Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

2 8 8Islam i n World Cult u r e sfrustrated and even enraged by the country ’s seeming inability to bring homeits citizens. Walter Cronkite, who was known as the most trusted news anchorin the United States, would end the CBS Evening News each night by remindinghis audience of how many days the hostages had been held in captivity.Though the hostages were freed just as President Ronald Reagan was beinginaugurated in 1981, Americans would once again receive bad news from theMiddle East the next year. In 1982, President Reagan intervened in theLebanese civil war, sending U.S. naval ships and Marines to Beirut. When theMarines’ barracks were bombed, hundreds of U.S. soldiers died. For someAmericans, it brought back painful memories not only of the hostage crisis inIran but also of the U.S. loss in the Vietnam Wa r. This time, however, it was notSoutheast Asians but Middle Eastern Muslims who were seen as the enemy.Such feelings would only increase in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraqi presidentSaddam Hussein, a former U.S. ally who had invaded the kingdom of Kuwait.These less-than-peaceful and harmonious international relations helpedbreathe life into the old European Christian stereotype of Islam as violent andirrational. The conflicts also fueled the imaginations of some scholars, whofeared that the menace of communism, a failed political project by the 1990s,would be replaced by an “Islamic threat.” Famously, Samuel P. Huntingtonpredicted a “clash of civilizations” between the West and an alliance of Islamicand East Asian cultures. Others, like Steven Emerson, focused on the enemy athome, attempting to portray various U.S. Muslims as potential terrorists. Thistype of alarmism only increased after 9/11 and may have helped produce theenvironment in which retributive violence and hate crimes against Muslims occu r r e d .A History of U.S. Muslim DiversityAlthough negative images of Islam have had an impact on Muslims, they reflectlittle about the day-to-day realities of Muslim life either in the UnitedStates or abroad. Muslims in the United States are and always have been anincredibly diverse group. In a community of 2 million to 8 million U.S. Muslims—estimatesvary greatly—there is no one dominant organization, race orethnicity, or school of thought. While African Americans are often thought tomake up the largest ethnic-racial group of Muslims in the United States,those who trace their roots to South Asia (especially India and Pakistan) maybe just as numerous. Various studies estimate that 25–40 percent of all Muslimsin the United States are black Americans. South Asians may account forup to 30 percent. The third largest ethnic-racial group is probably ArabAmericans, those who trace their lineage to Arabic-speaking countries in theMiddle East and North Africa. They may represent another 25 percent of the