Muslim Immigrants in the United States

PANEL:

• Mark Krikorian, Center for Immigration Studies;
• Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum;
• Peter Skerry, Claremont Mckenna College;
• Steven Camarota, Center for Immigration Studies

National Press Club, Washington, DC
Federal News Service

MARK KRIKORIAN: Hello and welcome. My name is Mark Krikorian. I'm executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. We're a think tank here in town that examines and critiques the impact of immigration on the United States. Everything - all of our work is on our website, www.cis.org, including the publications that we're releasing today. And just to get a commercial in at the beginning, we're doing another panel next week on the threat that Canada's asylum system poses to American security, and that will be here in the Press Club as well on Thursday.

Today we're releasing two papers. One is an essay entitled, "Muslim Immigrants in the United States," coauthored by Daniel Pipes and Khalid Duran - that's on the left side of the folders that you have-and Dr. Pipes will be discussing the paper and related issues. The other paper we're releasing is a fresh look at the numbers of immigrants from the Middle East by the Center's own Steven Camarota, our research director. And the press release and the study - the draft study for that are on the right side of the folder. The final version is still at the printer. Any one who has to deal with printers knows how that goes. The initial reason to publish this research and to have this panel is self-evident. In the aftermath of 9/11 there's been heightened interest in the Middle Eastern immigrant population living in the United States and its successful integration into American society is increasingly seen as important to our country's future. This has also been a matter of great personal interest to me being the grandson of immigrants from the Middle East and someone who's traveled extensively in the region.

Unfortunately, much of the analysis of this issue has been based on anecdote and conjecture and advocacy groups' special pleading rather than on hard fact. Valuable as they might be under certain circumstances, the impressions drawn from conversations with Egyptian cabbies or clerks at 7-11s are not the sound basis for policy making and we are endeavoring to try to fill that vacuum. And as a practical matter, this new interest in Middle Eastern immigrants has meant that the Center, as one of the main sources of information on immigration for the media, has been deluged with requests for up-to-date information on this population. And, in a happy coincidence, the detailed information or the detailed data source that Steve's report is based on was recently released by the Census Bureau.

The panel we have to discuss this issue is illustrious indeed. We'll begin with Steven Camarota, the director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies. And, if I do say so for myself, one of the nation's foremost experts on immigration policies' impacts on the United States. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and has written on the influence of immigration on the economy, on government services, on health insurance, on entrepreneurship and on other matters.

Our second speaker is Daniel Pipes. He is director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia and is the nation's foremost analyst of the threat posed by radical Islam, both to the West and to the Islamic world itself. He's also a columnist for the Jerusalem Post and the New York Post, received his Ph.D. from Harvard and is author of 11 books, most recently his new book, "Militant Islam Reaches America," published by W.W. Norton.

And our third speaker is Peter Skerry, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California and a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. His most recent book was "Counting on the Census?: Race, Group Identity, and the Evasion of Politics," published by the Brookings Institution Press. His Ph.D. is also from Harvard, and his earlier book, "Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority" won the Los Angeles Times book prize in 1993. He is conducting research on the political and cultural assimilation of Muslim and Arab immigrants in the United States.

After the three speakers offer their comments we'll then take Q & A from the audience.

Steve.

STEVE CAMAROTA: …

MR. KRIKORIAN: Thanks, Steve. Now Daniel.

DANIEL PIPES: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to thank the Center for Immigration Studies for this panel, which I think is timely and very useful. I'm very impressed by the study that Steve Camarota did. It's a very important one and I urge you to read it closely. The study that you have from Khalid Duran and myself is a section of a rather slow-moving book that one day we hope will see the light of day. It seemed useful to get out this sliver of it at this time, and we thank the Center for Immigration Studies for making it possible. Dr. Duran is not well and therefore cannot be here.

I'm afraid our study is one of those anecdotal studies that Dr. Camarota was referring too. We are grateful that - in fact, I think our conclusions jive with his even though ours tended to be more anecdotal and impressionistic than his. We attempted to look at the phenomenon of Muslim immigration as a whole, and we started by noting that there has been historically a dichotomy between Islam and the West, a dichotomy that is no longer valid because Islam is in the West, not just the United States but certainly Canada, Western Europe and even significantly in Latin American, Australia and so forth. Our study looks at one aspect of this, the immigrants to the West. That is not to say that converts are not also an important study, especially in this country and especially among African Americans.

The problem of counting the number of Muslims in the United States is the first challenge to a discussion of the subject. Some of the boosterish numbers that one can hear, five million, six, seven, some point even 12, I think can be safely discounted. The studies that have been made-made of course without the help of the U.S. Census, which does not ask this question-but studies which have been premised on serious scientific grounds show somewhere on the order of three million Muslims in all in this country. If one takes out the converts and their progeny then the number of immigrants and their progeny is somewhere above two million, I would think.

This is an extremely varied group ethnically. There are Muslims from over 100 countries represented in the United States, and there are some exotic examples of this; a favorite of ours is the Thai- Islamic restaurant in Los Angeles. This population is, like all or nearly all immigrant groups, younger than the national average. Immigrants tend to come young and it tends to be predominantly male. In fact, Islam is the most male religion in the United States. This has a variety of causes but, again, fits a general immigrant pattern.

Muslims tend to settle in large metropolitan areas and in particular in four broad areas: from New York to Washington, in California, especially the Los Angeles and San Francisco regions, in Texas, and in the Midwest in an area from Chicago to Cleveland to Detroit. Each of these areas has a fairly distinct ethnic quality. For example, Detroit has historically had an overwhelmingly Arab population. Iranians tend to predominate in Los Angeles. The striking thing about this geographic dispersion is that there are no ghettos, and if you have any knowledge of Islam in Europe you will understand why this is striking. In Europe, there are - for example in France there are the so-called suburbs, le banlieue de l'Islam. Here there is nothing like that. The only sizable town with a significant Muslim population, something in the order of 30 percent, is Dearborn, Michigan, and it is not a ghetto.

The history of immigration by Muslims to the United States is a long and colorful one. It goes back 500 years. The very first Muslim appears to have come in 1501. The significant influx of Muslims to this country was in the form of slavery. There are disputes on the number of Muslims but the fact of it is certainly clear. At the same time, the slave owners were very, very antagonistic - hostile to Islam and made it very difficult to pass on the religion from one generation to the next. There are some interesting anecdotes on how there were customs, somewhat Islamic in form, that got passed on. But it's safe to say that by two generations after the closure of the slave trade, Islam among slaves had died out. That would be in about 1860.

Not long after, a decade or two later, began the significant influx of Muslims, primarily from the Levant but also from other parts of the world. This influx continued fairly steadily until 1924 with the closure of immigration from outside of Europe, except for token amounts.

The third great wave of immigration began with a landmark 1965 immigration law that put a premium on family reunification and skills, and that is the reigning law still today. There has been, as we just saw, a vast increase in the number of Muslim immigrants in the United States.

The reasons for immigrating to the United States are manifold. I'll point out three purposes in particular. The first and most important is refuge. There are many troubles in the Muslim world. There are various forms of ethnic and religious persecution. There is militant Islam. There are those who are fleeing militant Islam. There are those supporters of militant Islam who are fleeing because they feel persecuted in the Muslim world. There are civil wars; there are international wars. There are many problems. There's tyranny. There are lots of reasons to leave the Muslim world and come to the United States.

Secondly, there's education and, more broadly, the economic opportunity. And thirdly, there's what I would call Islamist ambition - militant Islamic ambition. Islamism and militant Islam are the same. That is to say the purpose of coming to the United States is to change the United States. I'll get back to this later, but this is quite distinct from the purpose of refuge. It is often the case that what begins as a temporary sojourn for education refuge or economic reasons turns into a long-term residence - into permanent residence: children, burial and so forth.

Religious practice in the United States is a complex subject. It is clear that some Muslims come to the United States and become more religious. Others become less. The numbers that one can attach this, the numbers that stay the same roughly, are very soft, but it is clear that while some immigrants - Muslim immigrants to the United States respond to the secular order here by turning toward their religion, others find it freeing that here they can enjoy the secular life they could not have back in the home country.

As Dr. Camarota pointed out, the educational and economic levels of Muslim immigrants tend to be quite high, higher than the national average, though, as he points out, there are significant exceptions.

Some of the noteworthy accomplished individuals would include the recent Nobel prize winner in chemistry, an Egyptian immigrant by the name of Ahmed Zewail; the movie actor, Omar Shariff, who actually was born a Christian but converted to Islam; the basketball player, Hakim Olajuwon; and the model, Iman.

There are tensions between the many Muslim groups in this country, not surprisingly as peoples who have never been together or have a history of dispute together are thrust into one community. Iranians and Iraqis or Iraqis and Kuwaitis have tensions between them. There are ethnic prejudices, there are political differences, there are religious differences, but in all I think it's safe to say that there is an American-Muslim community that is in formation. However different the people who arrive may be, their children and grandchildren appear to taking on the identity of an ethnic Muslim- American as opposed to a Pakistan or Iranian or Egyptian American.

The children of the immigrants are a subject of great concern to the immigrants. The way of raising children in this country differs substantially from what one finds in the home countries. We have, to put it simply, a much more indulgent approach towards our children. This leads to many tensions between parents and children. Children want to be Americans. Parents want them to be as they were when they grew up. The particular problem arises with teenage girls who, just at the point in the home country they would have been veiled and segregated, in the United States they're out and loose. This has lead to many, many problems including the murder of a number of young Muslim women.

It is also a problem for the Muslim community that because the females are segregated, the males tend to go out and date non-Muslim women. One thing leads to another and you find that not an insignificant number marry non-Muslims. It is permissible, by the way, for Muslim men to marry non-Muslim women; it is not permissible for Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men. This means that the Muslim women are left high and dry. They have no Muslim marriage partners. This is a source of many, many discussion in the Muslim community.

Institutions were slow in developing among Muslim Americans. The first of them dated back to the 1950s, but the truly significant ones date only some 10-15 years ago. The striking fact is - I'm sorry, I'm saying national institutions as opposed to local institutions. The striking fact is that if one looks at the Muslim institutions as a whole-mosques, Islamic community centers, weekly newspapers, websites, national institutions, publishing houses, commercial ventures-the great majority of them, one Muslim leader has estimated 80 percent of them, are in the hands of militant Islamic elements. This gives the cast of official American Islam a radical flavor, which I don't think reflects the population as a whole but does very much affect the way in which the organized Muslim community interacts with the society and the government.

These organizations-and I would note three of them in particular, two Washington-based and one in Los Angeles. The two Washington-based are the American Muslim Council and the Council on American Islamic Relations; the L.A. based is the Muslim Public Affairs Committee. These three plus the many, many others tend to have an agenda that has four goals: to win special privilege for Islam, to intimidate and silence those who are opponents of militant Islam, to raise funds for, apologize, and otherwise forward the cause of militant Islamic groups abroad, and to sanitize militant Islam so it doesn't scare or offend anyone.

There is of course a history of terrorism among American Muslims, going as far back to 1980 when American converts to Islam murdered an Iranian dissident in the suburbs of this city, Washington, and reaching as recently as a month ago when an Egyptian limousine driver went to the Los Angeles international airport and murdered two people there. This is a distinct characteristic of the Muslim-American community that makes it different from any other immigrant community.

Looking at this question as a whole, it is a - we are in the process of watching a community develop its characteristics. Many things are still unclear about the future, but a few things are clear. One is that the Muslim immigrants, as opposed to the converts and their progeny, are likely to set the tone of this community and its goals, its achievements, its problems. Fashioning a distinct American Islamic identity is a challenge and also a great achievement. It is something that has particularly important implications for the Muslim world. I think there's a possibility that Muslim Americans will develop a synthesis, will modernize the religion in a way that has escaped Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan and elsewhere. It is a very, very significant relationship for both parties, the Muslim and the American.

Looking finally at policy implications, Dr. Camarota mentioned foreign policy. I would suggest that there are far deeper implications for the United States as well domestically. Militant Islam is a threat, is a challenge to the United States. Its ambitions are very great. They're not limited to foreign policy but seek also to change the very nature of the United States. To put it simply, where there are differences between Islam and American ways, the militants want to change America and make it Islamic. This is going to be, I believe, a significant issue in the years ahead.

Finally, let me conclude by bringing this to the topic of immigration policy. I think the prevention of militant Islam - preventing militant Islam from reaching the United States is a very great priority in immigration policy. This is our enemy. We must not let it into our house. This matter requires close scrutiny, and I think what it means, in particular, is that in addition to the standard and historic filters for possible visitors' or immigrants' health, wealth and criminal record-we should also be looking very closely at a person's politics and ideology. It is imperative that we not let in people who hate this country and who would do it harm. This requires close scrutiny background checks and the like. I'm not in the position to tell you exactly how this can be done at this time but I think the principle must be established that those who in any sense ascribed to militant Islam are not welcome here.

Thank you.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Thank you, Daniel.

…

Before we go to questions, Steve had one point he wanted to bring up to clarify something - .

MR. CAMAROTA: Yeah, let me just run through some numbers real quick. Now, my study focuses on Middle Eastern immigrants, and, as I point out, it's not all Muslim. I estimate that there are 1.1 million immigrants who are Muslim from the Middle East-that is, foreign- born Muslims from that region. There are probably another 100,000 to 200,000 immigrants who are Muslim from outside that region, from Sub- Saharan African, from India, small numbers from China and the former Soviet Union and so forth. In addition to that, my numbers do not include the children or grandchildren of Muslim immigrants. And I would agree with what Daniel said. The number of people in the United States who are of immigrant ancestry rather than converts who are Muslim is probably 1.3 million immigrants and maybe 500,000 -- 600,000 of their progeny, putting that number at somewhere around 1.8 (million), 1.9 million. And then of course there are the converts, maybe a million more, putting that number total at about 3 million.

But I just wanted to make that clear because I thought that perhaps some of the things he said would seem to be in conflict with some of the numbers I gave, but actually they line up very well because, remember, I'm only focusing here on immigrants from the Middle East, the percentage that is Muslim and non-Muslim.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Okay, well, I'll take the prerogative of the chair and ask the first question, which would be directed, I guess, to Peter and maybe to Daniel, but whoever wants to take it is fine.

The question of how Muslims and their children are going to assimilate, whether there's going to be a pan-Muslim identity or whether national origin groups will assimilate, that's an interesting question, but my question is, however that happens, does the central role of support for Israel in our foreign policy influence or color the assimilation of Muslim immigrants and their children? In the past as-Peter, you referred to the assimilation of previous ethnic groups-in the past assimilation was often facilitated by the overlap in the foreign policy preferences of immigrant groups and the federal government.

For instance, in the 19th century - through much of the 19th century, the hostility towards Britain that the Irish felt was actually shared by national policy. We think of our policy toward Britain differently, but in the 19th century it wasn't like that. Likewise, the foreign policy preferences of Eastern Europeans and Cubans and Southeast Asian immigrants dovetailed with U.S. policy during the Cold War. The big exception, obviously, is Germans during World War I, but even there immigration was stopped so that there was no prospect of ongoing mass immigration from Germany combined with a kind of tension or hostility or challenge with Germany.

So my question is, with high levels of immigration from the Islamic world combined with ongoing support for Israel, does that mean that the assimilation of Muslims and their children has the possibility of being colored in an anti-American fashion, an oppositional kind of fashion, and marked by ambivalence about America, even as those people become American in speech and occupation and residence and other ways? Do you see what I mean?

…

MR. PIPES: Two points. First, if we look at Table 1 in Steve's study, the largest immigrant populations come from Iran, Pakistan, Israel, Iraq, Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt and Lebanon. Clearly, most of the Muslim immigrants are non-Arab. For example, the Pakistani immigrants have a higher priority for the Kashmir issue than for the Arab-Israeli issue, so I think one has to keep it in context of the population that's here.

Secondly, yes, the Arab-Israeli conflict is an irritant. It does create a division between the general Muslim outlook and the general American outlook, and as such is a problem. But let's for a moment imagine that the United States had a rapid and complete change in policy and adopted one that was along the lines of what most Muslims in this country would like. I then ask, would this make a fundamental change in the sort of tensions and issues and challenges that exist, and the answer would be very clearly, no. The Arab- Israeli conflict is an irritant, it's not a cause-it is not the dominant factor. There are significant - I'm certainly less sanguine than Peter is about the future prospects. I think there are some significant confrontations that loom ahead, and in those confrontations the Arab-Israeli conflict is an irritant but not a cause.

…

Q Tom Sanderson from CSIS. This is for any of the panelists. Recognizing the positive presence of moderate Islam in U.S. presence, what is your reaction to recent reports of militant and extremist Islam being - or recruitment in U.S. prisons and mosques, especially in light of the recent arrest of Jose Padilla?

MR. SKERRY: My response to the question is that it's a great question, but we don't know what the facts are. I've been looking into that very question, and, again, there's some troubling indications of - and certainly troubling charges that have been made, but it's very hard to know what's going on. Our prisons are extremely decentralized. It's hard to get into them, never mind knowing what's going on in such a dispersed system. But there's an enormous vacuum of information here, and great temptations to make sweeping broad charges, such as Charles Colson made in the New York Times a month, six weeks ago. But when you call up and try to find out exactly what the evidence is that Charles Colson deduced, you find out that there's not much there. So I'm looking and I'll continue to look, but the answer is we don't know, I don't think.

MR. PIPES: The prisons were a prime recruiting ground for the Nation of Islam, starting in the very early days, the 1940s. Most notably, in 1949, Malcolm Little became Malcolm X in prison. The Nation of Islam saw the prison as prime recruiting ground for decades now. Subsequently, normative Islam - that's the non-Nation of Islam, the normal Islam, standard Islam - took a cue from this; or to put it differently, many of the members of the Nation of Islam went on to become normative Muslims, and they brought the same practice. So, there has always been, since the '40s, an emphasis on recruitment - on conversion in prisons, and there are some rather spectacular results. One study found that one-sixth of all prisoners in New York state jails are Muslim.

The second point would be that the 80 percent figure that I quoted before about Islamic institutions being militant Islamic probably roughly applies to the imams as well, the religious figures, and probably applies - I'm speculating here, but probably some order of magnitude applies to those imams who are going to the jails. Therefore, I think the number of militant Islamic missionaries to the jails is a very significant one, and a very problematic one.

Initially, the wardens didn't like Nation of Islam, didn't like having the presence of Islam, for obvious reasons, but eventually they became reconciled to it and rather encouraged it because it led to kind of a more organized and manageable prison population. So there have been no obstacles so far as I know of in the way of these radical imams going to the prisons and making converts.

…

MR. KRIKORIAN:?

Q I'm GeorgiAnne Geyer. I was surprised at the numbers of Muslim schools, and I was not aware that there were this many Islamic schools, and I'm still not aware of how they were certified. How did those schools start and what was the certification process?

MR. SKERRY: Well, I have been looking into that too, GeorgiAnne. I think the broadest answer, but germane to your question, is they started because we have a long tradition of pluralism in American education. We have the example of parochial schools. We have the example of private schools that are, to varying degrees, regulated. And I emphasize to varying degrees because in many parts of the United States, those private schools enjoy a tradition of not being very highly regulated.

If I may say so, your question sort of - I'm not sure whether you meant it or not, but sort of poses a kind of naivet? about that history. I mean, I would urge you the next time you meet somebody who supports vouchers to ask them how they view about Muslims participating in those programs.

We have a tradition of pluralism in America, and Muslims are part of that. Does that have costs and does that raise concerns? Yes, but let's not pretend that we don't have the history that we have. We do have a history of pluralism where we tend not to regulate very heavily private religious schools. And if we want to revisit that, fine, but let's not pretend it just happened today for Muslims.

MR. PIPES: As I mentioned earlier, this subject of children is a touchy one, and keeping children out of American public schools has, from the beginning, been a high priority among American Muslim immigrants. Providing an Islamic environment, one, for example in which girls could wear the hijab, the head covering, and not feel ill at ease, not feel teased about it; one in which the sexes are separated; one in which, say, sports gear is modest; one in which of course there is an Islamic component in the curriculum - all this was a high priority. It has not always been easy. It takes resources. Not until recently did, for example, the Saudis take interest in this.

There are, I think - I'm not quite sure of my figures, but I think there is something over a thousand Muslim schools in the country. The problem is that there was very little attention paid to them. And, again, quoting this 80 percent figure, the vast majority of these schools have a militant Islamic orientation. There have been some interesting studies-let me cite you two. In the National Post of Toronto there was a fascinating article on January 5th of this year about a school in the Toronto area that had essentially Pakistani madrasa curriculum. It only came to light because of an issue of sexual abuse. But the really interesting thing was the curriculum, that on the prairies of Canada essentially what you're getting is a replication of Pakistani agenda.

The Washington Post last October 16th, had a very interesting study of schools in this area, and the kind of attitudes of the principal and the teachers there. And just last Sunday, August 4th, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review had an extensive series of articles, some seven in all, about an extraordinary situation in which a school in the Pittsburgh area was very closely affiliated to the most radical - I mean, al Qaeda radical - and all of these things were essentially unmonitored. No one paid attention to them.

So, while I appreciate Peter's point that there is a long history of this, this isn't the same thing.

MR. SKERRY: Can I respond, please? I really must.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Really quickly.

MR. SKERRY: I appreciate Daniel's point, and I challenge him with enormous diffidence. Here's a gentleman who's spent his life and career understanding Islam in a profound way. But I have to say that the Washington Post didn't do a study of Muslim schools, it did an article on one school that is clearly funded by and set up by the Saudi embassy. There are hundreds of other Muslim schools in the United States that the Saudis have tried to support and - (inaudible) -- but I can tell you of lots of instances where those schools have either not taken advantage of the Saudi largesse or taken it and used it to their own purposes. But the fundamental reality is that we don't really know what's going on in these schools, and to cite one article in the Washington Post as a study I think is really misleading. We don't really know what's going on, and I would argue that the evidence suggests a different tendency.

…

Q My question is, is there anything positive that can be done by the American media to help Muslims get over this immigration problem in a way that helps the American society, the Muslim community and everybody?

MR. PIPES: Thank you. I think the most important thing that the government can do, the media can do, and other important institutions of American society, are to focus on the moderates and to promote moderation, to - for example, the media tends to focus on these three groups that I mentioned before. I don't think that's useful for anyone. There are alternative moderate groups, for example the Islamic Supreme Council of America, that should be the one quoted and gone to for response, but it tends not to be. So, in general, focus on the moderates, not on the radicals. Help the moderates.

Q We have an enemy who is camouflaging themselves in this rather large, what's called a benign community. They've blown up our buildings and used our own institutions against us. How do we find our enemy?

MR. CAMAROTA: Well, I would say that one area where I guess I disagree a little bit with Mr. Pipes is that - or at least one thing I would add - he said we need to be very careful about who we're letting into the country, but I would argue that the current numbers of people that we are allowing into the country makes that almost impossible. If we took in fewer people it would mean we could devote greater resources to investigating the background of each individual allowed in, and it would also mean fewer people to keep track of within the United States.

The State Department, which processes visas overseas, is completely overwhelmed, by their own admission, by the numbers. The INS has over a four million backlog of cases: adjustment to status and so forth. The system is overwhelmed by the numbers. In that environment we simply don't have the institutional capacity to do what Mr. Pipes wants, which is look into people's background, try to figure out what's going on. The only way I can see out of that is to bring those numbers down to something much more manageable.

MR. PIPES: We're not disagreeing. What I'm saying is the priority must be on this careful scrutiny. If that means that existing resources have to be reallocated and the numbers are smaller, so be it. I think the priority is not the absolute numbers that come in, the priority is on our security. So we're not in disagreement.

Q Daniel, you mentioned - you talked about there being - the violence from the Muslim community as being very different from coming from any other communities. Is that correct, that you said it was kind of a different in nature?

MR. PIPES: Roughly speaking, yes.

Q I was wondering - and any of you could perhaps speak to this - if there is any research on the violence of hate crimes?

MR. PIPES: Hate crimes vis-?-vis the Muslim-American community, there are two sets of statistics. And I can't give you exact numbers, but one are those that are compiled by the police and other law enforcement authorities on the one hand, and the second are those compiled by such institutions as the Council on American-Islamic Relations. They're very different. They show an order of magnitude difference. But even if one accepts the much higher levels of - no, there's no reason to accept it - the CAIR figures are essentially fraudulent. They're premised on all sorts of unreported incidences, incidents which are false. This is exactly the sort of media attention that I decried in my last answer. CAIR should be looked at as the Muslim equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan. Its figures should not be taken seriously.

If you take the law enforcement figures, you find that they're in fact very small. There were some incidents following 9-11, but in all I don't think you find a significant difference in violence towards Muslim-Americans as you might find towards Hindu-Americans or Jewish- Americans or others who are not Christian.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Thanks, Daniel. I would thank all of our panelists for participating. The papers that we've been discussing are on our website, www.cis.org.

Related Topics:  Immigration, Muslims in the United States receive the latest by email: subscribe to daniel pipes' free mailing list