For those who haven’t seen it, the Pew Research Center has just published the results of an extensive survey of American Muslims. This is a fascinating piece of research and worth your time to explore a bit.

Some key highlights include Pew’s assessment that around 2.35 million Muslims live in the US, of which about 1.4 million are adults. They include a chart with the results of other surveys and theirs seems to be on the high side, with at least one survey claiming one third this number. The only survey refuting this estimate was sponsored by…CAIR. Of course. It is the survey that claimed 6-7 million after counting 2 million mosque-going Muslims and extrapolating (without evidence) that therefore 3 times the number would sound about right.

The Muslim American population is a bit skewed to the young. What is interesting about this is that young Muslims under 30 tend to be more devout, more identified with their Muslim identity than their elders, more likely to support suicide bombings (31% of young Muslims either accepted or partially accepted their use), and generally more assertive about their Islamic links than their elders.

Muslim Americans tend to be about average in terms of income level when compared to non-Muslim Americans; their ideals tend to lean towards the Democrats, except when it comes to certain lifestyle issues such as homosexuality; and tend to be just about as devout and mosque-going as Christian Americans and believe in the divine origins of the Koran at about the same rate as Christian Americans believe in the Bible’s divine origins.

On the other hand, almost half consider themselves Muslims first, before considering themselves American. 6 out of 10 young Muslims believe this. 4 out of ten believe that Arabs committed the 9/11 attacks while 28% reject that premise entirely and 32% (!!!) refused to answer the question. 12% accept the use of suicide bombings in some form to “defend Islam,” while 9% refused to answer that question. As I note above, 31% of young Muslims accept this proposition. 3 out of 10 Muslims over 30 years of age believe that Islam and modern life are in conflict while 4 out 10 young Muslims believe this; which translates to a full 26% who think that Muslims shouldn’t even try to find this balance.

About 65% of Muslims are foreign born and of the 35% who are native Americans, more than half are African American for a total of about 20% of the Muslim American population. The survey breaks down many questions by origin of the Muslim and this is also informative, in particular because many native-born Muslims are converts to Islam. By the way, about a quarter of American Muslims are converts and most of them come from Protestant denominations.

The survey was light on questions of foreign policy although it asked about Afghanistan and Iraq. The large majority of Muslim Americans are opposed to those wars, don’t believe the “war on terror” is fought for authentic reasons, and don’t support this Administration in general. On the question of Israel and the Palestinians, 61% believe that Israel can exist while the “rights and needs of the Palestinians are taken care of.”

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themiddle

15 Comments

  • they support suicide bombings because Palestinians do not have nuclear weapons stashed in Dimona or artillery tanks and aircrafts to go after their occupiers. so to fight back at the illegal occupation, they blow themselves up.

    if you continue to plant fear, hunger and hopelessness to the Palestinians and suffocate them ON THEIR OWN LAND.. then all you will reap is terror, terror and more terror.

    someday you’ll see the L I G H T

  • Actually, you may wish to reconsider that point of view. You see, in Iraq, the suicide bombers target other Muslims. Obviously, the issue has nothing to do with Israel and “fighting back against the illegal occupation.”

    As for planting fear, hunger and hopelessness, you might wish to re-apportion your blame so that the Palestinians gain most of it. Here’s how it works: Israel offers peace, it gets war (2000); Israel opens crossings, it gets suicide bombers; Israel evacuates Gaza, it gets attacked by rockets daily; Israel tries a unilateral cease-fire, it gets attacked by more rockets, especially in times of strife. Add to this that Hamas and Fatah keep fighting, that they do not share the annual aid they receive with their constituents, that they keep investing those funds which they haven’t squirrelled away in fancy villas or in Switzerland on more and more weapons and explosives, and you learn, my little idiot, that in reality the suffering of the Palestinians is a self-inflicted wound.

    Never forget that a Palestinian state could already have been a reality if the Palestinians had wanted it so.

    Someday you’ll see the L I G H T.

  • Bitch please do not try to justify the Israeli APARTHEID, the land grab, the house demolitions, the massacres, the crop uprooting, the Palestinian DIASPORA.. etc, etc.. you Zionists are faaaar from innocent and the furthest thing from Judaism.

    As an American Jew I can tell you Israel is an artificial organ that just does not belong.

    Go ahead and stick to your “people without a land for a land without a people” bedtime story.

  • Your writing style gives some clues about you. Feel free to confirm if my guess is right: you are an effeminate, cross-dressing, male fan of Barbara Streisand who has taken a couple of poli-sci college classes with a professor who belongs to MESA.

  • hey you dumb wack-ass zionist bitch:

    you seem to know a lot about “artificial organs”…

    PS I am sorry you were abused as a child. really I am. I think what your dad did to you is inexcusable. but there are support groups for your kind; you won’t get the help you need here though we appreciate your stopping by. good luck.

  • The results of this survey are encouraging in finding that Muslim Americans do not share the sense of alienation that their co-religionists feel in places like France (over 75% say they are happy or very happy in the U.S.). For all of the faults of our hyper-individualistic form of capitalism, the U.S. does provide an opportunity for these immigrants to succeed, for their children to attend college, etc. This is not the case in Europe.

    I think the situation is different with African-American Muslims. And it’s always important to differentiate between “black Muslims” i.e. the Nation of Islam which is a cult and orthodox Muslims. I’d also be interested to know how many African-Americans convert to Islam in prison. I didn’t see anything about this in the survey but I went through it pretty quickly.

    This is for our anti-Zionist troll:

    Review of Efraim Karsh’s “Islamic Imperialism: A History”
    http://www.democratiya.com/review.asp?reviews_id=32

    In Karsh’s reading, far from the establishment of the state of Israel being a manifestation of European imperialism and colonialism, it is the Arab states that come off as plotting the division and conquest of Palestine. King Faisal I of Syria had sought to expropriate Palestine, as did King Abdallah of Transjordan who wanted an empire encompassing Palestine and Syria. The Arab League rejected Abdallah’s personal ambitions for the partition of Palestine and attempted to block the incorporation of Palestine into his kingdom. In recognition that the territory would either be controlled by the Zionists or divided amongst the various Arab regimes, a pan-Arab war was waged against the fledgling state of Israel in May 1948. In Karsh’s assessment, ‘this amounted to a “scramble for Palestine” in the classic imperialist tradition …for the simple reason that none of the region’s Arab regimes viewed Palestine as a distinct entity and most of them had their own designs on this territory’ (p.139).

    After independence, and amid increasing terrorism from secular nationalist and Marxist organisations, including Fattah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, successive Israeli governments ignored the danger posed by the Islamists of Hamas in the hope that they would pull support from the other radical groups. This proved disastrous. As Hamas’ militancy earned it increased support during the First Intifada of the 1980s, the organisation’s grip in the Occupied Territories deepened due to the corruption of the Palestinian Authority. However, the nature of Hamas is often misunderstood. Unlike the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Hamas is neither the embodiment of pan-Arab aspirations nor of Palestinian self-determination. It is not a political movement for national liberation that contains an armed wing. Hamas has articulated the far broader goal of establishing a global Islamist empire. This is in line with it’s ideological parent organisation, ‘which viewed its violent opposition to Zionism from the 1930s and 1940s as an integral part of the Manichean struggle for the creation of a worldwide caliphate rather than the defence of the Palestinian Arabs’ national rights’ (p. 213-4). According to Karsh, for Hamas, the issue of Palestine is ‘neither an ordinary territorial dispute between two national movements not a struggle by an indigenous population against a foreign occupier. It is a holy war by the worldwide Islamic umma to present the loss of a part of the House of Islam to the infidels’ (p. 214).

    [review continues]

  • I say the survey was moderately encouraging. It speaks to the greater success at integration & assimilation and the acceptance of Muslims in America in general. As always, the radicalization of youth, often via the new Arab media is a major problem & issue we’ll be dealing with for sometime to come.

    And if this is true : ‘About 65% of Muslims are foreign born and of the 35% who are native Americans, more than half are African American for a total of about 20% of the Muslim American population’, it says that efforts to gain greater security measures through ‘profiling’ may be fairly effective indeed. Cheers, ‘VJ’

  • Another Ism member, anti-semite shiksa calling herself a Jew. The only artificial organ is the non-existant place called Palestine and the Arabs who falsely call themselves Palestinians. You suffer from psychosis and need to be committed.
    Everything you accuse the Jews of doing to the Arabs is what the Arabs have ACTUALLY DONE TO THE JEWS.
    I hope you one day soon a bomb goes off in your vicinty and your head and all limbs are blown off. Justice would be for you to survive and spend your entire life suffering in extreme pain.
    You are an ignorant evil bitch. A sub-human piece of trash, a worthless piece of s***! F*** off and move to Saudi Arabia where you’ll be raped and beaten everday by your Arab masters. You deserve it!

  • This discussion offends everyone with an artificial organ.

  • Until I read comment #1, I couldn’t comprehend why Palestianians seem so intent on killing each other in Gaza. Thanks for clearing that up!

  • Wow… just woke up, the sun is shining, the people on their long weekend doing yardwork, walking their dogs… a new day dawning… feels like all the world’s problems do have resolutions… maybe The Surge can work… maybe Keith Ellision will attend a Shabbos dinner… maybe Bebe will get on the horn with Abu Mazen…

    Then I started reading these comments here, pulled the shades, got back into bed and got deep under the covers. The sun has turned black. Hopelessness, despair, Jews spewing hatred towards Israel and Jews spewing violence against Jews…

    I may never leave the house again… Damn, ran out of coffee. Have to leave the house again.

  • Have to admire spunk of writer of post #11. “F*** Jew haters” would make a great T-shirt or sign at an anti-war rally. Maybe there is concern that if Jews IDd themselves at such gatherings military aid to Israel might be jeopardized. But all supporters of Israel need to try to expand venues and cede less to the Islamists who are “embedded” in PBS, the BBC, AP and many U.S. papers. Anyway I would certainly help out with bodyguard duties should any sullen unshaven men or hooded women take exception to such a sign or shirt.