? · Aug 19 at 10:11am
Seems to me, Aaron, like America is drawing a different sort of immigrant from Europe or other parts of the world -- as often, I suspect, it does. If so, Europe's troubles are less likely to be replicated here.
Jul '10
Re: The Good News About American Muslims
James Poulos, Ed.
Seems to me, Aaron, like America is drawing a different sort of immigrant from Europe or other parts of the world -- as often, I suspect, it does. If so, Europe's troubles are less likely to be replicated here. · Aug 19 at 11:16am
A different sort of immigrant? Tell that to the numerous victims of "honor killings" in the U.S.
Tell that to the folks in Times Square who only avoided being blown up due to the bomber's laughable incompetence.
Tell that to soldiers at Fort Dix, who were targeted by pizza plotters.
Tell that to the victims of the first World Trade Center bombing.
Ad infinitum.