{"id":256,"date":"2009-03-03T07:54:25","date_gmt":"2009-03-03T07:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2009\/03\/survey-of-american-muslim-atti.html"},"modified":"2009-03-03T07:54:25","modified_gmt":"2009-03-03T07:54:25","slug":"survey-of-american-muslim-atti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/03\/survey-of-american-muslim-atti.html","title":{"rendered":"survey of American Muslim attitudes"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a fascinating survey of American muslims by Gallup that all sorts of interesting results (direct PDF link<\/a>). One of the key findings is that American muslims consider themselves to be “thriving”, even more so than muslims in the Islamic world or Europe. However, somewhat counterintuitively, muslim Americans are the least content of all religious groups. As the New York Times article summarizes<\/a>,<\/p>\n

\n

…the only countries where Muslims are more likely to see
\nthemselves as thriving are Saudi Arabia and Germany, according to the
\npoll.<\/p>\n

And yet, within the United States, Muslims are the least
\ncontent religious group, when compared with Jews, Mormons, Protestants
\nand Roman Catholics. <\/p>\n

Gallup researchers say that is because the
\nlargest segment of American Muslims are African-Americans (35 percent,
\nincluding first-generation immigrants), and they generally report lower
\nlevels of income, education, employment and well-being than other
\nAmericans. <\/p>\n

But American Muslims are not one homogeneous group,
\nthe study makes clear. Asian-American Muslims (from countries like
\nIndia and Pakistan) have more income and education and are more likely
\nto be thriving than other American Muslims. In fact, their quality of
\nlife indicators are higher than for most other Americans, except for
\nAmerican Jews. <\/p>\n

“We discovered how diverse Muslim Americans are,” said Dalia Mogahed,
\nexecutive director and senior analyst of the Gallup Center for Muslim
\nStudies, which financed the poll. “Ethnically, politically and
\neconomically, they are in every way a cross-section of the nation. They
\nare the only religious community without a majority race.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is perhaps the starkest evidence yet of the gulf between the African-American muslim community and the rest of American muslims, who unlike in European countries are not from one predominant ethnic group but are rather a truly cosmopolitan mix. This graphic from the poll makes this inherent diversity clear (click to enlarge):<\/p>\n

\"american-muslims.gif\"<\/a><\/span>Obviously, the very term “American muslim community” has limited value. This diversity implies that muslim Americans may find it nearly impossible to achieve any kind of political unity, but that is arguably a good thing in some respects, particularly with respect to immunizing resistance to violent extremism, which has not found as receptive an audience in American mosques as it has in Europe and the UK. <\/p>\n

Despite this diversity, the poll still makes a number of broad assessments about the muslim American community as a whole, which I think still have value. For example, muslim Americans are generally more educated<\/a> than any other group (except Jews), engage in less binge drinking<\/a> (except Mormons),  and are more well-integrated to the mainstream<\/a> than their European counterparts. Razib of Gene Expression<\/a> blog has been really delving into the data and makes two broad conclusions<\/a> over at Talk Islam:<\/p>\n

\n

1) some of the stress felt by muslims seems pretty clearly due to
\nanti-muslim sentiment which is particular & distinctive to muslims.
\ni.e., it can’t just be attributed to the fact that a large % of muslims
\nare racial minorities (some of the questions seem pretty keyed in to
\nthis reality).<\/p>\n

2) some of stress and anomie seems to be a byproduct of the
\ndemographics of muslims. i.e., in many social & demographic ways
\nafrican american muslims are far more like african american christians
\nthan asian muslims (who are mostly south asian i’m sure). some of the
\nquestions also suggest to me that there is something more than the
\nconventional level of anomie in the african american community at work,
\nbut rather a trend which emerges from the fact that large numbers of
\nmuslims who<\/p>\n

\n

a) convert to islam and so move themselves out of prior social networks<\/p>\n

b) but are not fully integrated into a muslim social network<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

i think this is most well illustrated by the demo of “asian
\nmuslims,” who are probably the least likely to be converts, and so have
\na natural communal framework which is historically robust. in contrast,
\nmany of the black and white muslims are converts with weaker historical
\nties, and don’t have as many people to rely on.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Clearly, depsite the diversity of the community there are some universal issues, of which Islamophobia and foreign policy rank highly (though with the latter, the muslim American community seems to have inherited some of the biases of the external Ummah<\/a>). <\/p>\n

Related: The New York Times goes into further detail on some of the other findings<\/a> of the poll, as does the main website for the poll itself<\/a> (Muslim West Facts). Also, there’s a healthy debate at Talk Islam<\/a> about what the term “muslim American” even means.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a fascinating survey of American muslims by Gallup that all sorts of interesting results (direct PDF link). One of the key findings is that American muslims consider themselves to be “thriving”, even more so than muslims in the Islamic world or Europe. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}