According to here, it’s 23 percent of French Muslims go to Friday prayers, and that’s an increase from what it used to be. According to here, only 29 percent of Dutch Muslims attend mosque at least once a month. According to here, 16 percent of British Muslims attend Friday prayers.

I don’t see any evidence to indicate that European Muslims are more religious than American Muslims. There is, however, significant evidence that American Christians are more religious than European Christians, so the Muslim/Christian religiosity gap is likely lower in the USA than Europe.

Importantly, the same data show that Muslims in the USA are more likely to be employed than Muslims in Europe. I think a lot of the problem with integration is economic, not just cultural or religious.

You are not wrong in your generalizations, but don’t forget they are generalizations about the differences between European and US Muslims.

I don’t think you are right about mosque attendance however. I don’t have precise numbers on mosque attendance, but the percentage of muslims who say religion is an important part of daily life is higher in the US than Britain and France.

I should look at the recent national Muslim polls to see what percentage of Muslim-American immigrants go to mosque or masjid every friday. I bet it is a fraction of what you would find in Europe. The professional class of immigrants to the US are not the group you are describing and they fit the typical republican MO.

As someone active in the Muslim community at the time here in Chicago, believe me there was no groundswell of support for Bush in the Blackamerican community.

Yes, there was an endorsement of a bloc vote for Bush by a segment of immigrant political organizations and yes that endorsement was probably more persuasive to a certain segment of Muslims than any such move will ever be again (in part because it turned out in hindsight to be such a colossal blunder).

Even at the time, the stated grounds for the endorsement were extremely flimsy (but you’ll note were supposedly based on civil liberties concerns, normally a more liberal issue — although also an issue for some on the right). Bush was able to use the fact that people were already happy with government persecution of Muslims under Clinton to his advantage little did we know that what happened under Clinton would be childs play compared to what Bush would do after 9/11. (We had no way to know something like 9/11 would happen but should have known Bush would be no friend of ours in civil liberties.)

People argued that Muslim bloc vote was so successful and responsible for Bush winning because that was in their interests at the time. The fact that political groups made such claims is not evidence in itself. In an election like Florida 2000 which was so close and so important I can only imagine how many different groups must have claimed that they were responsible for the result.

It is also likely that some amount of unjustifiable anti-semitism towards Gore’s running mate, or possibly some justified fear of Lieberman tilting the U.S. even more towards Israel played a part in the election that people don’t like to talk about.

What I mean by overemphasized is that it did not reflect some kind of political ideology in the community at large at the time.

Still, I do actually agree that there was some segment of immigrant Muslims who were tempted by the small government/low taxes line of the Republicans and could also dress that up in some family values type language at the time. The community shifted since 2001 due to events, due to generational change, etc. etc. so much so that the ‘conservative’ tag is not true politically.

I don’t think I’m arguing against anything in the original article here, I just think the use of the word “conservative” was sloppy and not well thought it. I guess it carries some idea of socially conservative. Although many communities Black, Latino, White Ethnic, Midwestern, etc. etc. are often freely labeled as socially conservative but I’m not always sure what this really means.

The Muslim bloc vote for Bush is largely overemphasized

These type of stories abound. It is either a popular myth only few have discovered (source?) or it is fact as reported:

The Muslim vote long fell fairly reliably into the Democratic column, but that changed in 2000. A combination of perceived slights by the Gore campaign and active wooing by Mr. Bush led to a break in the conventional wisdom. Major Muslim community groups actually went so far as to endorse Bush in 2000, in large part due to one big issue: racial profiling. On the campaign trail and in the debates, Bush used the issue to talk about his support of the Secret Evidence Repeal Act, a proposal to reverse parts of a Clinton-era law that made it easier for prosecutors to use secret evidence in terrorism cases.

Polls in 2000 showed Muslims favored Bush over Mr. Gore by a wide margin – some showed support in the 90 percent range – and some groups argued that some 60,000 Muslim votes put Bush over the top in Florida.

This one from Christian Science Monitor

The Muslim bloc vote for Bush is largely overemphasized by different people for their own purposes (I’ve done it many times myself!)

On foreign policy issues, American Muslims are on the far left of the American political spectrum. I don’t have time to look for survey data, but looking at Muslim organizations who are active in the public sphere, they are almost universally far to the left on immigration, far to the left on health care, far to the left on civil liberties issues.

There may be a few public policy issues where many or most Muslims might be thought of as to the right that you mentioned above but there has been no organized Muslim political advocacy on any of these issues that I am aware of…of course maybe people can point to specific examples I’ve forgotten or of which I am unaware.

I think the phenomenon of Obama’s popularity with the Muslims is explained in other ways and have more to do with his life story and personality than his actual politics. Most importantly: he isn’t Bush.

These are just my guesses as an outsider, as the situation here in Australia seems to be analogous – Right of centre on domestic issues. Left of centre on Foreign Policy.

Why do you feel that Muslim community’s opinions are to the left of Obama’s?