Soccer Dad

Islamic integration?

Geneive Abdo wrote America's Muslims Aren't as Assimilated as You Think. In it she argues that Muslims in America take pride in their Muslim identity.

Despite contemporary public opinion -- or perhaps because of it -- Muslim Americans consider Islam their defining characteristic, beyond any national identity. In this way, their experience in the United States resembles that of their co-religionists in Europe, where mosques are also growing, Islamic schools are being built, and practicing the faith is the center of life, particularly for the young generation. In Europe and the United States, young Muslims are unifying around popular imams they believe understand the challenges they face in Western societies; these leaders include Yusuf in the United States and Amer Khaled, an Egyptian-born imam who lives in Britain. Thousands of young Muslims attend their lectures.

However she sees the Islamic identity as something benign.

In my years of interviews, I found few indications of homegrown militancy among American Muslims. Indeed, thus far, they have proved they can compete economically with other Americans. Although the unemployment rate for Muslims in Britain is far higher than for most other groups, the average annual income of a Muslim household surpasses that of average American households. Yet, outside the workplace, Muslims retreat into the comfort zone of their mosques and Islamic schools.

Abdo appears to make the case that if American Muslims turn more hostile toward the United States, it would be the fault of Americans.

It is too soon to say where the growing alienation of American Muslims will lead, but it seems clear that the factors contributing to it will endure. U.S. foreign policy persists in dividing Muslim and Western societies, making it harder still for Americans to realize that there is a difference between their Muslim neighbor and the plotter in London or the kidnapper in Baghdad.

Daled Amos, though, has done a little digging and discovered that the Imams quoted in the article weren't always as moderate (or is that moderate sounding?) as they were for Ms. Abdo and observes

The impression you get from Shakir's words is that he gave up the idea of armed struggle for purely pragmatic reasons. But that does not mean he has given up on the idea of the struggle itself--or its goals: the takeover of the US.

This is an important question as Daniel Pipes has written earlier about The Islamic States of America. Writing about the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. Pipes notes

This Brotherhood approach is in keeping with my observation that the greater Islamist threat to the West is not violence – flattening buildings, bombing railroad stations and nightclubs, seizing theaters and schools – but the peaceful, legal growth of power through education, the law, the media, and the political system.

The Tribune article explains how, when recruiting new members, the organization does not reveal its identity but invites candidates to small prayer meetings where the prayer leaders focus on the primary goal of the Brotherhood, namely "setting up the rule of God upon the Earth" (i.e., achieving Islamic hegemony). Elkadi describes the organization's strategic, long-term approach: "First you change the person, then the family, then the community, then the nation."

His wife Iman is no less explicit; all who are associated with the Brotherhood, she says, have the same goal, which is "to educate everyone about Islam and to follow the teachings of Islam with the hope of establishing an Islamic state."

So is the alienation that American Muslims feel a function of American insensitive treatment of them? Or does it have to do with the nature of Islam itself?

Jihad Watch also finds that the Imams are seeking to create an Islamic state here and is disturbed by the blame America tone of the article. Wizbang notes this article in the context of commenting on an English man who had predicted twenty years ago that British Muslims would not assimilate because of Britain's multicultural policies.

via Memeorandum.

Technorati tag: Islam.