{"id":1072,"date":"2005-08-24T19:31:26","date_gmt":"2005-08-24T23:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=1072"},"modified":"2005-08-24T19:31:26","modified_gmt":"2005-08-24T23:31:26","slug":"stars-stripes-crescent-a-reassuring-portrait-of-americas-muslims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2005\/08\/stars-stripes-crescent-a-reassuring-portrait-of-americas-muslims\/","title":{"rendered":"Stars, Stripes, Crescent: A reassuring portrait of America’s Muslims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wall Street Journal<\/a> BRET STEPHENS AND JOSEPH RAGO Wednesday, August 24, 2005 <\/p>\n

Ever since it became clear that three of the four jihadis who bombed London on July 7 were born and bred in England, the British have been taking a hard look at their Muslim neighbors: Do they share the same values? How do they fare economically? Whom do they cheer when England plays Pakistan at cricket? And how many more would-be bombers are among them?<\/p>\n

As it happens, Her Majesty’s government was well clued on these questions before the bombers struck: A 2004 Home Office study showed, for example, that British Muslims are three times likelier to be unemployed than the wider population, that their rates of civic participation are low, and that as many as 26% do not feel loyal to Britain. By contrast, the U.S. Census Bureau is forbidden by law from keeping figures on religious identification (although it collects voluminous information on race and ethnicity), so there are no authoritative data on the size and nature of America’s Muslim population. Yet if the U.S. is ever attacked by American jihadis, we will no doubt ask the same questions about our Muslim community that Britons are now asking about theirs.
\n
\nHere is what we know.<\/p>\n

First, let’s dispose of the common misconception that Arab-Americans and Muslim Americans are one and the same. In fact, most Arab-Americans aren’t Muslim, and most Muslim Americans aren’t Arab. According to the 2000 census, there are 1.2 million Americans of Arab descent, of whom only 24% (according to a survey by the Arab American Institute) are Muslim. As for the rest, they are mainly Catholic, Eastern Orthodox or Protestant. They are also highly successful, with an above-average median household income of $52,000 and an astonishing intermarriage rate of over 75%, suggesting they are well on their way toward blending into the great American melting pot. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wall Street Journal BRET STEPHENS AND JOSEPH RAGO Wednesday, August 24, 2005 Ever since it became clear that three of the four jihadis who bombed London on July 7 were born and bred in England, the British have been taking a hard look at their Muslim neighbors: Do they share the same values? How do … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1319,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-popular-culture","category-religion-in-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1319"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}