Report: Muslim Integration Crucial to U.S.
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A better-integrated Muslim population would better serve America as it navigates critical domestic and foreign-policy challenges involving Muslim populations, a new report argues.
Sponsored by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the report released yesterday says that greater U.S. Muslim involvement in the public square is crucial to the nation’s security and well-being, and that Muslims are largely responsible for finding ways to make themselves heard.
The report by a 32-member nationwide task force culled from academia, politics, and the business and nonprofit worlds largely avoids sensitive questions about attitudes toward U.S. foreign and security policy.
“This is a group that is half-Muslim, half non-Muslim that came together because we believe that America is losing by not having the appropriate involvement of Muslim Americans in the civil discourse of politics,” said task force co-chair Lynn Martin, a former Republican congresswoman and secretary of labor in the George H.W. Bush administration. “This is not whiny. This is not about what’s wrong. What it says is, here are some potential solutions.”
Among them: expanded counterterrorism partnerships between Muslim Americans and law enforcement, development of a leadership network of prominent Muslim Americans to work with youth and serve as “community ambassadors,” building stronger Muslim American institutions and working with coalitions on common concerns like immigration and health care. The report also calls on the press and government to fairly portray and involve Muslims in the national discourse, but suggests Muslims carry greater responsibility.
One of the American Muslim community’s defining characteristics — its diversity — poses a challenge when identifying potential leaders and organizing, said Farooq Kathwari, another task force co-chair. Mr. Kathwari is chairman, president, and chief executive officer of EthanAllen Interiors Inc., one of the nation’s largest furniture companies.
“It is not an easy situation for Muslim Americans because they are not one, they are not monolithic,” he said. “The only reason now they’re getting together — like African-Americans got together — is for civil rights.”
