Monday, August 28, 2006

The Rejectionist Generation

Geneive Abdo spent two years traveling the country and interviewing a wide variety of Muslims in America. These quotes are from her piece in the Washington Post:

I found few signs of London-style radicalism among Muslims in the United States. At the same time, the real story of American Muslims is one of accelerating alienation from the mainstream of U.S. life, with Muslims in this country choosing their Islamic identity over their American one.

A new generation of American Muslims -- living in the shadow of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- is becoming more religious. They are more likely to take comfort in their own communities, and less likely to embrace the nation's fabled melting pot of shared values and common culture.
... [snip] ...
From schools to language to religion, American Muslims are becoming a people apart.
... [snip] ...
"I know I don't have to fit in," she [Ismahan, a computer scientist in Michigan] said. "I don't think Muslims have to assimilate. We are not treated like Americans. At work, I get up from my desk and go to pray. I thought I would face opposition from my boss. Even before I realized he didn't mind, I thought, 'I have a right to be a Muslim, and I don't have to assimilate.' "
... [snip] ...
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 ...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well what a surprise!

As soon as Muslims become numerous and concentrated enough to form their own self-sufficient, self-contained alternative communities, they will do so. The same thing is occurring in Oz:

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/opinion/story/0,22049,20269164-5001031,00.html

The U.S. hasn't escaped what's happened in Britain, it's just in an earlier stage of Islamisation. In three or four years time America is going to wake up to find that a third of its young Muslim males (including the prosperous and college-educated) are in favor of suicide attacks on U.S. soil in reprisal for some grievance or other.

Muslims will be Muslims, their country of residence is of no relevance because their sole loyalty is to the worldwide Scummah.

Anonymous said...

...and guess who's setting up shop in America's Muslim communities

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/terrorism.php?id=228908