The United States of Islam (3)

Muslims in America: Middle Class, Educated, Professional

Most Muslims in America are from the Middle East, right?

Actually, only about a fourth of the Muslims in the United States were born in Arab countries. The rest are a diverse mixture of converts and Muslims born here and in more than 75 other countries, according to a Pew Research Center study that interviewed more than 55,000 Muslims.

Indeed, almost as many Pakistani, Indian, and other South Asian Muslims live in the United States as there are Arab immigrants — 18 percent vs. 24 percent.

Also surging in numbers: European and African Muslims. They now make up about one-tenth of the U.S. Muslim population after the government resettled tens of thousands of Bosnians, Somalis, Sudanese, and other refugees from their war-torn countries since the 1990s.

At one point in the late 1990s, nearly half of all refugees who came to the United States were Muslims, according to the State Department.

Today, immigrants and refugees account for 65 percent of Muslims in America, the Pew study found. Only 35 percent were born in the United States — and two-thirds of those converted to Islam. Converts are increasing, and they include both blacks and whites, although blacks dominate the numbers.

Even though many Muslim Americans are new to the United States, the Pew report found that they are solidly middle class, with about 1 in 5 families earning more than $100,000 a year.

Unlike their British, French, and German Muslim counterparts, American Muslims earn basically the same as non-Muslims. British Muslims, for example, are 22 percent more likely to be poor, compared with non-Muslims, while only 2 percent in the United States fare so poorly. Many Muslims here tend to have college educations — they are professors, doctors, engineers, and computer techs —except for the Asian and African refugees who often learn to read and write for the first time once they get to the United States.

It's no surprise, then, that American Muslims tend to feel more assimilated than European Muslims.

Most American Muslims, for example, give high marks to the communities where they live.

The Pew report also found that Muslims in the United States are relatively young, with the ability to earn more money in the years ahead. Only 5 percent of Muslim Americans are 65 or older, while almost half are between the prime wage-earning years of 30 and 48. — D.G.W.


Shariah LAW: a question of Interpretation

Shariah is a legal and social code for Muslims to live by based on what is handed down in the Koran, in stories and teachings from the life of the Prophet Muhammad, and in rulings by Islamic thinkers over the centuries. Contrary to popular belief, it does not offer a fixed set of rules, and there are several differing interpretations. The use of Shariah in Islamic countries varies widely.

In Saudi Arabia, it has been used to justify death by stoning and even the intentional injury of a criminal through surgery.

But in Egypt, the largest Arab nation, Shariah law applies only in personal issues — such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and custody of children. Otherwise, the legal system is entirely secular, on the model of the French legal system.

Shariah categorizes its offenses by the types of punishments they engender:

* Offenses to which are affixed a specified punishment (hadd)
* Those for which the punishment is at the judge's discretion (ta'zir)
* Those offenses in which a form of retaliatory action or blood money
is inflicted against the perpetrator or his kinsmen by the victim's
kinsmen (jinayat)
* Offenses against the public policy of the state, involving administrative
penalties (siyasa)
* Offenses that are corrected by acts of personal penance (kaffara)


As originally published in Newsmax magazine.