Recently in Muslims Category

If the extraordinary interview-by-proxy of radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi in today's WaPo is to be believed, accused Ford Hood murderer Nidal Malik Hasan made contact with him last December, and emails between the two followed from there--including "two or three" responses from al-Aulaqi. The Yemeni journalist who conducted the interview--a man with close ties to Aulaqi--"declined to comment" when asked "whether Hasan mentioned Fort Hood as a target."

Did he or didn't he? Whatever, it's hard to believe that the FBI was as blithe or asleep at the switch as it now claims about the connection. Al-Aulaqi is, as the Post makes clear, a very well known figure--one of a handful native English-speaking radicals capable of influencing susceptible American Muslims to engage in acts of violence. And Hasan had given more than sufficient indiciation that he was susceptible.

But: Did Hasan pretend to the FBI that he was just pretending to be susceptible? In the reporting on his background, there are various stray remarks that people thought he was conducting research on the impact of Islamic teachings on Muslims in the military. It seems less and less plausible that what was going on here was nothing more than a troubled man increasingly drawn into a radical version of his faith and pushed over the edge by assignment to an overseas combat zone.

In its summary of the Hasan evidence to date yesterday, the NYT states that it all

will be studied by Army and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents trying to answer the same questions that many Americans have debated over the last 10 days:

Was Major Hasan a terrorist, driven by religious extremism to attack fellow soldiers he had come to see as the enemy? Was he a troubled loner, a misfit who cracked when ordered sent to a war zone whose gruesome casualties he had spent the last six years caring for? Or was he both?

Or, in addition, was he a man whom the FBI and/or the Army thought they were using for their own counter-terrorism purposes? And who will be looking into that question?

In its just released report on the Muslim population worldwide, The Pew Forum claims that Muslims constitute .8 percent of the American population. A year ago, its Landscape Survey reported that Muslims made up .6 percent of the American population. But this was not what that survey of 35,000 found. In a conference call for journalists, Luis Lugo said that Muslims had come in at just .3 percent of actual respondents--a number adjusted for statistical reasons to .4 percent. Pew chose to report .6 percent because that was the conclusion of its 2007 survey of Muslim Americans. Its rationale for substituting it for the actual Landscape Survey findings seemed less than plausible to me.

The only explanation for how the present .8 percent was arrived at is the following footnote, from page 24:

There has been considerable debate over the exact number of Muslims in the United States. The 2.5 million figure is a projection for 2009 based on the Pew Research Center's 2007 survey "Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream" (http://pewforum.org/surveys/muslim-american/) and available Census Bureau data (http://factfinder.census.gov/), adjusted for U.S. population growth. For a discussion of the larger debate, see http://pewresearch.org/pubs/532/questions-muslim-survey.

I don't understand how .6 percent in 2007 projects to .8 percent in 2009. But based on the actual Landscape Survey findings, Pew has now doubled its estimate of the proportion of Muslims in America. By way of comparison, the 54,000-respondent 2008 Trinity ARIS found the number to be .6 percent. That's good enough for me.

In his much awaited speech today, Obama said:

Much has been made of the fact that an African-American with the name Barack Hussein Obama could be elected President. But my personal story is not so unique. The dream of opportunity for all people has not come true for everyone in America, but its promise exists for all who come to our shores - that includes nearly seven million American Muslims in our country today who enjoy incomes and education that are higher than average.

Actually, it's between one and two million Muslims in America, in all but the most self-serving estimates by Muslim organizations. The Trinity American Religious Identification Survey--54,000 respondents surveyed in 2008--has Muslims at .6 percent of the adult population, equal to 1,349,000 souls.

There's plenty of commentary in the offing on Obama's interview with Al-Arabiya--here's Klein's early guide to it--but I want to call attention to just this exchange on President Bush's War on Terror.

Q President Bush framed the war on terror conceptually in a way that was very broad, "war on terror," and used sometimes certain terminology that the many people -- Islamic fascism. You've always framed it in a different way, specifically against one group called al Qaeda and their collaborators. And is this one way of --

THE PRESIDENT: I think that you're making a very important point. And that is that the language we use matters. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations -- whether Muslim or any other faith in the past -- that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name.

And so you will I think see our administration be very clear in distinguishing between organizations like al Qaeda -- that espouse violence, espouse terror and act on it -- and people who may disagree with my administration and certain actions, or may have a particular viewpoint in terms of how their countries should develop. We can have legitimate disagreements but still be respectful. I cannot respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians and we will hunt them down.

But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship.

I've generally thought the Bush administration deserves credit for not turning its response to 9/11 into a Holy War against Muslims, and thus that the expression "war on terror"--meaningless as it strictly speaking is--was essential to that effort. Occasionally, someone in the administration would use a term like Islamic fascism or militant Islam, but for the most part any reference to the religion was avoided.

A close reading of this exchange shows Obama taking the Bush line. What the questioner is angling for is an answer that differentiates Al Qaeda and those who collaborate with it from militant Muslim organizations with other agendas, such as Lashkar-e Tayyiba, the Kashmir-liberationist group believed responsible for last year's attacks in Mumbai, whose top leaders have been designated as terrorists by the U.N. Obama won't go there. Even as he emphasizes extending the hand of friendship to the Muslim world, he promises to "hunt down" organizations "like al Qaeda -- that espouse violence, espouse terror and act on it." Where this leaves Hamas and Hezbollah remains to be seen.

Obama told Time's Joe Klein of that he is in favor of negotiating with the Taliban. General Petraeus agrees. This statement has prompted an elated response from blogger Mujahideen Ryder:"This is extremely good news, and makes me want to shout at all the Muslims in Texas, Virginia, Ohio, Florida and any other strong Republican states to get out there and vote for Barack Obama!"

However, scroll down and look at some of the comments and you can see this type of response is not unanimous. Some seem skeptical that Obama has their interests at heart. As in: "Obama is a Politician. At the end of the day he going to fold to the people who keep him in power."

Andre Carson has assumed his seat in the House of Representatives representing Indiana's seventh district as the second Muslim elected to Congress. My information is that, at least on the Democratic side, there was a decision to let him assume the seat as a courtesy to his late grandmother Rep. Julia Carson, who died last year. But he's got opposition in the primary contest in May, and there will be a vigorous general election fight as well. All of which could make Andre Carson the first sitting Muslim member of Congress to be defeated for reelection.

Turning away from the presidential race for a moment, there was a significant event in Indiana yesterday. The late Congresswoman Julian Carson's grandson, Andre Carson, won a special election 54-43% to serve in Indiana's 7th congressional district. What makes this story more interesting is that Carson will be the second Muslim elected to Congress. Joining the ranks of Keith Ellison (DFL-MN), Carson said "I'm a proud Hoosier. I'm an Indy 500 Hoosier, I'm a Covered Bridge Festival Hoosier, I'm a Black Expo Hoosier, I'm a state fair Hoosier. I just happen to be a Hoosier of the Muslim faith". Carson will finish out the ten months in this session before having to run again in November.

Juan Cole has a critique in Salon of the anti-Islamic rhetoric of the GOP candidates. As he notes, President Bush effectively turned American Muslims into Democrats. How much difference it will make beating up on "Islamofascism" and its cognates is not yet clear. But given that Americans remain honor-bound to respect Islam as a legitimate religion, there's a limit on how much of a rallying cry, a la anti-Communism, it can be--at least in my view.