Seems that the public really, really want health care reform.
Latest Updates: America RSS
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aziz
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aziz
Dean tries to provoke a discussion about the term “Black”, arguing that it’s a term that only applies to the African Americans in the US and not to Africa. It’s similar to debates we’ve had here at TI in the past, especially this one.
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johnpi
Pitiable British professionals must ask for another cup of gruel:
At any given professional level, you found British people doing things that only much poorer Americans would do, like bringing lunch, hanging their clothes to dry, or going without cable (though the Americans I knew said the cable wasn’t worth it anyway).
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aziz
An excellent diary at dkos by an Arab American (non muslim) about collective blame.
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johnpi
A new Rasmussen poll shows that the Northwest Airlines attack has seriously increased Americans’ fears about terrorism.
The poll, which was conducted last night, shows that 79% of likely voters think another terrorist attack is likely within the next year. This is up from 49% of Americans who said the same thing in Rasmussen’s poll in August. The new poll also contains 42% of likely voters who think another attack is “very likely,” up from 16% of Americans in August.
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aziz
“America!” they said with a hint of contempt on their face. “The Yankees do not make a distinction between veiled and unveiled. Backward people! They are the only ones left that think all people ought to be treated the same.”
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johnpi
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aziz
America does religious freedom right: new mosque to be built in shadow of 9-11 Ground Zero.
Switzerland, are you paying attention?
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aziz
Muslim Americans, The Next Generation: a guest post at City of Brass by Willow which is pretty much the perfect example of muslims “reflecting about their faith” that non-muslims are always insisting we do in response to violence and whatnot.
an excerpt:
Ironically I think Muslims are at a disadvantage because Islamic law is comparatively easy to practice and apply in isolation. The result is a community with a sustainable level of conservatism (ie, it’s not like orthodox Jewish or Catholic doctrine, which are almost impossible to keep up en toto outside a Jewish or a Catholic community with established kashrut/regular access to communion etc). Other communities were forced to give up a great deal of religious life simply because the bells-n-smells necessary to sustain it weren’t there. Muslims in America haven’t been forced to make compromises. So any compromises they do make come with an almost hilarious level of groaning and moaning, like they are doing everyone a ginormous favor by budging an inch.
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johnpi
Pew research: 63 percent of US Muslims see no conflict in being devout and living in Modern society. Pew estimates the actual population of Muslims living in the United States at 2.35 million.
The first-ever, nationwide, random sample survey of Muslim Americans finds them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world.
Research findings:
• Overall, Muslim Americans have a generally positive view of the larger society. Most say their communities are excellent or good places to live.
• A large majority of Muslim Americans believe that hard work pays off in this society. Fully 71% agree that most people who want to get ahead in the United States can make it if they are willing to work hard.
• The survey shows that although many Muslims are relative newcomers to the U.S., they are highly assimilated into American society. On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to the U.S. should try and adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct from the larger society. And by nearly two-to-one (63%-32%) Muslim Americans do not see a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.
• Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries. However, there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified. Nonetheless, absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world.
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aziz
Razib says
a form of Islam which requires less marking off from the “kufar,” and implicit dominance of Muslim norms in the public space, can persist and flourish. Shared practices and values, broadly construed, is entirely compatible with starkly contradictory views on the nature of God, or the appropriate manner in which to worship God within religious establishments.
and I agree, though I do disagree with his larger premise in that I believe it’s precisely the multicultural tolerance he derides, and not a generalized “Protestantism”, which is the cultural foundation for America. The latter derives from the former, not the other way around.
Critics of multiculturalism like to mis-represent it as an orthodoxy unto itself, but its actually the absence of one. This is why America can be simultaneously deeply Protestantist and also the greatest Islamic country on Earth.
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johnpi
LAPD’s iWatch terrorism ad: Important or incredibly creepy?
The iWatch program encourages people to report suspicious activity that may be terrorism-related to the police. The American Civil Liberties Union has expressed concern that iWatch will lead to “racial or religious profiling.”
Have you monitored your neighbors today?
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fathima
‘American Qur’an’ blends US life, Quranic verses:
In Birk’s version, each chapter of the Quran has been carefully copied in English in a calligraphy modeled on the urban graffiti of America’s inner cities. The stark black text is bordered by scenes from American life both mundane and extraordinary: gangsters flashing signs, Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, migrants working the fields, a crowded airport lounge and a raging California wildfire among them.
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johnpi
Spate of terrorism arrests not connected, analysts say.
In the past week, U.S. officials have announced charges in five terrorism probes in five states. It is a confluence of cases unlike anything the country has seen since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
But CNN’s national security analyst Peter Bergen and law enforcement analyst Mike Brooks say not to read too much into it — the rush of arrests is a coincidence.
“These are things that are happening completely independently,” Bergen said.
Brooks agreed, calling it a “happenstance.”
Most everything else in the story has already been bloged/linked here at TI, with the possible exception of an indictment against a Brooklyn man for conspiracy to commit murder abroad and for support of foreign terrorists. The man wanted to join al Shabaab in Somalia and “take up arms against perceived enemies of Islam.”
There’s also this observation about the men arrested:
While the five probes do not appear linked, they do involve suspects of a similar “socio-economic profile,” said Bergen.
“The profiles of the people… generally speaking is much closer to what we see among European Muslims,” he said. “They tend to be less well integrated” into mainstream society, and in many cases have faced economic difficulties and unemployment, Bergen said.
If there is a link among the suspects, Bergen said, “it’s a feeling of exclusion from the American dream.”
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johnpi
US Muslim and Arab groups urge vigilance following latest New York terror case.
(Press release)
Following the announcement of a federal indictment yesterday against a Colorado man on one charge of conspiring to detonate bombs in the U.S., a coalition of Muslim and Arab American groups are urging greater vigilance and partnership among community members.In their joint statement, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the Freedom and Justice Foundation (F&J), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and Imam Mohamed Magid, Director of the ADAMS Center in Virginia, stated:
The defendants in this case will be judged in the court of law, and should be afforded their due process and the presumption of innocence. While we are always vigilant in defending civil rights and preventing stigmatization of any group or religion, we also view the safety of our country as a top priority. We have an overarching duty to work together and with law enforcement to protect the country and to offer any information that can pre-empt another terrorist attack.
“We urge our constituents to extend full cooperation to protect the innocent, to support the rule of law, and to keep the name of Islam clean and clear from any criminal behavior,” said MPAC Senior Advisor Dr. Maher Hathout.
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johnpi
Panel recommends keeping some color-coded alerts.
A special task force recommended Tuesday that if the Obama administration keeps color-coded terror alerts, the number of colors and levels of risk should be reduced from five to three.
This will reduce the tendency of the US public to be victimized by confusing, unintelligible terror warnings as happened frequently during the Bush administration.
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johnpi
Poll: Muslim Americans still struggling for acceptance.
Eight years after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, Muslim Americans – particularly Muslim-American women – continue to face battles in their struggle for acceptance and the right to wear religious garb in public settings. A new poll from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life finds that Americans see Muslims as encountering more discrimination than any other religious group. But while Americans are more likely to be familiar with Islam or personally know a Muslim than they were at the time of the attacks, levels of tolerance are lower today than they were in the months immediately following Sept. 11.
Reason not to withdraw and isolate yourself from the non-Muslim larger community.
A majority of Americans under age 30 (52%) know a Muslim, but less than one-third (30%) of those over age 65 do. That’s significant because researchers have found that knowledge of Islam and Muslims tends to make an individual more inclined to express favorable views of the two. “People who know a Muslim tend to be less likely than others to see a connection between Islam and violence,” says Gregory Smith, a senior researcher at the Pew Forum.
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johnpi
American Muslims have recovered their American identity somewhat from the intense post-9/11 alienation, but they still are viewed as outside the mainstream.
As someone who studies the Muslim American population, I’ve been impressed by the growing sophistication of the questions I’ve been receiving from reporters and others, especially at this time of year. I’m hearing a new level of understanding about Muslim beliefs and practices, and about how Muslim Americans fit into the national landscape. Questions revolve much less than they did a few years ago around stereotypes of Muslims as oppressors of women, violent, singularly focused and irrational.
Still, I have a hard time imagining that scholars who study Christian Americans get a lot of phone calls before their big religious holiday, Christmas, from reporters asking, essentially: “Hey, what’s up with those Christians?”
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johnpi
In 1979, when the Islamists overtook the popular revolution and established an irreversible Islamic Republic, they made all range of promises – women’s rights, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, open government, freedom, freedom, freedom. They also promised to keep the West, and particularly the United States, out.
Today, the freedoms have vanished without possibility and all that is left is anti-Americanism and the irony that America has inadvertently contributed so much to keeping the Republic intact….
Crisis mode is the Republic’s autopilot and having an enemy which for many years has somehow justified retaliatory Iranian rhetoric in the eyes of millions of people worldwide who suffer US-backed dictatorships and wars has been the icing on the cake.
The decision to declare Ahmadinejad President is based largely on the fact that the Republic does not want to negotiate with America – that it quite likes being denounced by the United States.
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johnpi
Comments of a young Egyptian Muslim man, Ahmed Aly, on trying to get a visa to fly to the US:
Last week I called the American Embassy in Cairo requesting an interview to apply for the US visa. I think it’s funny that a young Muslim would apply for the U.S. visa. Especially a young Muslim from the Middle East. Why is it “funny”? – Simply because of this rule: young Muslims are NOT welcome in USA.
I requested that interview, and I sent email to the American embassy telling that I know that they won’t issue me the visa, but I am applying only because some of my American friends are insisting on my visit in the States. Most of them even offered to send me $131 visa fee via Western Union!
I am applying for the U.S. visa for the third time to prove to my American friends that it’s kinda impossible for a young Muslim to obtain a U.S. visa. And also to stop the “headache” my friends cause me. Visiting the United States of America is a lost case for me!
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johnpi
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aziz
a VAT tax for the United States? I think if some taxes are reduced as well, it would be a good idea.
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Kawthar
FBI informant steps out of the closet:
The claim by Craig Monteilh, a 46-year-old Irvine resident, that he had been sent by the FBI to infiltrate several Orange County mosques could affect the government’s case against Ahmadullah Sais Niazi. His allegations highlight recurring issues about the use of informants by law enforcement agencies and have fanned long-held fears by some Muslim leaders about religious profiling.
Monteilh said in interviews that he had alerted the FBI to Niazi after meeting him at the Islamic Center of Irvine in November 2006 and spending eight months with him. Monteilh said he called himself Farouk Al-Aziz and posed as a Syrian-French American in search of his Islamic roots. Monteilh told the FBI that Niazi befriended him and began to lecture him about jihad, gave him lessons in bomb-making and discussed plots to blow up Orange County landmarks.
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johnpi
Movement to help former felons regain vote advancing in Kentucky and Virginia.
Nationally, more than five million people are not allowed to vote as a result of a past felony conviction. Disenfranchising people works to alienate them and make them more susceptible to ‘alternative theories’ that revile democracy.
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johnpi
In the White House press briefing, Press Secretary Dana Perino suggested that the war would help create “a more stable and secure” life for the people of Gaza:
PERINO: We understand the need to try to create a more stable and secure area for themselves [Israel] and also for the Palestinian people, who have been held hostage by Hamas in Gaza since the summer of 2007. And we urge them to be very cautious when it comes to civilian casualties. We want to keep them to an absolute minimum.
No doubt Israel will enter Gaza City on a carpet of flowers and sweets.
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willow
Woah. The Secret Service has blamed Sarah Palin for the white supremacist threats against Obama during the campaign.
Heavy. I hope this means that attacks on patriotism will go out of fashion as a favorite weapon of the politically desperate.
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aziz
From 52 to 48, with love. One America, indivisible – purple politics personified.
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Mr Moo
America’s outcast Muslims
Gaurdian: Once Bush backers, Muslims today are staunch Democrats. But both Obama and McCain shun them. Interesting article in the Guardian. The accompanying video is also interesting. -
willow
Eugene Jarecki, director of the documentary Why We Fight, writes one of the most insightful pieces I’ve ever read about the transformation of John McCain from maverick to…well, John McCain. A must-read.
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willow
A couple of teenage skinheads have been arrested on charges of plotting an assassination attempt against Senator Obama. They were also planning to murder 88 other African Americans. (According to the Boston Herald, 88 has some kind of significance within the skinhead community.) I considered refraining from posting about it, as I think this kind of story has the potential to spook voters. But a lot of us were wondering when the violent side of American racism would rear its head in this campaign. Well, wonder no longer.
