Americans Mixed (Up) about Muslim Immigrants
07/21/2007
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According to a recent Newsweek poll, citizens are not exactly comfortable with Muslim immigrants in their midst, although it's clear that more education needs to happen, particularly to knock down the misguided belief that "Islam is a religion of peace." It's not. The Koran is full of stories about the battles of the Islamic conquest and admonitions to kill infidels.

Americans are largely accepting of their fellow citizens who are Muslims, but remain worried about radicals inside the United States, according to a new NEWSWEEK Poll—the first the magazine has conducted on attitudes toward Islamic Americans. Forty percent of those surveyed believe Muslims in the United States are as loyal to the U.S. as they are to Islam. (Thirty-two percent believe American Muslims are less loyal to the U.S.) But close to half (46 percent) of Americans say this country allows too many immigrants to come here from Muslim countries. [Poll: Americans and Islam Newsweek Online 7/20/07]

As I observed in Muslim Fifth Column Polled, Muslims residing in the United States are not loyal to this country at all: Only 28 percent consider themselves Americans first; 47 percent have their primary identity in being Muslim.

Keep in mind that Muslim immigration is increasing, despite the obvious danger of welcoming possible enemies.

For more about fascinating Muslim diversity, see Foreign Policy's list of the World's Stupidest Fatwas. There are only five — the writer can't have been trying very hard.

What about the fatwa against the Danish cartoons that caused the death of over 100? Perhaps such a relatively low body count doesn't rate attention.

Anyway, here's a fatwa against public health from Foreign Policy's list:

Polio vaccine

Who: Local mullahs in rural Pakistan

What: Pakistan's largest Islamist umbrella group, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), issued a fatwa in January 2007 endorsing the provincial government's efforts to immunize children from polio in the country's Northwest Frontier Province. But even though health workers carried copies of the ruling with them as they trudged across the province, The Guardian reported in February 2007 that the parents of some 24,000 children had refused to allow the workers to administer polio drops. It turns out that influential antistate clerics had been issuing their own fatwas denouncing the campaign as a Western plot to sterilize Muslims. Although Pakistan only saw 39 cases of polio last year and most children have now been immunized, a similar religiously motivated firestorm against polio drops in Nigeria in 2003 allowed the eradicable disease to spread to 12 new countries in just 18 months.

Thanks, Islam, for facilitating the spread of polio!

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