America Free but Immoral
Islam Will Replace Collapsing Amerikan Empire
Muslims: America free but immoral
By UWE SIEMON-NETTO, UPI religion correspondent
WASHINGTON, April 28 (UPI) -- There are seven million Muslims in the United
States, according to a new report published by the Council on
American-Islamic relations.
The report compiled by the Hartford Institute for Religious Research shows
that U.S. Muslims are theological conservatives with a mixed view of
American life.
On the positive side, 99 percent agree either "strongly" (82%) or "somewhat"
that "America is a technologically advanced society that we can learn from.
Moreover, 35 percent feel strongly that America is an example for freedom
and democracy, and 42 percent concur "somewhat" with this statement.
However, two thirds are either strongly (28%) or somewhat (39%) of the
opinion that America is an immoral, corrupt society. This view was most
forcefully expressed by African-American Muslims, who account for 30 percent
of the followers of Islam.
Of this group, 39 percent agreed "strongly" with the claim that "America" is
immoral. By contrast, only 23 percent of the southern Indian immigrants or
their descendants share this feeling as adamantly, according to the Hartford
report.
On the other hand, only 15 percent of the American Muslims agreed strongly
with the statement that American society was hostile to their faith. Another
42 percent, however, told researchers that this was "somewhat" true.
Compared with Europe, the Muslim population in America is still relatively
small. Germany whose population of 82 million is less than one third as
large as that of the U.S. has 3.2 million Muslim residents. France,
population 60 million, has four million Muslims, who are by now the
second-largest religious group in that country.
In the Netherlands, chiefly in Rotterdam, scores of churches have been
converted because their former Christian members had deserted them.
"In many European countries church attendance is so low that the day does
not seem far off when weekly worshipers of the Islamic faith will outnumber
regular churchgoers," IDEA, a Protestant wire-service, predicted years ago.
In the United States, 46 percent of Christians attend services at least once
a week, compared with one-tenth of church members in many Western European
countries. Nevertheless, it is still considerably less than the 76 percent
of Muslim men who go to mosque for Friday prayers in America.
Like Christians, American Muslims are by no means a homogenous group. There
are 40 different Islamic denominations of which the Islamic Society of North
America is the largest. Of the 1,209 U.S. mosques, 27 percent adhere to this
organization, the Hartford Study shows.
The average membership of an American mosque numbers 1,625. This is 25
percent more than in 1994 when the Hartford Institute conducted its last
survey of American mosques. This brings the number of U.S. Muslims
associated with a house of worship to two million, out of a total of seven
million.
Of those who participate in the life of an American Mosque, 75 percent are
male, 81 percent have a high school diploma and 48 percent a college degree.
Almost 30 percent of American Muslims are converts from other religions. In
Europe, by contrast, the number of conversions to Islam is insignificant,
according to a recent IDEA report.
Theologically, American mosques are very strict. When asked, "How important
are the following sources of authority in the worship and teachings of your
mosque," 95 percent of the respondents described the Koran as "absolutely
foundational," and 90 percent said the same about the Sunnah (teachings) Of
Mohammed.
Similarly, 96 percent reported that their mosques emphasized in their
teaching abstinence from alcohol and from sex outside marriage.
http://www.islamawareness.net/Fastest/immoral.html
