Recent Poll about what Americans believe about Islam, Muslims, and Obama
This article in the Huffington Post highlights a most interesting Newsweeks poll.
- 24% of Americans think Obama is a Muslim. What is interesting is that this is almost double the percentage of those who thought he was a Muslim 2 years ago, during the election (only 13% during the election) ! (question 17)
- If you look at republicans in particular, 52% believe Obama to be trying to impose global Islam !! (A full 14 percent of Republicans said that it was “definitely true” that Obama sympathized with the fundamentalists and wanted to impose Islamic law across the globe. An additional 38 percent said that it was probably true — bringing the total percentage of believers to 52 percent.)
- 58% of Americans today do NOT know a Muslim at all. But this is lower than 2 years ago (63% did not know a Muslim in 2008). (question 18)
- Compared to 2 years ago, there are more Americans today (60%) who have a more favorable view of Muslims (about 7% more) (question 19)
- 23% say that they would NOT want a mosque in their neighborhood (question 20)
- 52% are worried about radicals within the US Muslim community (question 21)
- In a different poll (Pew Research), 85% of Americans say that they do not know much (or at all) about Islam
Reflections on these numbers:
- Some in America are looking for a way to blame a foreign evil enemy on our domestic problems (economy, wars, etc..). It seems that the best way to rally the troops, so to speak, is to blame a minority group (oh where have we seen this before?). In fact, these people will tell you, the reason Obama is so bad, and should be replaced as soon as possible, is that he is a closet Muslim! An African American leader recently said: they cannot call him the “N” word, so they will call him the new “M” word!
- It seems that there are more people today who are against Muslims (because they need to pin point an enemy, and find a something to blame) ; but also there are more people who are standing with Muslims (because of the tolerant values upon which our society and our constitution is built).
- There is a definite need for Muslims to reach out more. Muslims must come out of the closet and open their homes, houses of worship, and hearts to the larger society. It is not acceptable that 58% of society do not know a Muslim. Most likely one of these people is your neighbor.
- Most people who personally know a Muslim have a much more favorable view of Islam and Muslims.(this is from a different poll). This highlights the importance of Muslims reaching out.
- The worry about radical Muslims is a genuine worry. In fact, American Muslims are worried (or should be worried) about radical Muslims. However, it is obvious that this worry is currently inflated for political reasons. What should we do as American Muslims? 1) combat radicalism in our community: not in the Name of Islam! And 2) be much more inviting of the larger society into our community in order for them to know Islam and Muslims
- The bottom line is this : American Muslims are caught in the middle of a battle not of their own doing. Some in America need an enemy to “rally the troops”. They are positioning Islam/Muslims as this new enemy. Anything Muslim is bad for America. With the small microphone that we have, American Muslims are yelling out: this is not true. This is not what Islam is about at all. American Muslims must not get caught in this political fight though. We need to focus on reaching out to others – even if it is done individually and one on one. We need to decrease the chance that this hype would play in the hands of the extremists in either side. Because this is the stuff that extremism, on both sides, thrives on.
Your thoughts?
Shariah between two popes
This is an interesting article about Sharia by Sherman Jackson.
The article describes the different view of Sharia from two popes. Here is an excerpt :
While it started out as a minor footnote, opposition to sharî’ah has now morphed into the mantra by which many justify their opposition to the so-called “Ground Zero mosque.” If we allow this mosque to go forth, so the logic goes, the next thing you know, all the bars in the country will be shut down (and those infidel lushes flogged!), all the women will be draped in sheets, and Muhammad will replace Jacob as the most popular name in America. Allahu akbar!
While some of this hysteria is clearly being peddled by people who know better, most Americans are probably just engaged in a good-faith attempt to understand and respond to sharî’ah through the only prism they have: their own historical experience. I was recently reminded of this on a visit to Cairo, during which time two popes, one Catholic, the other Coptic, expressed almost mutually contradictory sentiments about sharî’ah. The chasm separating their perspectives related not to their different levels of knowledge aboutsharî’ah but almost entirely to their differences in historical experience.
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The most interesting position, however, was that of the [Coptic] Church itself. In addition to religious freedom it invoked sharî’ah in its defense! Time and again, Church officials publicly invoked such sharî’ah maxims as, “When confronted with People of the Book (Jews and Christians), adjudicate among them on the basis of their own religion.” The Coptic patriarch, Pope Shanoudah III, even went so far as to quote the Qur’ân directly in his weekly sermon: “Let the People of the Bible adjudicate according to what God revealed therein. And whoever does not adjudicate in accordance to what God reveals, they are among the corrupt” (5: 47). As if these statements were not explicit enough, in an interview published on 10 June in the official Ahram newspaper, Pope Shanoudah stated plainly and without equivocation, “We simply ask the judges, if they want to reconcile with the Church, to apply the Islamic sharî’ah.”
Read full article here.
A much more comprehensive article on Sharia is written by Noah Feldmen, of Harvard Law School, can be read here.
A World Without Islam
This is a very interesting book : A world without Islam, by Former CIA official and Historian.
I read the first chapter, and it seems like a very good good so far.
Here is the excerpt from NPR :
What would the world be like without Islam? In A World Without Islam, former CIA official and historian Graham Fuller says it wouldn’t be much different from the world today.
According to Fuller, the West’s fraught relationship with the Middle East isn’t really about religion — and actually predates the spread of Islam.
Fuller tells NPR’s Neal Conan that he found “deep-rooted conflicts that still exist over ethnicity or economics or warfare or armies or geopolitics [that] … really don’t have anything to do with Islam, and indeed, existed long before Islam came into existence.”
One of those conflicts can be traced all the way back to antiquity.
“The ancient Greeks fought wars with the ancient Persians for several hundred years, from about 500 to 300 B.C., struggling over the same turf,” Fuller says. “The people who came to occupy them later, the Byzantine Christians, fought the same wars, and then the Turkish Muslims came and they fought the same wars.”
In his book, Fuller says, “I try to run through a whole lot of events and take Islam out of the equation, and see what we’re left with.”
And what was left was the idea that the continuity of geopolitics and grievances across the Middle East doesn’t need Islam to explain it. Rather, he sees Islam — and religion in general — as a banner in that Islam provided the organizing principle for the Muslim empire that took over much of the world.
“I’m not arguing that Islam has not had great impact on the Middle East region and its cultures and civilization,” he says. “But I’m arguing that the nature of conflict between the West and the East does not depend on that, and precedes Islam.”
Consider, for example, the struggle over oil and energy in the Middle East.
“If the area were Christian, would the region be any more accepting of big Western oil companies trying to come in and dominate those things?” he asks. “I don’t think so.”
Fuller says that while he finds imagining the world this way an important and informative exercise, he is in no way advocating for a world without Islam.
“I’m really focusing on the nature of struggle between the East and the West,” he says, “and whether Islam plays a significant role in that.”
You can buy the book here from amazon.
Islam in America 
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