Muslim Americans seem Ordinary

Today is a lazy day. It was the eleventh day in a row I worked from 5 am to sometime after noon, the second I worked to almost 3 pm. I didn’t necessarily feel like writing anything in-depth today. But rather than forgoing a post altogether, I decided to do some copying and pasting.

The local Sioux Falls paper, The Argus Leader, had a great article in today’s paper. It seemed like a great replacement to anything I would have written. So enjoy!

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By Amitabh Pal

Muslim-Americans are pretty much like other Americans. That’s the message of a comprehensive survey made public August 2.

‘A decade after the September 11 terrorist attacks, a Gallup poll released Tuesday found that the vast majority of Muslim-Americans say they are loyal to the United States and optimistic about the future,’ the New York Times reports, adding, ‘The poll in many ways contradicts the stereotype of Muslim-Americans as an alienated and discontented religious minority.’ Muslim-Americans are more likely that members of most other communities to frown upon violence used for political purposes.

‘Understanding their lack of sympathy for al Qaida, Muslim-Americans also are the least likely major religious group in the US to say there is ever to say there is ever a justification for individuals or small groups to attack civilians,’ states the Gallup report accompanying the survey. ‘Roughly one in 10 Muslim-Americans say such attacks are sometimes justified, IN every other major religious group except Mormons, the proportion of people who say such attacks are sometimes justified is at least twice that.’

And contrary to stereotypes, Muslim-Americans actually express more tolerance for different beliefs than any other religious community, the survey found.

In a number of ways though, Muslim-Americans diverge in their attitudes – understandably so.

They are less supportive of American foreign policy and have a more commonsensical view of US actions abroad.

‘Although it is sometimes suggested that America’s unpopularity in majority-Muslim countries is a result of misinformation spread by those countries’ leaders to deflect attention from their own repressive policies, most Muslim-Americans do not believe this,’ states the report. ‘Sixty-five percent say the distrust is based on what the US has done.’

On top of the list of recent US failings in the Muslim world is the Iraq War. More than eight out of 10 Muslim-Americans believe the Iraq War to be wrong. If only the rest of the country had earlier picked up the cue, we perhaps wouldn’t have had this misadventure.

Another area where Muslim-Americans deviate is in their perception of discrimination. They feel more victimized than members of most other religious groups say American Muslims are.

You can’t blame Muslim-Americans for such reactions. In the Gallup survey, one-third of Protestants and Catholics think American Muslims to be sympathetic to al Qaida. Such prejudice has real-life consequences. Several individuals in the US have been murdered since the September 11^th attacks because of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hatred. Dozens of mosques have been vandalized, defaced, or torched. During the past two years, 35 Muslim religious sites have faced opposition, reports the Pew Center on Religion and Public Life.

The Gallup report has a number of proposals, such as involving Muslim-Americans in the crafting of foreign policy, and for the US government to systemically track anti-Muslim-American discrimination and global Islamophobia.

Let’s give these recommendations a chance.

(Amitabh Pal, the co-editor of the Progressive Media Project in Madison, WI, is the author of the recently published “Islam Means Peace: Understanding the Muslim Principal of Nonviolence Today.” He wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues.)