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Written By: Fares Anam
Article Date: Jun 19, 2007 - 7:02:41 AM
With hard work, Muslim Americans can make a good life for themselves.
The first-ever, nationwide, random sample survey of Muslim Americans finds them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world. In fact, Muslims living in American are much more assimilated and happier than those living in the European Union, according to the survey. The Pew Research Center conducted more than 55,000 interviews to obtain a national sample of 1,050 Muslims living in the United States. Interviews were conducted in English, Arabic, Farsi and Urdu.
The resulting study, which draws on Pew’s survey research among Muslims around the world, finds that Muslim Americans are a highly diverse population, one largely composed of immigrants. Nonetheless, they are decidedly American in their outlook, values and attitudes. This belief is reflected in Muslim-American income and education levels, which generally mirror those of the general population. Overall, Muslim Americans have a generally positive view of the larger society. Most say their communities are excellent or good places to live. A large majority of Muslim Americans believes that hard work pays off in this society.
Fully 71 percent agree that most people who want to get ahead in the United States can make it if they are willing to work hard. Pew says Europe’s Muslims are “ghettoized” and “markedly less well off than the general population, frustrated with economic opportunities and socially isolated.” But American Muslims say that, “their communities are excellent or good places to live.” Both income and college graduation levels match the national norms. Most feel Muslims should adopt American customs once in the US and 63 percent report no conflict between religious devotion and living in a modern society.
Perhaps consequently, 63 percent had a “very unfavorable” view of al-Qaeda; 85 percent said suicide bombing is rarely or never justified; only 1 percent said violence to defend Islam was “often” permissible. Dr. Ahmed Basher, a sociology professor at the University of Sana’a, said that the results are natural, as America is a nation founded by immigrants, with a long history of absorbing them. “This gives Muslims more chances to find opportunities to integrate into American communities, and also American society is a modern society, so this also gives another opportunity for integration into their communities,” Basher said.
Also, there are many factors involving Muslims in the changing attitude of Americans around them, because there is a plurality of ethnicities and religions, he said. Muslims are affected by religious references that they took from their countries, such as Sufia and Salafi (different Muslim sects) and other references. Even Americans know that there are many ways to practice Islam. The survey shows that although many Muslims are relative newcomers to the U.S., they are highly assimilated into American society. On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to the U.S. should try to adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct from the larger society.
And by nearly two-to-one (63 percent to 32 percent), Muslim-Americans do not see a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society Roughly two-thirds (65 percent) of adult Muslims in the U.S. were born elsewhere. A relatively large proportion of Muslim immigrants are from Arab countries, but many also come from Pakistan and other South Asian countries. Among native-born Muslims, roughly half are African-American (20 percent of U.S. Muslims overall), many of whom are converts to Islam. Based on data from this survey, along with available Census Bureau data on immigrants’ nativity and nationality, the Pew Research Center estimates the total population of Muslims in the United States at 2.35 million.
Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries. However, there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African-American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. The situation changed completely after the events of September 11, said Dr. Basher. Americans’ outlook changed greatly, and Islam came to represent for them terrorism and violence, he said. “There is now apprehension, fear and warning from Muslims in America, so as we see violence and exclusion against Muslims and monitoring laws that were issued after the attacks.” But even after 9/11, there were but a few anti-Muslim incidents in the United States, said Pew.
In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are now much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified. Nonetheless, absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world A majority of Muslim Americans (53 percent) says it has become more difficult to be a Muslim in the United States since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Most also believe that the government “singles out” Muslims for increased surveillance and monitoring Relatively few Muslim Americans believe the U.S.-led war on terror is a sincere effort to reduce terrorism, and many doubt that Arabs were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Just 40 percent of Muslim Americans say groups of Arabs carried out those attacks, despite evidence to the contrary.
“I think that Muslims are now failing to integrate into American and European communities, so that requires more organizing and reconciliation among themselves,” Basher said. “The Islamic call must be extended in these societies, and the religious institutions, universities and Islamic centers, which lack in communication between Muslims in the West, so they must increase and intensify their presence there.” Nabil al-Sofi, a Yemeni journalist, said that the American society is more open than most societies.
“I think the integration of Muslims in their communities is due to that,” he said. “The tension between Muslims and Westerners are because of the conflicts in the Middle East. Also, Britain and France were colonial powers in the east for a long time, but America is a modern and open country,” al-Sofi said. American society is a society focused and concerned largely with American domestic issues, not about other societies, he said. “So after the events of September 11, the attacks focused and added pressure on the Muslims in those American communities.
There were discriminatory and racist incidents against Muslims, but within time that will be lost,” he said. European Communities have more experience than America in the world of Islam and Muslims because they were colonial powers of the Muslim states, al-Sofi said. “I think that the Muslims assimilate easily to their communities. For example, the cities of London and Berlin have a lot of Muslim people in their societies, and I also participated in several courses and seminars in these communities, and I saw that Germany is more interested in integration.” But this is contrary to the study’s findings. According to the study, Muslims living in Europe are poorly integrated and often are ghettoized.
Muslims in America are much better assimilated. “European communities have more visions on the religious side—more so than the communities in America, due to the nature of the cultural environment of Europe. Muslims are finding the process of integration difficult within European societies due to several factors such as the great legacy of colonialism in the mentality of Muslims,” said Dr. Abdul-Gabar Radman, a sociology professor at Sana’a University.
“European people might say, if I recognized the opportunity to merge Muslims into our societies, they will become part of the democracy and political process, and will impose new realities on the European Community,” Radman said. American society is a set of lineages, religions, beliefs and ideas, said Radman. And the liberal thought is more distinguished in the American society than in Europe. “Because America supports freedom of the individual essentially, according to its philosophical liberalism system, and also there are a set of beliefs which allows Muslims more freedom of movement in their communities—more so than in European countries,” he said.
Dr. Sameer al-Abdali, political science professor at Sana’a University, said that the American society has a variety of people, and its civilization was close and new, unlike European society, which is an ancient civilization. “America is an open country and has ethnic and religious diversity. The media of America and Europe have imagined Arabs as ignorant and idiotic because the Zionist media controlling foreign media that has a big role in distorting Arabs and Muslims,” al-Abdali said. But it is absurd to claim that all foreign media are controlled by Zionists (a common misperception in the Muslim world), when Jews make up just 2 percent of Americans, and newspapers are owned by a wide variety of people and companies, from all sorts of backgrounds.
Muslims began their integration into American society in the early 1980s, and they were able to publicize the Islamic religion and establish many mosques, Radman said. “If Muslims gathered to achieve the unity of belief and thought, they will become a large force and capable of influencing political decisions in American society,” he said.
