A significant number of contemporary Americans are frightened by Muslim immigration. They see these newcomers as culturally incompatible, dangerously intolerant and potentially larcenous. Moreover, they think they are flooding into this country in unacceptable numbers. What should we make of this? Let’s look at it historically.
In the 19th century many Americans were similarly concerned about Roman Catholics, mostly Irish, pouring into an essentially Protestant America. One major worry was that these immigrants were obedient to a foreign monarch, the Pope, who directed an authoritarian and anti-Protestant institution that Protestants found especially threatening. They asked how a people accustomed to tyranny and intolerance could ever learn to live in America? Wouldn’t these Catholics band together and become another America altogether?
Then there was the sheer numbers of Irish Catholics immigrants. At the dawn of the Civil War the Catholic presence in America already exceeded the total population of the U.S. just 70 years prior. And their number eventually swelled to five million. That was a lot of very culturally different people to absorb so quickly. But Irish Catholic immigrants quickly proved so capable of understanding and embracing democracy; and blending in to the fabric of the nation that a third generation Irish-American, John F. Kennedy, became the 35th President of the United States.
Unlike the 19th Century Irish immigrants, contemporary Muslim arrivals do not pledge allegiance to the equivalent of a Pope, nor even to a unified religion. There are even bloody disagreements among them about what it takes to be a Muslim.
On the other hand, the most fanatical among them, a minority to be sure, want to convert all of the United States to Islam. Some, if necessary, by the sword. They also want to institute their version of Sharia Law in place of our current law. That seems distinctive and dangerous.
Keep in mind that Muslim immigrants constitute only a tiny fraction of the 19th and early 20th Century flood of Roman Catholics. In fact, the entire Muslim population of the United States amounts to less than 1% of America’s total population. And less than 5% of all immigrants currently entering the U.S. are Muslims.
What about present-day Muslim immigrants? Will they, unlike the Irish Catholics, prove durably alien? Will they become a separate America? Then again, Muslim immigrants might prove to be solid American citizens, just like the Irish.
Let’s not forget, though, that a substantial number of Americans still regard the United States as Christian. And, for them, non-Christians are, ipso facto, un-American. A substantial number of them even claim that the United States was founded as a Christian nation even though some of America’s most influential founders like:Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Ethan Allen and Thomas Paine.) were less Christians than deists or rationalists. And they certainly thought it important for the United States NOT to have a state religion.
Recently some Somali-Americans defrauded Minnesota and the United States government out of multiplied billions of dollars. This massive fraud is causing some Americans to link criminality and lousy citizenship to Muslims collectively. That’s certainly untrue. But if people believe it to be true, it will be true in its consequences.
The Irish-American experience proves immigrant Muslims have no corner on immigrant criminality. Some immigrant Irish became gangsters of the first magnitude. Indeed the Irish Mob was one of the nation’s most notorious organized crime groups. Then later arriving Italian-Americans proved even more capable of organized criminality. So the Somali’s have no patent on that.
Of course a comparatively small number of Muslims have proven to be murderous terrorists. Those who crashed passenger planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon being the most prominent These perpetrators were foreign nationals. But in many American’s minds their terrorism is linked to all Muslims. That’s certainly not fair. But when a situation is defined as true, it is true in its consequences. And that means a sizable segment of Americans oppose Muslim immigration. (Including home grown converts.)
Looking back, though, many Americans once thought Irish-American Roman Catholic immigrants were a distinct threat. But that has faded away. Does that mean Muslims will also attain, even desire, the same degree of in
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