Abstract

This paper discusses about the religion Islam and the democratic government in USA. Despite the prejudices and the wave of racism and xenophobia in the United States unleashed against Arabs and Muslims following the Sept. 11 attacks on Washington and New York, the Muslim is the fastest growing religion in this country has had in the years to become the second most number of practitioners, moving from that place to the Jews. 42% of American Muslims belong to the African American community, 24% comes from South Asia (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan), 12% comes from the Arabic (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia) and the rest are from Muslim countries in Southeast Asia, North Africa, Europe and Latin America. There are currently some 1,200 Muslim associations and institutions throughout the country, 1,250 mosques and Islamic centers, 100 Islamic schools during the day and over a thousand Sunday or weekend, 3,000 cultural centers, in addition to thirty newspapers and magazines, radio stations , etc. Most of these mosques, Islamic centers and associations are concentrated in the southern states, east and Midwest, and among them, in suburban or metropolitan areas of large cities. Various Islamic organizations such as the Council for American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Society of North America and the Islamic Circle of North America, produced a report last year in order to know the reality of the Muslim community in USA.

Islam in America

Islam and America

The history of Islam in America goes back some five hundred years. Muslims constitute the second largest religious group (after Christians) in the United States, and Islam is increasingly an important and recognized aspect of American culture.

The earliest Muslims in America were West African explorers of the Caribbean and Muslim guides for Spanish and Portuguese explorers in the fifteenth century. Large numbers of Muslims, many as Moriscos (Muslims with a public Christian identity), immigrated to the Americas in the sixteenth century after the expulsion of the Jews and Moors from Spain. It is estimated that some twenty percent of the African slaves brought to America from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century were Muslim. Little is known about these early Muslims, and little remains of their influence on later American religion and culture.

Most of the Muslims in the United States have come from a series of immigrations that began in the late nineteenth century. The earliest to arrive were largely unskilled peasants who found work as manual laborers, though some became small-business owners, and some became homesteaders in the Midwest. Following World War II, large numbers of Middle Eastern and Eastern European Muslims came to the United States, many fleeing political unrest in their countries of origin. These Palestinians, Egyptians, Iraqis, and Albanians were generally more highly skilled and better educated than previous immigrants. Since the 1960s, Muslims have come to the United States from South and Southeast Asia. To a greater degree than those of earlier waves, these later immigrants have tended to represent a more Western acculturated class seeking professional career advancement rather than political ...