Islam is taking over in the US

[Belowjob2.0]

@Ramira

I must make the observation for these black american converts from prison that visit Africa that I have met, I do not find they are very strong or very interested in the religion. The majority I have met seem to have it more as an african identity movement and keep essentially the american christian ideas and practices. But this is only anecdote. I might have met the wrong ones.

No, I think those are the only ones.

They have to go to Africa to find out that they are Anglo-American, Protestant individualists.

[tomndebb]

@Stringbean

The only real concern, and it’s isolated to European nations, is the growing demand for acceptance of Sharia principles among the Muslim immigrant communities. It’s like saying “yes we’re living in your country but we want our own set of laws to abide by within our community.”

As noted by others, Muslims who immigrate to the United States are crossing an ocean, losing ties to the Old World, and are willing to assimilate to American legality and society.

There is, however, no “growing demand.” There is a rather small number of Muslims who have asked for recognition for Sharia-based tribunals to be employed for marital and neighbor disputes in the manner of Jewish Bet Din and Catholic Marriage tribunals. Such tribunals, even when given quasi-official recognition, are completely voluntary and have no standing to interfere in the actual administration of law. There is, separately, a very tiny number of people loudly seeking some sort of separate Sharia courts to be established, but they have received no recognition and have been condemned by other Muslim groups.

[Ramira]

@Stringbean

The only real concern, and it’s isolated to European nations, is the growing demand for acceptance of Sharia principles among the Muslim immigrant communities.

Yes many european racists and bigots make this argument as a fiction to justify their racism.

however it is a fiction that is based on gross exagerations and the religious bigotry of double standards. Aside from a marginal group of the salafistes, the only larger demandes that occur are for the Muslim equivalents of the same religious arbitration (that is the private arbitrations that can always be overriden by the secular law) privileges on the personal law issues that have been given without scandal or question to the Jews and the even Christians in some circumstances where some people wish canonal laws.

but the religious bigots, they cry scandale and pretend it is the imposition of religious law (which they put in the terms of the Sharia law to make it sound more foreign and more scary).

Although I am secular and have no desire for such things, I am offended by the religious bigotry and the lies and double standards in these claims.

[RickJay]

The number of Americans who believe Islam is taking over America probably exceeds the number of Americans who are actually Islamic.

[nani]

I can only imagine how appeals for bilingual education and having to “Press 1 for English” and the immigration debate would go over in the US if Latinos were Muslims. Being mostly Catholic has caused us enough difficulties over the years.

@Ramira

Yes and those states have been overwhelmingly secular governments that are much more likely to have been oppressing the more conservative religious people - not for any real religious reason but for the perceived threat to the power structure.

this complete misunderstanding of the history of the arab region and most of the islamic world leads to deep misunderstanding of what the word and the experience of the "secular" government has meant in these regions. It has meant dictatorship and oppression, it has not meant any liberty or any freedom of expression - except for the Potemkin village façade of women’s rights that many secular dictators promoted to the adoring reaction of the west, which did not recognize this promotion was a façade and really only concerned the elite wives of the male ruling class.

It was this kind of experience that generated the Iranian revolution and it remains a minority experience to have an Iranian type government.

I am for the liberal secular government and you find it develops fine in the Senegal, and even in the Mali, where no foreign power has had great interest to intervene.

but please let us stop the constant commentary that mistakes the Saudia Arabia, the Gulf and the Iran for the entire Islamic world. It leads to the false conclusions.

This times 1000.

[Little_Nemo]

@Ramira

Yes many european racists and bigots make this argument as a fiction to justify their racism.

however it is a fiction that is based on gross exagerations and the religious bigotry of double standards. Aside from a marginal group of the salafistes, the only larger demandes that occur are for the Muslim equivalents of the same religious arbitration (that is the private arbitrations that can always be overriden by the secular law) privileges on the personal law issues that have been given without scandal or question to the Jews and the even Christians in some circumstances where some people wish canonal laws.

but the religious bigots, they cry scandale and pretend it is the imposition of religious law (which they put in the terms of the Sharia law to make it sound more foreign and more scary).

Although I am secular and have no desire for such things, I am offended by the religious bigotry and the lies and double standards in these claims.

It’s similar to the school issue. There are already numerous religious schools around and nobody raises an objection to a Catholic school, a Quaker school, or a Jewish school. But when a Muslim community wants to set up a Muslim school, people act like it’s a terrorist training camp.

[EdwinAmi]

How is it not self evident that by and large most immigrating Muslims are, in part, doing so to escape from the oppressive fundamentalism that has hijacked their religion in their homeland?

That they don’t want ‘that’ for their sons and daughters, seems to indicated they won’t be supporting such movements toward ‘that’, in their new homes.

As the child of immigrants I can tell you they never make these connections, and never really get off the boat.
An immigrant is just as likely as ever to hold onto the ideals that oppressed him in his home country as after he’s immigrated.

[Saintly_Loser]

@tomndebb

There is, however, no “growing demand.” There is a rather small number of Muslims who have asked for recognition for Sharia-based tribunals to be employed for marital and neighbor disputes in the manner of Jewish Bet Din and Catholic Marriage tribunals. Such tribunals, even when given quasi-official recognition, are completely voluntary and have no standing to interfere in the actual administration of law. There is, separately, a very tiny number of people loudly seeking some sort of separate Sharia courts to be established, but they have received no recognition and have been condemned by other Muslim groups.

This.

Also, when I hear some of my acquaintances (and relatives, sadly) rant and rave about creeping Shariah law in the US, the examples they give are usually very ordinary, routine business cases where there is a contract with standard choice of law provisions, and that choice is, say, Saudi law, which incorporates Islamic financial principles. A US judge will apply Shariah law in those circumstances. That judge is not ruling that it’s OK to have six wives, or murder your daughter if she’s raped, he’s saying that a contract is a contract, and people who do business in and with Islamic countries may have their agreements (voluntarily) governed by Shariah financial principles.

That’s all. No creeping Shariah here.

[slash2k]

@Ramira

I must make the observation for these black american converts from prison that visit Africa that I have met, I do not find they are very strong or very interested in the religion. The majority I have met seem to have it more as an african identity movement and keep essentially the american christian ideas and practices. But this is only anecdote. I might have met the wrong ones.

My (extremely limited and anecdotal) experience is even more prosaic. The company that contracts the food service operations at many American jails/prisons uses different and often higher-quality food for “religious diets” (I dunno why–maybe it’s harder to find cheap kosher/halal foodstuffs). Converting gives an inmate access to better food, and it’s easier to convert to Islam than Judaism. The inmate must learn at least something about the faith, but the primary reasons for conversion are more material and social rather than spiritual.

Religion in American prisons is an odd affair, with different institutions having environments conducive towards encouraging different faiths (cf. the Brothers in Blue program in Kansas, which is explicitly evangelical Christian, or the links between Asatru and white supremacist gangs).

[robert_columbia]

@tomndebb

There is, however, no “growing demand.” There is a rather small number of Muslims who have asked for recognition for Sharia-based tribunals to be employed for marital and neighbor disputes in the manner of Jewish Bet Din and Catholic Marriage tribunals. Such tribunals, even when given quasi-official recognition, are completely voluntary and have no standing to interfere in the actual administration of law. There is, separately, a very tiny number of people loudly seeking some sort of separate Sharia courts to be established, but they have received no recognition and have been condemned by other Muslim groups.

And that is a good point. There’s two sides of the “We want Shariah courts!” thing. One involves allowing consenting adults with a legal dispute to voluntarily submit to binding arbitration from a private Shariah-following private arbitration organization and then have the judgment of that “court” acknowledged in secular courts via existing legal principles of binding arbitration and/or contract law. The other is forcefully imposing Shariah (or someone’s interpretation thereof) on the community at large, with “religious police” knocking down doors, issuing arrest warrants, and overall making life a living hell for people who don’t agree with them.

The “Shariah” that people are asking for in the US is overwhelmingly of the first type. If you don’t want to be subject to Shariah, don’t agree to an arbitration. Go to your local public, secular court and sue there under regular law.

[Revtim]

Is there any significant difference between the “creeping Islam/sharia” scare mongering of today and the “creeping communism” scare mongering of the 1950s? More racist maybe?

[Trinopus]

There really was a communist bloc that was acting aggressively to acquire more territory.

But…yeah, the threat was pretty badly overestimated. McCarthyism took a legitimate dislike for communism and ramped it up into a major conspiracy fantasy.