Many of my friends do not want more Muslims in America (though they’ll never say this in polite company).
I point out to them the proud history of Islam but this is to no avail.
They ask me which majority Muslim countries I want America to become more like. Where has Islam increased in power and personal liberty simultaneously increased?
They point out the problems that Europe is having assimilating its Muslims.
I point out that American Muslims are far more assimilated into America than European Muslims are into Europe.
My friends don’t want to be blown up by Muslim terrorists. They don’t want authors like Salmon Rushdie threatened with death for writing against Islam. They don’t want restrictions on free speech in the name of protecting the feelings of minorities.
I recommend to them that they watch amusing comedies like American History X or East is East to see how we can all get along.
East is East: “In 1971 Salford fish-and-chip shop owner George Khan expects his family to follow his strict Pakistani Muslim ways. But his children, with an English mother and having been born and brought up in Britain, increasingly see themselves as British and start to reject their father’s rules on dress, food, religion, and living in general.”
American History X: “A former neo-nazi skinhead tries to prevent his younger brother from going down the same wrong path that he did.”
I didn’t march with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama to grow into my old age giving bigotry any kind of sanction.
