9-6-2014 Islamic, yet integrated: Why Muslims fare better in America than in Europe The Economist

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/07/economist-explains-12

… America's Muslims are better off than their European co-religionists. They are almost as likely as other Americans to report a household income of $100,000 or more. The same cannot be said of the Pakistanis who came to work in the now-defunct textile mills of northern England or the Turks who became guest workers in West Germany. Many American Muslims arrived in the 1970s to complete their higher education and ended up staying. Muzammil Siddiqi, chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America, which issues fatwas, or religious opinions, to guide the behaviour of the country's Muslims, is typical: he was born in India and holds a Harvard PhD in comparative religion…

 

A few bad apples

For the past dozen years the FBI and other agencies have been watching mosques in the hope of spotting would-be terrorists early. This has yielded little, although the FBI did reveal one alarming conspiracy in 2009, when four men were convicted of planning to shoot down planes with missiles and burn synagogues in New York. Not many American Muslims want to become terrorists. And as the deaths of Mr McCain and Mr Abusalha suggest, there is no map for the journey from basketball-loving teen to violent extremist.

If the September 11th attacks permanently altered America's view of Islam, they also changed Islam in America. Peter Skerry of Boston College says that a few decades ago it was common for religious leaders to agonise over whether it was possible to be a good Muslim and live in America. That argument disappeared almost overnight, as did the question of whether it was appropriate for American Muslims to vote. At the conference in Detroit, speakers made frequent approving references to the protection afforded to the free exercise of religion by the constitution…

 


Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

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