Book Review: AL' AMERICA: Islamicity

By: Paul M. Barrett

Peace Be Upon UsIslamic and Arabic traditions have long been part of American culture.
It was a rough election season for American Arabs and Muslims. The McCain-Palin ticket shamelessly amplified the Internet smear that Barak Obama is a crypto-Islamic fanatic who fraternizes with terrorists. Obama responded by insisting, persuasively, on his credentials as an observant Christian. But in the process, he did little to point out the inherent bigotry in the Republican strategy Colin Powell, during his televised endorsement of Obama, eloquently challenged the assumption that Arabs and Muslims deserve to be held at arm's length. But the former secretary of state couldn't single-handedly do much to change the perception of these groups as a political liability.

Jonathan Curiel intends his book Al' America as an antidote to the fear. Ignorance, unsurprisingly, lies at the heart of it. Start with basic demographics: Most Arab-Americans are Christian, not Muslim, and most American Muslims are not Arab. Private surveys show that the largest segment of the American Muslim population -- about one-third -- traces its roots to South Asia, primarily Pakistan and India. Arabs make up only about a quarter of the Muslims in this country; African Americans, mostly converts and their children, another fifth.

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