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AAI in the News

US More Accepting of Islam, Less Likely Than Britain to Create Radicals

By Patrick Bourland
Kansas City InfoZine
Posted on Sunday September 25, 2005

After Britain assigned culpability to its own citizens in connection with the July subway bombings, a wave of concern crossed the Atlantic and sprinkled the American shore: Could something like that happen here, too?

Washington, D.C. – Recently, prominent Muslims in Washington have whistled a more hopeful tune: something like that probably won’t happen here, and concrete reasons explain why.

James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute, expressed the idea in the simplest terms.

“You can be a third-generation Kurd in Germany and still be a Turk,” he said. “After one generation, you become an American, not only in citizenship but in identity.”

He continued to refer to the U.S. as a place where “the table is set” and where there is a “social and economic mobility factor” – integral facets of what many like to call the American Dream – facets that are missing in Britain.

“In Europe, Muslims become underclass,” he said. “Here, there is a pre-existing underclass but people can move up.”

The differences might also be rooted in history, perception and politics.

“It’s an interesting phenomenon,” said Arsalan Iftikhar, national legal director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “I think a lot of it revolves around immigration laws.”

Britain’s “more relaxed” immigration laws have led to a greater influx of uneducated, blue-collar workers different from the well-educated, well-established Muslims who immigrated here 30 to 40 years ago, he said. They centered themselves in urban ghettoes, he said, and “that necessarily isolates them.” That isolation breeds exclusion, which can be a prelude to violence.

“The kids in Britain who saw things that way were alienated to start with,” CAIR Research Director Mohamad Nimer said. “They were not seen as British citizens; they were seen as Muslims although they were British citizens. ‘Now, you’re a Muslim, and you don’t belong here.’”

“Our situation in America is different because of the history of this country,” he said. “People in this country are accepting to new populations.”

That’s not to say that life is perfect for American Muslims. U.S. popular thought often puts entire groups under scrutiny, and Muslims – more specifically, Muslims of Arab descent – are sometimes targeted.

“We blame all Muslims for the bad deeds of any particular Muslim,” Nimer said. “We cut up the maps and we distribute blame at will.”

The most obvious example of that is Sept. 11, after which Islam became synonymous with terrorism.

“Bizarre policies were implemented by the government post-9/11,” Zogby said. “But the pendulum’s going back because a whole lot of people are pushing it back.”

Nimer noted that the push has been a political one. “When people feel that there is some injustice that is taking place, they channel that feeling into increased political participation,” he said. “People were stunned by the PATRIOT Act, but it motivated them to join coalitions to basically repeal it.”

“A lack of political guidance, so to speak, in Europe” has exacerbated an already problematic situation there, he said.

Not everyone has maintained optimism, though. Akbar Ahmed, author of “Discovering Islam: Making Sense of Muslim History and Society,” is wary. He asserted that the U.S. is not immune to radicalism or extremist behavior, and that internal insurgence is possible.

“We live in an environment that is much more dangerous than we assume it is,” he said. “If there is something else that happens here, this fragile fabric could unravel.”

Still, Zogby is confident that the fibers of America form a stronger vestment.

“Of course there are bad guys,” he said. “We’d be foolish to ignore it, but I think the pressures that work in the other direction are too great.”