Poll: U.S. Muslims 'largely assimilated, happy'

Minnesotans reflect national trend of greater satisfaction than counterparts worldwide, poll says.

By Sharon Schmickle, Star Tribune

Last update: May 22, 2007 - 9:11 PM

Mukhtar Thakur was not surprised Tuesday by a major new poll finding that American Muslims are more likely than their European counterparts to reject Islamic extremism and express satisfaction with their lives.

"The United States is truly much more of a melting pot than Europe can ever be," said Thakur, a civil engineer who has lived in London and now works for the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

In one of the most comprehensive surveys of Muslim Americans, the Pew Research Center concluded that they are "largely assimilated, happy with their lives and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world."

About half of the Muslims surveyed had attended college, for example, and their annual incomes were fairly comparable with those of the overall American public, Pew reported.

That is not to say Muslim Americans are blissful. They overwhelmingly oppose the war in Iraq, and they were far more disapproving than other Americans of President Bush's job performance. More than half of those polled said anti-terrorism efforts single out Muslims for scrutiny.

A quarter of Muslim adults younger than 30 and 13 percent overall said suicide bombing could be justified at least in rare circumstances. On that score and other contentious issues, American Muslims took more moderate views than their counterparts around the world. For example, nearly 80 percent in the United States said suicide bombing of civilian targets never can be justified as a tactic to defend Islam. In a Pew poll last year, 64 percent of Muslims in France said "never" to the bombing. In Egypt it was 45 percent.

Minnesotans are reflected

In Minnesota, despite flareups over Muslims refusing to scan pork at supermarket checkouts and haul alcohol in taxis, Thakur and other Muslims reflect the poll's findings.

"In Islam during the time of the prophet there was no suicide bombing ... it can never be justified," said Hared Mah, a 25-year-old from Somalia now studying economics at the University of Minnesota.

American Muslims have grown more cautious since Mah arrived in Minnesota in 2001, he said. There's more fear of warrantless wiretaps and being accused of participating in terrorist plots. But that tended not to be reflected in sympathy with violence. Five percent of American Muslims in the poll expressed favorable views of Al-Qaida.

"Al Qaida is a bunch of crazy people. ... It does not serve the interests of Muslims," Mah said.

Even in these times of tension between the West and some parts of the Muslim world, two-thirds of the American Muslims polled said there is no conflict between devout faith and modern life.

Co-existence is 'an option'

"There is a misconception that it's hard to be cool and Muslim," said Ayman Balshe, 25, a Palestinian-American dentist who is doing post-graduate studies at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. "My generation feels it takes a spiritual push in order to thrive ... and we are free to be spiritual in our daily activities."

While Balshe's family was displaced by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he agreed with 61 percent of the American Muslims polled that "a way can be found for Israel to exist so that the rights and needs of the Palestinian people can be taken care of." By stark contrast, 90 percent of the Muslims in Morocco and 85 percent in Jordan disagreed with the statement in a separate Pew poll.

The lesson of the immigrant experience in the United States is that "co-existence is definitely an option," Balshe said.

The message to take from the Pew survey is that the United States has lessons to teach the world about inclusion, said Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., who is the first Muslim to serve in Congress.

"Maybe the good old United States is doing something right," he said. "Having gone through a civil war, having gone through Jim Crow, having gone through a women's rights movement ... we've learned something about the value of tolerance."

Interviews for Pew's nationwide survey of 1,050 Muslim adults were conducted in English, Arabic, Urdu and Farsi.

Sharon Schmickle • 612-673-4432 • sschmickle@startribune.com

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