"Titled "Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream," the Pew report draws a picture of a diverse population of about 2.35 million U.S. Muslims, of which two-thirds of the adults were born abroad, and which has a generally positive view of the larger society.
Most call their communities good or excellent places to live, and most report that a large portion of their closest friends are non-Muslims. They are slightly more satisfied than the general public is with the state of the nation.
On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to the United States should adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct. And they are even more inclined than other Americans to say that people who want to get ahead can make it if they work hard; 71 percent of U.S. Muslims agreed with that statement, compared with 64 percent of the general public.
"What emerges is the great success of the Muslim American population in its socioeconomic assimilation," said Amaney Jamal, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University who was a senior adviser on the poll. "Given that for the past few years they've been dealing with the backlash from 9/11, these numbers are extremely impressive."
A majority say their lives have become more difficult since Sept. 11, 2001, and most think the government has singled out Muslims for monitoring. About one in four said they do not think that "groups of Arabs" were responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks." Cooperman
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I was involved in a panel discussion at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia which addressed the potential for what was called "Home Grown Terrorism" in the United States. It can be found below posted on 4/18/2007. The focus was on the possible generation of "sleeper cells" among the US Muslim population. I maintained at that meeting that the circumstances of Muslim life in the United states are so different from those in Europe that the emergence of such "cells" is quite unlikely. At the same time, I said that the lack of organizational structure and centrally ordered control of doctrine that are inherent in Islam (see my "Lecture on Islam" posted above) ensure that it is always possible that some small group of Muslims may take it upon themselves to make jihad without regard to the opinions of any substantial Muslim community.
My opinion was generally shared by the "experts" present while the Europeans present understandably were reluctant to accept such an opinion.
I am happy to see that this Pew study supports my contention. The estimated population number also is much like my own. I think that the population numbers usually cited by groups like CAIR (7 million) are simply too high.
Lastly, I think it is unfortunate that 25% of American Muslims polled think that Arabs were not the perpetrators in 9/11. The identities of the hijackers has been very clearly established. Anything else is fantasy and self-deception. pl
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/22/AR2007052201463.html
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