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Survey: U.S. Muslims Assimilated, Opposed to Extremism
By Alan Cooperman
Washingto=
n Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 23, 2007; A03
Unlike Muslim minorities in many European countrie=
s,
U.S. Muslims are highly assimilated, close to parity with other America=
ns
in income and overwhelmingly opposed to Islamic extremism, according to=
the
first major, nationwide random survey of Muslims.
The survey by the Pew Research =
Center
found that 78 percent of U.S. Muslims said the use of suicide bombings
against civilian targets to defend Islam is never justified. But 5 perc=
ent
said it is justified "rarely," 7 percent said
"sometimes," and 1 percent said "often"; the remain=
ing
9 percent said they did not know or declined to answer.
By comparison, Muslims in France=
, Spain<=
/a> and Britain were
almost twice as likely to say suicide bombing is sometimes or often
justified, and public acceptance of the tactic is even higher in some
countries with large Muslim populations, such as Nigeria,
Jordan and Egypt<=
/a>.
Titled "Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mo=
stly
Mainstream," the Pew report draws a picture of a diverse populatio=
n of
about 2.35 million U.S. Muslims, of which two-thirds of the adults were
born abroad, and which has a generally positive view of the larger soci=
ety.
Most call their communities good or excellent plac=
es to live, and most report that a large portion of their
closest friends are non-Muslims. They are slightly more satisfied than =
the
general public is with the state of the nation.
On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to th=
e United States=
should adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct. A=
nd
they are even more inclined than other Americans to say that people who
want to get ahead can make it if they work hard; 71 percent of U.S. Mus=
lims
agreed with that statement, compared with 64 percent of the general pub=
lic.
"What emerges is the great success of the Mus=
lim
American population in its socioeconomic assimilation," said Amaney Jamal, an assi=
stant
professor of politics at Princeton Uni=
versity
who was a senior adviser on the poll. "Given that for the past few
years they've been dealing with the backlash from 9/11, these numbers a=
re
extremely impressive."
A majority say their lives have become more diffic=
ult
since Sept. 11, 2001,
and most think the government has singled out Muslims for monitoring. A=
bout
one in four said they do not think that "groups of Arabs" were
responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Though socially conservative, Muslims lean toward =
the Democratic Pa=
rty,
six to one.
Farid Senzai,
another Muslim adviser on the poll, said the findings are in sharp cont=
rast
to the "ghettoization" of Muslim
minorities in parts of Western Europ=
e,
where Muslim immigrants are markedly less well off than the general
population, frustrated with economic opportunities and socially isolate=
d.
Just less than half of Muslim Americans have atten=
ded or
graduated from college, close to the national figure of 54 percent, and=
the
income distribution among Muslim families closely matches the national
norm.
Still, the poll found "pockets of sympathy for
extremism" particularly among African Americans and young Muslims,
said Andrew Kohut, head of the <=
st1:PlaceName>Pew
Research Center.
Native-born African American Muslims, who represent
about 20 percent of the total Muslim population, are its most disillusi=
oned
segment, the report shows. They are more skeptical than foreign-born
Muslims of the idea that hard work pays off. About 13 percent are satis=
fied
with the way things are going, compared with 29 percent of other
native-born Muslims and 45 percent of Muslim immigrants.
One of the poll's most striking findings, Kohut said, is that African American Muslims are
considerably more likely than immigrant Muslims to express support for =
al-Qaeda.
Nine percent of African American Muslims expressed=
a
favorable attitude toward Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization, while 36 percent held =
a very
unfavorable view. Among foreign-born Muslims, 3 percent had a favorable
view of al-Qaeda while 63 percent chose
"very unfavorable."
Jamal, the Princeton professor, said the data seem to indicate that Afr=
ican
American Muslims are sympathetic to the goals but not the means of al-<=
span
class=3DSpellE>Qaeda, because 85 percent said suicide bombing is
rarely or never justified. She speculated that they may see al-Qaeda "not just as the force behind terrorist
attacks . . . but as resistance to a status quo that is seen to treat t=
hem
unfairly."
The poll found that U.S. Muslims overwhelmingly op=
pose
the war in Iraq, while
the general population is closely split on that question. Muslims also
oppose the war in Afghanistan,
48 percent to 35 percent. The reverse view prevails in the general
populace, which supports the Afghan war by nearly two to one.
Muslims under age 30 are more religious than their
elders, as well as more inclined to support suicide bombing and more li=
kely
to identify themselves as Muslims first, then Americans, the poll found=
.
Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion a=
nd
Public Life, said the Washington-based nonprofit organization spent $1
million on the poll. It surveyed 1,050 Muslim adults in four languages =
--
English, Arabic, Urdu and Farsi -- and paid them $50 each for their tim=
e.
To generate the sample, Pew used randomly dialed
telephone numbers to reach more than 57,000 households. In addition, it
gleaned likely Muslim names from a commercial database and re-contacted
some English-speaking Muslim households that had been identified in oth=
er
surveys since 2000. The overall margin of sampling error was plus or mi=
nus
five percentage points.
One finding likely to generate controversy is Pew's
estimate of 2.35 million Muslims in the =
United
States, including 1.5 million adults.
Because the U.S. Census does not ask about religious identity, there ha=
s been
no previous, widely accepted estimate of the Muslim population. Smaller,
less random surveys have come up with lower numbers, while some Muslim
groups have contended, based on loose methodology, that there are 7 mil=
lion
Muslims or more.
Polling director Jon Cohen and polling analyst
Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report=
.
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