I give up. But I will say that it indicates a discouraging trend in public discourse. One should expect a writer that earns enough stature to have a column in a publication as widely distributed as the Jerusalem Post could find his way to at least a thesis statement, if not a reasonable conclusion of... something.

Simple, the guy's a bit nuts. Let's say he's right and there are fewer Muslim-Americans around than many claim.

David Harris is trying to argue that the number of Muslim-Americans had been inflated in order to give Muslim interest groups a greater say in American politics.

If that's true, inflating a number to 2% of the population seems a pretty lame way of gaming the system. 2% ain't much.

The reason Harris' piece is so unclear is that he doesn't want to come right out and say what his thesis is because his thesis is offensive. Here it is, though: "There aren't that many Muslims around so they shouldn't have much say in the legislative process and don't worry about hurting their feelings when you pass laws at the local, state or federal level."

That's what he's trying to say. He's afraid to say it because it's racist. He's also afraid to admit that if one half of his argument is true (that people have inflated the Muslim population numbers in order for political gain) then that the other half is true (He's interested in deflating them, also for political gain).

One other thing he doesn't realize (and again, I'm assuming his arguments are correct here): those inflated numbers that Harris complains about the media reporting do not always lead to positive press for Muslims. Some of those stories cravenly use the large numbers to suggest threats of homegrown terrorism and the like.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

The AJC used to be a liberal group. But once this guy took over it lurched to the right big time. He is the last of a bread, the old time holocaust obsessed Jewish professional who lives in America, goes to fancy schools, raises his kids all-American but yearns for 1938 when Hitler was out there and group identity was fostered by the German people like Harris sorely miss. He's a Brooks Brothers Ghetto Jew. All he lacks is a Yiddish accent to mask his Harvard roots.
Serious neurosis here.

Destor is of course right he is saying that according to the Pew Poll there are fewer Muslims that many assert. He is also saying that some people, like those at TPMCafe, have a vest interested in denying this. I have no idea whether Pew is correct but Harris' other point is virtually proven by every post here.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

So what if Harris is right.
If I were to publish a piece stating that the commonly accepted statistics on the African-American population are wrong. They are not 13% of the population but rather 10%. And I attacked the media for reporting 13 and not 10.
There would only be one reason for publishing this, as a means of teling politicians and policymakers that African-Americans are not as significant as they might think.
And I'd publish it in a white supremacy magazine.
The unspoken aspect of the Harris piece is RACISM, pure and simple.

In five lines you insert a lot of negative descriptions

(1) "Holocaust obsessed". I guess genocide and having much of your family (as in my case) wiped out is really nothing to get excited about.

(2) "The Right". Need I say more, an known satanic force.

(3) "Brooks Brothers". I guess it is a bad thing to wear nice clothes.

(4) "Ghetto Jew"....ugh, he really deep down is different than Madison1776, so he really has no place in Madison's America.

So Daniel Pipes is an "Islamophobe" because he writes things critical of Muslim extremists. Does that make you a "Judeophobe" since you are always making unproven claims that the Bible and Jewish history are forgeries and that Israel ("THE JEWISH STATE") is a despicable country?

M.J, it seems pretty clear to me that Harris is engaged in the politics of magnitude.  It's foolish - there's no real corelation between numbers and significance.  Of the billions of asteroids floating around out there in space, only one kilt the dinosaurs.

The same game is played with the numbers who show up for the demonstration.  The bad guys insist only 2,000 showed up.  The other bad guys insist that 20,000 showed up.  Numbers = significance.  So I think the question about Harris' motive would be why he feels it important to designify Muslims.  That leads to some pretty frightening (possible) answers.

BTW, the Ba'athists did not collect ethnic and religious data on Iraqis - so we don't really know how many Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomens etc. there are.   

Neoboho

My claims? LOL! Don't get all dramatic. You're confusing me with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which represents the 1.5 million Conservative Jews in the United States. Go argue with them. Frankly I wish more people would be willing to question their mythologies like this but FYI the "muslim extremist" would find this debunking of the story of Abraham & David etc. to be just as offensive as you do.

AS RABBIS FACE FACTS, BIBLE TALES ARE WILTING

By Michael Massing

New York Times, March 9, 2002

Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Moses. The entire Exodus story as recounted in the Bible probably never occurred. The same is true of the tumbling of the walls of Jericho. And David, far from being the fearless king who built Jerusalem into a mighty capital, was more likely a provincial leader whose
reputation was later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling nation.

Such startling propositions - the product of findings by archaeologists digging in Israel and its environs over the last 25
years - have gained wide acceptance among non- Orthodox rabbis. But there has been no attempt to disseminate these ideas or to discuss them with the laity - until now.

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which represents the 1.5 million Conservative Jews in the United States, has just issued a new Torah and commentary, the first for Conservatives in more than 60
years. Called "Etz Hayim" ("Tree of Life" in Hebrew), it offers an interpretation that incorporates the latest findings from
archaeology, philology, anthropology and the study of ancient cultures. To the editors who worked on the book, it represents one of the boldest efforts ever to introduce into the religious mainstream a
view of the Bible as a human rather than divine document.

I must say that the name Jerusalem Post makes me nauseous (while the two words in separations do not). The main reason is that a number of years ago there was a horrific attack by Chechen terrorists on a theater in Moscow and several hundred persons were killed. The editors of Jerusalem Post found it fitting to publish the article responding to that tragedy with the title

Israel is number one!

in which the author was exultant that Israel is so much better in the security measures than Russia, and anybody else for that matter. I mean, the bodies were still warm.

This piece is not as obnoxious, but characteristic of a certain frame of mind that oscillates between feelings of superiority and snide self-pitying "Washington Post overcounts Muslim, Titus leveled Jerusalem, nobody likes us". Khmelnytskiy and Haman can be added for a good measure.

Hell, even the Americans that vote, pay their taxes and sweat their life away in some mind numbing job don't even count, and they number in the hundreds of millions.

The only ones Congress pays attention to are the ones who show up with bags of cash to be used for "campaign expenses."

I was wondering a bit about methodology here. It would seem to me that newer immigrants (and I've read data elsewhere that suggest there are fairly large numbers of newer Muslim immigrants to this country) would probably be less inclined to answer such personal questions over the phone to a stranger, especially given the ugly attitudes displayed by some Americans to Muslims in general after 9/11.

The summary of the study's findings itself hints at this:

• A majority of Muslim Americans (53%) say it has become more difficult to be a Muslim in the U.S. since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Most also believe that the government "singles out" Muslims for increased surveillance and monitoring.

Given that so many American Muslims believe (and I think they're correct in this) that the government is "singling them out," it doesn't seem unreasonable to surmise that there might also be a significant proportion who were reluctant to answer any questions. This could quite easily lead to inaccuracies in the estimate of the population size. It is unclear whether the researchers even considered this, or attempted to control for it.

And do the new immigrants even have phones?

As I understand it, sampling about religious issues is notoriously frought with difficulties and errors in general. For instance, an annual Gallup poll around questions of religious affiliation (they didn't even ask about Islam!) shows the Jewish population of the U.S. as being 2% in 1995, rising to 3% in 1996, and then dropping back to 2% again in 1997. But the Jewish population of the U.S. didn't actually grow by 3 million (I'm using a rounded off figure here of 300 million to represent the total U.S. population) in 1996 and then shrink by the same number in 1997. These sorts of things are representative of unavoidable statistical sampling errors. When one is concerned about single percentage points, even a small error can make a big difference.

But at any rate, the results of the study overall provide mostly very good news, which one can glean just from the title: Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream. I guess that might disappoint those, both here at TPM Cafe, and in the wider world, who wish to present Muslims as the devil incarnate.

The reporting on the Pew study by the JPost seems more than just a bit questionable, since the author and the AJC obviously feel they have a dog in this race (about population figures).

Know your enemy well, for in the end that is who you become. ~~Old Chinese Proverb

very simple reason: the more difficult it is to immigrate, the more selected the immigrant population is.

I read about comparisons of the economic status between American Blacks and Carrabean Blacks, as performed in NYC and Toronto. Interestingly, they were going in the opposite direction.

I'm no expert. But this is what I do know.
In 2000, Muslims I know drank the Bush kool-aid and turned out to vote for him thinking that he would be more balanced in his Middle East policies -- most notably with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian issues.

By 2004, they had no such confidence in Bush.

So, yeah, I can see why some might wish to step in and declare their support unnecessary. "We don't need them anyway" kinda message.

I'm all for these neo-cons drinking more of their own kool-aid. They're fooling no one but themselves.

I'm going to go for deconstructing the URL of this article :(www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/jun/01/there_are_damn_few_arab_americans_in_this_country)

Does conflating Arabs with Muslims have anything to do with it?

Fine, Harris. Let's do the numbers. One of every two Jews is marrying out. Their kids won't be Jews. Your kind anyway.

Right now Jews are 2% of the population and 23% of the Senate.

Do you really want to play this game. Your kids are defecting in droves. Muslims aren't. What a dumbass column. Harris would have been a good Nazi.

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN STORM TROOPERS

A recent Pew poll indicated that a small number of American Muslims, a minority of only 8%, considered suicide bombing acceptable under certain circumstances. The vast majority, 78%, said suicide bombing against civilian targets was never acceptable. Most Christians, 65% of Protestants and 72% of Catholics, believe that torture is justifiable under certain circumstances. Nearly half of Americans, 46%, believe that it may be acceptable to deliberately target civilian populations in war time. An average of 75% of Muslims in Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia and Morocco believe that such attacks are never acceptable.

Will the good Christians, the peaceful ones, ever speak out against their co-religionists who carry bombs in their cars or drop them on civilians in Iraq?

Christians perpetrated the crusades, the inquisition, the slave trade and imperial adventures too numerous to mention. It may be comforting to pat ourselves on the back and consign those behaviors to past centuries. We are living in the 21st century after all. Who would use the name of the Christian God to justify mass killing? A majority of modern day American Christians, that's who.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=228&Itemid=36

Rosenberg's question was why Harris was so worried about the numbers of Muslims. That's different matter. The answer is that Harris and his ilk see themselves as engaged in an ethnic war against American Muslims.

Rosenberg said, "Even if his facts are accurate, what difference does it make?"

Isn't that the same thing as saying what difference does it make how many Muslims there are in the US?

Harris may be anti-Muslim, I don't know. The "sub-text" of his article may be anti-Muslim, though that wasn't obvious to me. But favoring an accurate tally of the number of Muslims in the US hardly qualifies one as an "ethnic warrior."

I've now read portions of the full report on the study (available at the link I posted upthread), not just the summary, and thought you might be interested to know that your concern about landlines vs wireless phone service was anticipated by the researchers. They attempted to control for the problem. Here's what they said:

The survey was conducted solely over landline telephones. There was no practical way in this study to reach individuals who only have cell phones, or have no telephone service - an estimated 13.5% of the general public. The 1.4 million projection assumes that the proportion of Muslims who are cell-only or have no phone service is no different from the population overall. However, as a younger, predominantly immigrant population with relatively low levels of home ownership - all factors associated with the use of cell phones rather than landlines - it is possible that the number of Muslim Americans is higher. (Full Report, pages 9 and 10)

Good catch, piotr. 

Know your enemy well, for in the end that is who you become. ~~Old Chinese Proverb

(1) What is the PEW poll, and how reliable is it?

(2) According to the statistics you bring, 22% of Muslims DO approve of suicide bombings against civilians. That is not a small number. How many Christians would approve of suicide bombings and how many suicide bombings have actually been carried out by Christians in recent years?

(3) How many Muslims feel that torture is acceptable under some circumstances? Is it less that the number you give for Christians? Which countries use torture routinely more frequently on political opponents, Christian Europe or the Muslim/Arab Middle East?

(4) Muslim imperialism and aggression conquered the Christian-controlled Holy Land in the 7th century, long before the Christians took it back in the Crusades. Muslims were running the slave trade in Africa long before the Europeans arrived in the 15th century. Muslim imperialism poured out of Arabia in the 7th and conducted a jihad that eventually reached from France through North Africa to southeast Asia.
What was the Muslim Ottoman Empire doing attacking Vienna in the heart of Europe in the 17th century? Wouldn't you call that agression and imperialism.
Looks like there is plenty of blame to go around in ALL directions.

"To say that it is hateful requires drawing on some larger knowledge base."

True enough. But isn't the author obliged to tell us the point of his essay? And if he doesn't isn't he putting his readers in the position of having to speculate?

Most people don't have the time or interest to do the necessary research. In the absence of such "larger knowledge" they are likely to make common sense, rule-of-thumb inferences such as the author's unstated goal is to diminish Muslim-American political clout. Then one tends to speculate why this might be so.

If the author forces his readers to fill in the gaps then any unjust conclusions are to a very large degree his own fault.

Good point re: North America.  As it turns out, there are an estimated 257K Muslims living in Mexico. The same source gives the Canadian figure as 600K.

Neoboho

This one really tickled my fancy. There were some real howlers:

AJC began approaching several mainstream media outlets to ask why they routinely cited numbers that appeared grossly exaggerated, often came from groups with dubious political agendas, and surely couldn’t withstand closer scrutiny.

Most answers fell into one of three categories: (i) lazy journalism...
That's certainly a credible claim on Harris' part...that a media outlet would admit that it's work was based on "lazy journalism."

In 2001, we went the next step, knowing full well that, as a Jewish organization and notwithstanding our longstanding reputation for solid research, we’d be potentially vulnerable to attack. But no other institution stepped forward, so we forged ahead.

This is the best the AJC "academic heavyweight" (more Harris self-puffery) could muster in counting U.S. Muslims is this:

After thoroughly studying all available data and the methodologies used, Dr. Smith

Harris conveniently neglects a major controversy among American Jewish demographers over the past few yrs. in pinpointing good numbers for the Amer. Jewish population. The commonly accepted number has been around 6 million. Then some demographers lowered the number to 5 million. People tore their hair out. Where did those 1 million Jews go?? The point is as other have pointed out here knowing the precise numbers of any given religious group is not an exact science by any means.

The JPost comments are also unintentionally hilarious in a dark sort of way:

demographics involving muslims is very inaccurate given their cultural trait to falsify answers to their advantage.

What % are Sunnite. What % are Shiites.

I admire the courage you have for spending time findind the truth.

over 95% of terrorist acts worldwide are carried out by so called muslims and most muslims are anti American and anti Israel why not? Oh but lets be politically correct and not "profile". HOGWASH

How do we even know that there are up to 1 billion Musilims worldwide? We don't know! It has always been a tactic of Islamists to exaggerate their numbers for political gain, and the left (helped by their Media pawns) want that Muslim vote so badly that they don't care about the ramifications of such lies for Western society and thought.

Richard Silverstein
Tikun Olam>

Harris may be a bigot, but it's certainly not obvious from the article Rosenberg linked to. And who's playing a "numbers game", the people putting out the wrong numbers or the people putting out the right ones?

And if you know what a rhetorical question is, you couldn't possibly consider Rosenberg's question to be one. In fact, it's just another way of saying, "It doesn't matter how many Muslims there are in the US," a statement that is so problematical I'm not going to bother listing the top 10 reasons why it's wrong and stupid.

Though there's nothing in the quotes you list quite on the same level as accusing someone of "ethnic warfare," I'm willing to stipulate that Harris has his own pro-Israel agenda. But don't the Israeli government and its apologists commit enough REAL transgressions that it's counterproductive to attack one of them when he actually gets a fact right?

To paraphrase Rosenberg, what difference does it make if Harris is pro-Israel? The question is, is he right or not? To say the answer is irrelevant because he's pro-Israeli is ridiculous. Are Muslim groups systematically exaggerating the spread of Islam in the US and the number of Muslims in order to enhance their political clout? Are media outlets letting their claims go unexamined for fear of being accused of anti-Islamic sentiments? I'm open-minded on the first, and I'm skeptical about the second, but these are surely issues worth considering, not dismissing with a moronic "we shoudn't care because the guy bringing it up is pro-Israel."

At first, I idly speculated that perhaps Harris was succumbing to the Israeli obsession with demographics.

Then I read the article and now think that Harris is genuinely threatened by the idea that Muslims in America could gain political clout that they don't have at present. In that case, the total numbers aren't really all that important aside from providing a rationale for ignoring their concerns.

But, if American Muslims follow the examples of political activism pioneered by AIPAC at the local levels, they could become a factor in electiing reps to Congress who are immune to the pressures from certain elements of the pro-Israel community .

Could Harris be attempting to perform some pre-emptive damage control in anticipation that Muslims could form local PACS and influence elections in districts where their numbers could make difference?

It is important to remember that Congress is pro-Israel because that is what their voters want, not because of the "Jewish lobby". The US would be pro-Israel even if there were only 10% as many Jews in the US as there are. There has been a positive attitude towards Zionism among non-Jews, since the 1840's (!), long before there was a relatively large Jewish population in the US. President Martin Van Buren took an active stand against the Damascus Blood Libel of 1840 and President Abraham Lincoln expressed support for setting up a Jewish state. He stated that after he finished his second term as President his fondest wishes were to visit California and Jerusalem (I had the priviledge in living in BOTH places!).

I have a feeling that somewhere in the bowels of the Washington national security bureaucracy there is a count of Muslims in America down to the man. I doubt this honor is extended to any other group. I doubt this count will lead to more political clout for Muslims.

inflating a number to 2% of the population seems a pretty lame way of gaming the system. 2% ain't much.

Doesn't that depend on how large the population is of the audience he is addressing and their own percieved power/impact in America is? How much larger is the Jewish population over 2%? Is it 5%?  If so, 2% matters.