An interesting study by the Pew Forum concludes that in “intensity of religious identity,” Muslims are “not unlike Evangelicals.”
Although Muslims constitute a small minority in the United States, and their holy book and many of their religious rituals are distinctly their own, Muslim Americans are by no means “the other” when it comes to religious life or politics in the United States. In many ways, they stand out not so much for their differences as for their similarities with other religious groups.
In their level of religious commitment, Muslim Americans most closely resemble white evangelicals and black Protestants. In their basic political orientation, they closely resemble black Protestants as well as seculars. When it comes to their views on some social issues, such as homosexuality, Muslims’ conservatism matches that of white evangelicals. Muslims are even more likely than evangelicals or any other group to support a role for government in protecting morality.
Muslims account for less than one percent of the country’s population, whereas eight-in-10 Americans are Christian. Recent public opinion surveys by the Pew Research Center find that, with respect to the intensity of their religious beliefs, Muslim Americans most closely resemble white evangelicals and black Protestants. Within all three groups, large majorities (72% of Muslim Americans, 80% of white evangelicals and 87% of black Protestants) say religion is “very important” in their own lives. Those notably high percentages set all three groups apart from Catholics (49%) and white mainline Protestants (36%).
[…]
When asked about how they think of their personal identity, only about a quarter (28%) of all Muslim Americans say they identify themselves first as an American rather than as a Muslim. This number is strikingly similar to the percentage of white evangelicals (28%) and black Protestants (33%) who say they think of themselves first as American and only secondarily as Christian.
The full article, including lots of interesting tables, is here.
Religion makes strange bed-fellows. Or perhaps not so strange after all. 🙂
I reproduce here comments from a Catholic friend, with some revision:
Historically, the major interreligious conflict has been between Christianity and Islam. This simplicity no longer obtains with the recent arrival of Atheism. This is an umbrella term for its various modern permutations: globalism, secular democracy, Reform Judaism, the U/U church, etc. Atheism has the power structures of the West to itself.
Each of the three has each other as a mortal enemy. They can coexist but they do not make peace. The relative serenity of American existance and its current hegemony on global power make us think that Atheism can coexist with Christianity. It cannot. Milder forms of Atheism, such as the Masonic Lodge and democratic secularism can coexist with milder forms of Christianity such as mainstream Protestantism temporarily. This is the premise of the American Experiment. It is time limited, and its time is running out.
In a triangular conflict each side rationally seeks tactical alliance with each other side. That is because each two sides can profit from putting a squeeze on the third. Thus:
– The Atheists who hate muslim fanatics for their selfless dedication find commonality of goals with the Christians who want to push back Islam.
– The Christians understand that after the Atheists are done with the Muslim, they will be next. They see commonality of goals in rights of religion in the public square and a pro-life agenda with the Muslim. Do we hate the Muslim for his piety and traditional lifestyle, or is it his presence in Europe and America? Christian pro-life pressure groups have their best ally in the Muslims and their worst enemy in the Atheist state.
– The Muslim knows that the Atheist state requires an influx of culturally inassimilable minorities to justify its oppressive bureaucracy, its socialist welfare and taxation, and its moral decadence. The Muslim by donning a mask of moderation can plead to the state for minority protection, while the state can point to his presence to dechristianize its public policy. This is the role for every beady-eyed leftist whose principal fear in America is that one day the Religious Right will win all elections and take the Right to Choose away. This is also the role for all self-serving immigrants, Muslim or otherwise, who fear mass deportations, and for Muslims who do their part in the Jihad by simply populating the West with themselves.
It is a perfect triangular conflict, and is at the base of a complex and unstable structure.
This same poll shows a significant number of AMERICAN Muslims under 30 thought suicide bombing was OK. The numbers in the chart don’t add up to 100% but it appears 26% think suicide bombings which kill innocent civilians are OK, at least some of the time. (I don’t see where they asked about suicide bombings of American soldiers and Marines or Iraqi police). So I guess, other than that, they are just like White Evangelicals and Black Protestants.
This appears to be an attempt to establish “moral equivalency” between religious Muslims (how religious one might ask) and evangelicals. The point being, I do not see evangelicals praising God while blowing up innocents. Yet, the vast majority of Muslims seem to give tacit approval of the extremist’s actions in Allah’s name. If they do not, there is scarce media coverage of it.
Paul Berman’s TERROR AND LIBERALISM posits that Modern Western Liberalism (the philosophy, not the political orientation) has had a series of opponents that were all built around cults of death. First, Communism, then Fascism and Japanese Militarism, Stalinism, Pol-Potism and now, Radical Islam. Each is opposed to the values of the West (equality, fraternity and liberty) and each glorifies death, both in exulting the death of it’s ‘heroes’ and cheering the death of its ‘enemies.’
I agree with LeightonC in post #4. You don’t see radical Christians blowing themselves or others up in the name of Jesus – and worse, a significant number of other Christians cheering them on. Radical Christians, for the most part, withdraw from, rather than attack the world.
Q. What goes “clop, clop, clop, clop, BANG, clop clop clop?”
A. An Amish drive by shooting.
#3, #4, #5 So, is there some further point or conclusion? Do these observations suggest how we should engage Muslim nations and individuals?
You don’t see radical Christians blowing themselves or others up in the name of Jesus
Abortion cllinics and doctors
Brian, the point has been made over and over again, but just so you can’t pretend you never read it, here it is, from one who has read much of the Quran and Commentaries and the entire Bible several times and listened to much teaching on it from those who read the texts in the original Greek and Hebrew and who have studied the culture of the time for its context and so translation/application to our time.
So-called Christians who blow up abortion clinics and murder abortion doctors are acting in direct contradiction to the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels and the whole New Testament.
Muslims who wage jihad, blow up civilian Jews, Christians, and Muslims of different ethnicity from themselves, who lie baldfacedly to “infidels” not in self-defense from bodily harm but to subvert government and society and to impose Muslim law eventually, who dance in the streets to celebrate mass murder or tacitly or expressly approve of violence to force conversion and suppress criticism and kill converts from Islam, are acting in accord with the general teachings of Islam and the actions of its prophet Mohammed. The Quran is dry, sterile bones, devoid of the least speck of the mercy and grace that permeates the Bible and that was lived out by true God and true man, Jesus Christ, that He lives out now at the right hand of the Father, until the time is fulfilled for Him to make final and eternal claim to His kingdom and the joyful worship of His loyal subjects, made free indeed by the Son forever!
Well, Timothy McVeigh was a lapsed Catholic who explicitely rejected the Catholic Faith, so obviously, we can blame Oklahoma City on the Catholic Church.
The Atlanta bombings were done by a guy who had, more or less, been tossed out of his fundamentalist church and was selling drugs, so obviously, fundamentalist Christianity was to blame for those acts of terror.
I remember years ago reading an eye-witness account of the Boston abortion-shootings. The shooter was actually going after everyone in the vacinity; if I remember right, he turned out to be psychotic. So obviously, Christianity is to blame for him, too.
There are 2 billion folks on this planet claiming to be Christians. That some of them – even “true Christians” – might act badly, is no surprise. Specific examples, however, might be helpful, rather than broad stroke claims.
#6–The atricle is about American Muslims. In that regard the answer is simple. We must insist that all immagrants and their prodigy buy into America. It is why our whole immagration policy stinks. Everyone is welcome, but America is a new country. We are not a nation of tribes and clans. If you want to be American, you have to buy into the new world view that America is as idea. PC doesn’t like it, but that’s my view, which I admit I borrow significantly from Teddy Roosevelt (yes, I know he’s not PC either). #7 PLEEEEASE. When will Muslims in America (and I suppose the rest of the world) start decrying the actions of the Jihadist murderers? On 9/11 people in the Muslim woorld were dancing in the streets. People who bomb abortion clinics are not Christians, and all Christian communities condemn such actiivities. We did not celebtaye, but prayed for the victims, even though we may be anti-abortion. Of course, I suspect you already knew that, didn’t you?
Milton and Words Matter
So then the opposite is true. These aren’t ‘real’ Muslims. Argument over
David Keller,
Most Muslims, like most Christians, describe themselves as Muslim first and American second. But America is America precisely because the majority of its people were and are (for now) Christian. That is why Muslims do not belong here and we do not belong there. The bad news is they are here and here to stay. The good news is the secular experiment will eventually collapse, and over time the people of North America will coalesce into more homogenous communities.
Brian, have you actually read much of the Quran or Mohammed’s Commentaries? Don’t just swallow the camel of the face of the “religion of peace” that it’s supporters tell us in English. Read translations of “sermons” that imams give in Arabic to the true believers and read The Quran in English, then tell me whether the violence we see daily toward the “enemies of Allah” is an aberration or a realization of the Quran’s commands.
#12–(1) Great choice of screen names. (2) I also disagree with your underlying premise because I believe in the Great Commission. (3) And while I do consider myself a Christian first, I fully understand the necessity of defending America against its enemies, which do right now appear to be predominantly Isalmic states and Jihadists.
#7 Brian,
You missed the most important part of my quote – “a significant number of other Christians cheering them on.” If you put my statement in its complete context you get an absolutely opposite reaction to the one you portray. The vast majority of Christians (including those Christians in the Pro-Life Movement) condemn the murder of doctors and bombing of abortion clinics. When 9/11 occurred, Muslims around the world celebrated in the streets.
And then there is simply the matter of scale/moral equivalence. If one compares the level of ‘Christian’ violence to that of ‘Muslim’ violence there is no comparison.
I believe that Berman is right – that modern Islam believes that it is striving toward some Utopian goal (in this case, a restored Caliphate or the coming of the Mahdi), but has morphed into a death cult, just like Communism, Fascism and others before them.
“So then the opposite is true. These aren’t ‘real’ Muslims. Argument over”
Brian is the kind of guy that if you want to debate him, you better be prepared to debate BOTH sides…
So then the opposite is true. These aren’t ‘real’ Muslims. Argument over
Well! I guess you told me. I just a-quiver in are of your brilliance, Brian!
But just to be clear:
these violent people have renounced Islam, as Timothy McVeigh renounced the Catholic Faith?
They have left the Mosque, as the Atlanta bomber left his church?
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[i]edited by elves. Words Matter, we closed the other thread for a reason. Do not bring arguments from one thread to another when they are off-topic to this thread.[/i]
David,
The Great Commission also includes the wise admonition that we are to shake the dust of recalcitrant cities off our feet and leave them to their fate. Nevertheless, if Christendom is to conquer the Holy Land and the larger Middle East it will have to be done the same way Christendom conquered the pagans: patient evangelization even in the face of torture and death.
RevK’s post underscores the dilemma of the liberal state. Its charters prohibit discrimination (even private discrimination in the case of the US) on the basis of all men being created equal. (They aren’t, by the way.) Thus, even as the liberal state crusades for liberalism abroad, it has no basis for excluding or quashing illiberal elements at home. At this point, the liberal state must either transform itself into a totalitarian state, maintaining a quiescent diversity for so long as the central government can keep its grip, or it can devolve along its ethnic and cultural fault lines.
This also underscores the quasi-imperial nature of the current liberal crusade. Historically, imperial conflicts are followed by an influx of natives from the client state into the mother country. Thus, Pakistanis have ended up in Britain, and Iraqis will end up here.
#18–I don’t disagree with most of what you have to say, except that I would have to agree with Thomas Jefferson and the Bible–all human kind is created in God’s image. What we make of ourselves is another matter.
My daughter has a friend whose family is from Syria, and now have US citizenship (plus the daughter was born here).
Anyway, The parents arranged a marriage for this girl when she was 16. She tried to rebel, but they forced the issue and so she (with over a 4.1 grade average) married a man twice her age as soon as she’d graduated high school, and he then moved to Arizona with her, and she is now expecting — at 19 — their first child.
When my daughter asked her friend how she, as an American, could go along with this, her friend replied, with pride:
“Oh, but we’re not American, we’re Syrian!”
Keep in mind, they sought and obtained U.S. citizenship, yet they consider themselves Syrian and NOT American. :shut: