Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11 Book

Homegrown, radicalized Islamists have set off bombs in Madrid and London; could it happen here? Given rising anxiety about the possible alienation of American Muslims, a readable book offering a responsible yet sympathetic profile of that community should be welcomed. Five years after 9/11, Geneive Abdo, who has reported skillfully on Islamism in Egypt and Iran, has produced just such a book.Her reporting shows that Muslim immigrants have much in common with Americans from other lands and cultures. Traditional Muslims arriving from the Middle East and South Asia fear that their children will succumb to the allure of big-city life and abandon the faith. Such newcomers are embracing the same strategies adopted by Jewish immigrants a century ago: setting up religious schools, charities and houses of worship that double as community centers. Yet Muslim settlement in America has had its own patterns, of which Abdo offers a brief but lucid history. The first to arrive were slaves from West Africa who were converted to Christianity. The subsequent "prairie" generation, which arrived in the mid-19th century, homesteaded in the Midwest but proved too isolated to flourish. A new wave of Muslim immigrants followed the liberalization of U.S. immigration laws in 1965 -- and set out not merely to survive but to thrive. Muslim Americans, Abdo writes, are now amply represented in white-collar professions and enjoy a median income slightly above that of the overall population.Read More