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I saw this story when it came out in the Wall Street Journal but did not have a chance to write about it here; this NewsMax summary (thanks to John) faithfully reproduces all the flaws of the WSJ original.
Muslims in the U.S. tend to be "role models," both as Americans and as Muslims, according to an eye-opening commentary in the Wall Street Journal....The Journal, however, took a look at the situation among Muslim in the U.S. and found:
• Most Arab-Americans aren't Muslims. Only 24 percent of the 1.2 million Americans of Arab descent are Muslim, and most of the rest are Catholic, Eastern Orthodox or Protestant.
• Most American Muslims aren't Arabs. One third are of South Asian descent, 20 percent are American blacks and just 26 percent are Arabs.
These two points, while interesting, are utterly irrelevant to whether American Muslims are "role models" or not. They actually only address an entirely different question -- the erroneous tendency of Americans to use "Arab" and "Muslim" synonymously.
• Muslim advocacy groups say there are more than 6 million Muslims in the U.S. But the most credible study to date estimates the total Muslim population at 1,886,000.
What does that tell you about Muslim advocacy groups? Are they included in the "role model" category?
• 59 percent of American Muslims have at least an undergraduate degree, making them the most highly educated group in the U.S.• American Muslims comprise the richest Muslim community in the world - four out of five earn more than $25,000 a year and one in three makes more than $75,000.
• 82 percent are registered to vote.
• 64 percent of American Muslims are foreign born, but the overwhelming majority arrived here legally.
• 21 percent of American Muslims marry a member of another faith.
According to the data compiled by the Journal, the U.S. does not have a "Muslim problem," write Bret Stephens and Joseph Rago in the commentary.
"On the contrary, America's Muslims tend to be role models both as Americans and as Muslims."
But the Journal warns: "It takes no more than a few men (or women) to carry out a terrorist atrocity, and there can be no guarantee that the U.S. is immune from homegrown Islamist terror."
Bret Stephens' and Joseph Rago's mistaken assumptions are flying thick and fast here. While American Muslims may indeed be role models in their wealth and high voter registration rate, it is not at all true that only ill-educated poor people actually commit terrorist atrocities. This has been disproved in study after study, as well as by looking at our experience in the United States. Maher Hawash worked at Intel. He made $360,000 a year. He was in the U.S. legally -- in fact, he was a naturalized citizen. I'll wager he was registered to vote. He married an American. Stephens and Rago would have confidently held him up as a role model and considered inconceivable the idea that he could turn out to be a jihad terrorist. And yet he was.
The WSJ article is yet another manifestation of a fundamental misunderstanding that blankets the public discourse about Islamic terrorism. Even at the Wall Street Journal they don't understand that the primary motivation of the jihadists is a religious ideology, not resentment born of economic injustice or marginalization. But economic injustice and marginalization are things they understand; a religious ideology that can move men to give up good lives and devote themselves to murder and destruction is so far out of their purview that they cannot even imagine it, and take all the evidence of it that is in front of their faces as indications of something else.
There very likely are model citizens among American Muslims. But none of the statistics marshalled by Stephens and Rago does one thing to establish whether or not there among all these affluent and law-abiding Muslims there are people who, like Mike Hawash, are nursing jihadist sentiments.
Posted by Robert at September 5, 2005 9:38 PM
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This WStJ article is, from first to last, ridiculous.
Let's start with the first. What exactly is a "model citizen"? Someone who doesn't litter and pays taxes? Is one a modeller citizen if one earns more than $75,0000 a year than a citizen who earns $35,000 a year? Why?
Apparently earning power, and possession of an undergraduate degree, makes for a "model American." Now that degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have been reduced to indications of nothing at all, what does possession of a degree mean? In what subjects? How obtained? There isn't a Saudi student in this country who cannot buy his term-papers, and the number of Saudis who have bought-and-paid for doctoral dissertations is almost equal to the number of Saudis who have received doctorates. Let's not be naive.
Can someone earn money, pay his taxes, not litter, and be the most un-model of citizens? You bet. If that person is formed by, informed by, guided by, a belief-system that again and again instructs him that he may not take "Jews and Christians for friends" (as the Qur'an so clearly does), that he is instructed to "smite the Unbeliever" wherever he finds him, where many dozens of passages in the Qur'an, hundreds of Hadith, and many of the most important events in Muhammad's life (the Sira) all instruct the Believer to see the universe as being divided in two -- between Believers and Infidels, with every Believer owing his loyalty, his sole loyalty, to fellow Believers, no matter what they do (as long as they remain part of the umma al-islamiyya) and no loyalty at all to Infidels, but enmity.
And the same goes for the Infidel nation-state. It is not possible for a Believer, a Muslim, to swear allegiance to the American Constitution and to mean it. He can say it, once or ten thousand times, but if he remains a Believer, to the very extent that he accepts the tenets of Islam, he cannot conceivably accept a political and legal system that elevates mere men, and mere Infidel men at that, above the rule of Allah. It cannot be.
How can any Believer, any Muslim, conceivable accept the legal equality of non-Muslim and Muslim? Oh, I don't mean he can't accept it, for now, merely as a tactic, until such time as Muslims become more powerful and numerous -- but really, how is it possible to accept that which contradicts the very basis of Islam? And how, for example, can a Believer accept the full legal equality of men and women? And how can a Believer possibly accept the idea of freedom of conscience, including the freedom of those who are Muslims to leave Islam altogether? This cannot be. This is impermissible. It may have to be endured, for now, but that is very different from saying that it must be endured forever.
An Iranian scholar in exile (his name escapes me at th emoment) has written a book which offers a detailed analysis of the absolute incomompatibility of Islam, that is to say the Shari'a or Holy Law of Islam, with the freedoms guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in similar documents, such as the American Bill of Rights.
It is silly to write about incomes, as if they were guarantees of anything, or any of the other silly criteria that these two authors, who appear not to have understood that the main criterion for being a "good citizen" (spare us that "model" citizen, stuff, which is so stuffy, silly, and insufferable) is to believe that the enterprise of America, the American Constitution, the work of the Framers, the work of those who followed upon the Framers, deserves our support, our loyalty, our admiration.
In fact, even on the terms these authors present, the numbers of Muslims who have been found to be involved in louche activities, from cigarrette-smuggling to cheating various welfare offices, to document (passports, social security cards, drivers' liceneses) fraud, to a thousand other scams, has been quite remarkable.
One would like to ask the authors of this jejune piece what relevance they believe an inculcated hatred for the American system, for men as the final authority, for the freedom to jettison one's beliefs including Islam, and an inculcated hatred for one's Infidel neighbors (see the record of Muslim soldiers, for example, including the army man who killed two officers and wounded many others, out of his solidarity with Islam, and the Marine who desered not once but twice and is now apparently living back in Lebanon, and the army captain who was hired to teach soldiers about "Islam" and subsequently became involved in the first World Trade Center bombing, and a host of other examples -- this does not exactly bring to mind the display of loyalty and bravery of the Japanese-American soldiers of the 442nd regiment, does it?
No, these authors are jejune in their critera for what constitutes a model citizen. They miss the point about the belief-system of Islam. Why? Because they have not studied Islam. Give me a Buddhist earning $20,000 a year any day over that Intel computer engineer referred to above, or his ilk , all over the place. What counts is the possibility of accepting, and supporting, not in feigned but in heartfelt fashion, what makes America America. No Believer can possibly offer that, for American laws, and customs, and understandings, are antipathetic to Islam, incompatible with Islam. This is not said idly. This is said by all those who have studied Islam thoroughly, and who are not part of the bought-and-paid-for army of apologists.
Stephens and Rego were not thinking clearly when they invoked this phrase "model Americans" and they certainly show that they have not bothered to learn about Islam, before making these grand pronouncements that only make them, the earnest pronouncers, look foolish.
You can have egg on your face only so many times. In the end, people will turn away -- they don't relish the spectacle. In its understanding of Islam, the WStJ has had egg on its face just a bit too often. Time to either educate the relevant staff, or hire other staff, or shut up about the matter.
Posted by: Hugh![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at September 5, 2005 10:34 PM
Obviously, these people don't read this site or any of the sites linked to it.
They should be e-mailed the link to JW/DW so that they may become educated on subjects they're writing about.
Posted by: DCWatson at September 5, 2005 11:05 PM
I live in a major city of the U.S. that has taken in 250,000 people in the wake of Katrina. The muslim percentage for the Interfaith effort is between 5% to 10% of the population and it sure shows they want to convert the populace right here in this disaster zone. The muslims here are considered " Model Citizens ". Scary, huh?
Posted by: fox1 at September 6, 2005 12:12 AM
Are they being held up as model citizens of the USA or the umma?
Those contemplating the destruction of the land they live in are not 'model' citizens regardless of their outward appearances as such.
The Islamic community has been involved in so many subversive and violent plots that I truly don't care about official proclamations that muslims are not a problem. The ideology they are enslaved to (Islam) is the problem. Official proclamations stating otherwise or no.
Posted by: pythagoras at September 6, 2005 1:18 AM
The author in the WSJ didn't take into account what these "model citizens" are thinking. Do they support jihad in all its manifestations? What about Sharia or triumphalism or the Caliphate? Would they repudiate violent jihad even though it is mandated in the Koran? Would they be willing to drop the passage from the Koran that are violent and demeaning to non-Muslims? What do they think about honor killings or Sharia?
Throughout history Muslims have appeared to be "model citizens," biding their time until demographics, economic or political influence had given them an edge, or clout, or demographic superiority. Then the so-called model citizens showed true intentions. Islam always trumps citizenship in an Muslim individual, causing them to revert to the ideal modeled by their founder, Mohammed.
Remember that.
Posted by: epg at September 6, 2005 8:30 AM
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