@Foofie,
Quote:In my opinion, having seen local Muslim women with burkas, and head scarves, and other garments I cannot name, I do question whether Muslims in some locales will assimilate the same way that other ethnic groups have assimilated. And specifically, I am questionning whether some Muslims in the U.S. will want Sharia law, similar to some Muslims in England?
What do you really mean by "assimilate"? Remove all traces of their Islamic identity? Hang out in bars drinking? Eat Chinese food made with pork? Or that they shouldn't continue wearing traditional Muslim garb if they want to?
The more orthodox Muslims in the United States tend to live in somewhat self contained enclaves, just as the orthodox Jews do. And you can recognize many orthodox Jews, such as the Chassids, by their particular form of dress and hats, just as you can recognize orthodox Muslims by their attire. And both groups may send their children to private parochial schools, rather than public schools. They really aren't interested in assimilating into the larger society beyond a certain point, although they really aren't interfering with that larger society either. Both orthodox Muslims and Jews want to maintain certain religious traditions and practices and values, and they won't be able to do that if they assimilate beyond a certain point.
Those reform Jews who assimilated totally in the U.S. also began inter-marrying to such an extent that there are fewer and fewer Jews today, and the same would be true for the less observant Muslims, assimilation pulls them away from their faith and you wind up with fewer and fewer Muslims with subsequent generations. One reason they want to start building these large cultural center/mosques is to try to hold on to the younger generations of Muslims and keep them from drifting away from their faith.
But Foofie, you seem to be ignoring the fact that there are many, many, many Muslims already living in the U.S., and who were born in the U.S. They blend in just fine, in case that is what you are worried about. They look, act, and dress, exactly like everyone else. They obey the laws like everyone else. They are as patriotic and loyal to this country as everyone else. Their religion is just a part of their lives, as it is for most Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. in the U.S., and it is not necessarily the dominant factor in their lives. Most of the Muslims I've known identify with their ethnic background--Turkish, Egyptian, Iranian, etc.--just as other people consider themselves Irish or Italian or Puerto Rican--and they do not regard themselves as part of some amorphous Muslim group.
And, Foofie, it sounds like you are connecting the building of a handful of mosques in the U.S. with a tidal wave of Islamic immigrants suddenly storming our shores. The Muslims are already here, they've been here for a long time, and they are going about their business, relatively unnoticed, just like everyone else. Building a few mosques isn't going to change anything, or result in a great increase in the number of Muslims, any more than building a church results in an explosion in the number of Christians.
Muslims really aren't as foreign or as exotic as you think, Foofie. You really wouldn't recognize the average Muslim if he or she sat down next to you on the bus or worked in your office. And your attitude really surprises me because it's the sort of thing that people who have no daily contact with Jews say about Jews, thinking of all of them as some sort of foreign or strange element. That's not true of most Jews and it's not true of most Muslims in the U.S.
Reading this thread leaves me feeling very sorry for Muslim Americans. How awful it must be to have to live with the kind of suspiciousness and hostility that's been expressed here.
