[Vision2020] American Muslims More Patriotic than Fundamentalist Christians?

[Nicholas Gier]

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http://www.salon.com/2011/11/29/are_evangelicals_a_national_security_threat/singleton
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Tuesday, Nov 29, 2011 6:50 PM UTC2011-11-29T18:50:00Zl, M j, Y g:i A T Are
evangelicals a national security threat?
A new poll suggests that American Christians (unlike Muslims) are likely to
put their faith before their country
By David Sirota

 (Credit: iStockphoto/sjlocke)
  If you have the stomach to listen to enough right-wing talk radio, or
troll enough right-wing websites, you inevitably come upon fear-mongering
about the Unassimilated Muslim. Essentially, this caricature suggests that
Muslims in America are more loyal to their religion than to the United
States, that such allegedly traitorous loyalties prove that Muslims refuse
to assimilate into our nation and that Muslims are therefore a national
security threat.
Earlier this year, a Gallup
poll<https://www.mail.uidaho.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://news.yahoo.com/muslims-most-loyal-american-religious-group-poll-says-002413175.html>illustrated
just how apocryphal this story really is. It found that Muslim
Americans are one of the most — if not the single most — loyal religious
group to the United States. Now, comes the flip side from the Pew Research
Center’s stunning
findings<https://www.mail.uidaho.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/11/17/the-american-western-european-values-gap/?src=prc-headline>about
other religious groups in America (emphasis mine):

American Christians are more likely than their Western European
counterparts to think of themselves first in terms of their religion rather
than their nationality; 46 percent of Christians in the U.S. see themselves
primarily as Christians and the same number consider themselves Americans
first. In contrast, majorities of Christians in France (90 percent),
Germany (70 percent), Britain (63 percent) and Spain (53 percent) identify
primarily with their nationality rather than their religion. Among
Christians in the U.S., white evangelicals are especially inclined to
identify first with their faith; 70 percent in this group see themselves
first as Christians rather than as Americans, while 22 percent say they are
primarily American.

If, as Islamophobes argue, refusing to assimilate is defined as expressing
loyalty to a religion before loyalty to country, then this data suggests it
is evangelical Christians who are very resistant to assimilation. And yet,
few would cite these findings to argue that Christians pose a serious
threat to America’s national security. Why the double standard?
Because Christianity is seen as the dominant culture in America — indeed,
Christianity and America are often portrayed as being nearly synonymous,
meaning expressing loyalty to the former is seen as the equivalent to
expressing loyalty to the latter. In this view, there is no such thing as
separation between the Christian church and the American state — and every
other culture and religion is expected to assimilate to Christianity. To do
otherwise is to be accused of waging a “War on Christmas” — or worse, to be
accused of being a disloyal to America and therefore a national security
threat.
Of course, a genuinely pluralistic America is one where — regardless of the
religion in question — we see no conflict between loyalties to a religion
and loyalties to country. In this ideal America, those who identify as
Muslims first are no more or less “un-American” than Christians who do the
same (personally, this is the way I see things).
But if our politics and culture are going to continue to make extrapolative
judgments about citizens’ patriotic loyalties based on their religious
affiliations, then such judgments should at least be universal — and not so
obviously selective or brazenly xenophobic.
 [image: David Sirota]
David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future:
How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show
on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds at davidsirota.com, follow him on
Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at
www.davidsirota.com<https://www.mail.uidaho.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.davidsirota.com>
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