Lost in many of the discussion about Islam is an oddity known as generation three.
Normal immigrants who arrive are culturally emeshed in their country of origin. Using my own familiy as an example my granfather read the Yiddish paper till the day he passed on. He didn't care much for popular culture except for Gunsmoze, Bonanza and strangely Benny Hill. His life revolved around work going to temple his kids and his mixed up relatives.
My fathers first language was Yiddish. He can still speak it fluently but his language is English. He became a Bal Teshuvah later in life but is far more Americanized than his father. He is an avid Yankee fan who is also into Art, theatre
and a wide variety of music.
I am more americanized than my father as I am generation three. I do not speak any Yiddish and am not religious.
This is very much the normal pattern immigrants follow. However two factors have changed the third generation experience. Immigrants are not being taught American history from the blame America first crowd. Every third world civilization is disneyfied.
There is also madrassa and mosque fanaticism intervening in the generation three trend towards assimilation. Madrassas teach radical Islam and people like Mark Steyn claimed to see more angry Muslims in London than in Yemen.
Lost in the mix is that Muslims in America work jobs. We do not have the added problem of unemployed men in Mosques in large numbers that exists in Europe. It may be that we may see a generation three Americanized Muslim. There is room for hope
as popular culture tends to be the great leveler.
The future may be brighter than we assume in the long run.
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I don’t think this will work the same way with Muslims. As you note, in the UK generation 3 is more devout and militant than generation 1 or 2. The same thing is true in France. Will that happen here?
One theory is that we don’t have a welfare state to create a class full of resentment. That’s true to some degree. Another theory is that we didn’t let in as many Salafi Mulsims.
Both the UK and France have a “guilt problem” stemming from the colonial policies in Pakistan and Algeria. They’ve allowed massive immigration that creates a concentration and limits assimilation. And they didn’t screen for ideology. These preachers recruit the 3rd generation – in many cases good students with excellent prospects.
I just saw a documentary on the British-born killer of Daniel Pearl: middle class, elite British school, etc. Like communism, the true-believer is from the elite and not the working-class. New York taxi drivers and news-stand merchants are less likely to be problems, unless some elite middle-class true-believer leads the way.
The dissatisfaction starts with a spiritual depravity … communism, Islam, Nazism … and not so-called grievances.
I was under the impression that most Muslims in the UK are generation 1 or 2. Have they been there long enough to have generation three yet. If it is there they can't be that numerous or have reached adult status.
It is the cause for hope.
13th generation American here.
(My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather's nephew was the surveyor who produced the first map of the Jamestown colony)
I was going to ask how you got that number
Okay.. I must do a pro-South rant.
Geneological research is a bitch south of the Mason-Dixon line before 1840 thanks to the Union army burning down courthouses.
Assholes!
Thank you for your time.
Mr. Beamish,
Wow! Those are some credentials!
Beak,
We do not have the added problem of unemployed men in Mosques in large numbers that exists in Europe.
Good point. Nevertheless, I agree with what Jason said and am not very optimistic:
I don’t think this will work the same way with Muslims.
Since the early 1990s, Saudi dollars have poured into the United States to fund mosques and Islamic schools.
Recently, I saw several pieces about how the Islamic schools in the UK are using textbooks which promote hatred of infidels, if not outright jihad. I posted a video about those textbooks HERE, with a short commentary of my own.
The Muslims who were already here prior to that influx of Saudi dollars have become marginalized.
In France it is the third generation. In the UK it comes from all 3 and from Islamic converts.
I think AOW has a good point.
This is more a question of the state of the jiahdi movement at this point in time then the evolution of generations of immigrants. Muslims are rediscovering their religion often in institutions funded by Saudi dollars. The old watered-down colonial-period perfunctory practice is giving way to a renewed and vigorous practice of Islam as it used to be. This gets whatever generation is coming of age.
The young tend to be idealists and they seek an authentic practice. And being young they tend to seek rationalizations for their anger. Islam fits the bill. It’s also a way of rejecting their parents’ assimilationist ethos.
In France they coud be in generation Three. The problems may speak vollumes about Europe indeed.
I think the difference lies in the social safety net. Euuropean Moslems don't have to "demean" themselves with work. The state pays them to lie around and be resentful.
Jason,
Those last two paragraphs of your above comment--that's what I was trying to say. But you said it better than I could have!
I'm glad to see that you emphasized this generation's rebellion against that of their parents.
OBL made a big deal out of the watering down of Islam. From this article in the February 13, 2007 WaPo:
ISTANBUL -- About a week before Sept. 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden sat down to a breakfast meeting in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. His Turkish guests had arrived with a plan for a spectacular terrorist strike, but according to accounts two of the visitors later gave investigators, there was no talk of business over the meal.
Instead, bin Laden held forth for an hour about the injustices Muslims were suffering at the hands of Israel and the United States, standard motivational remarks tailored slightly for the occasion: He told the visitors that one of his grandmothers was Turkish.
[...]
"The aim of this organization is to take action against American and Israeli targets and to break their dominance over Islamic countries," said one suspect, explaining a conspiracy conceived long before the United States sent troops to Iraq.
"The Islamic umma are being oppressed," said another, using the Arabic word for the global Muslim community....
OBL views the "oppression" of Islamic nations as the consequence of heresy.
FJ
You may swat me for this slight. A subsistance handout with no work turns men into domestic annimals.
What’s that saying? An idle minds/hands are Mohammad’s playground?
Worse. It turns them into "drones".
I immigrated to the states when I was 9. My family is considered Protestant of the Congregational Church line. I'm not very religious because I used to witness the violence from the orange walk marches back in Glasgow. I believe in Christ; I just refuse to go to any churches.
Jason
The best compasion is a job and a real living.
FJ Drones are worse than domesticated annimals.
Steve We all make our our path organized or unorganized. I would like towarn against the magic bullet. There are those who do not get transmogrified because they found god. It is an important part of life, but it is no magic cure oil for those with larger issues.
For what its worth, we know some Lebanese (Hezbollah fans) acquaintances who raised their kids to hate the Jooooooozzzz, but one day the eldest (Ali) decided he just didn't believe islam anymore. He refused to continue praying until he believed again. He was about 17, and is now in college. He may be an exception, but lets hope not. Hopefully he's intelligent enough to see the inconsistencies in islam, like that whole bit about a omnipotent God who requires it's adherents kill women and children.
I also know another from the same group, whose sons joined the Marines. He's very proud of them; however, other family members consider it bad, so he shows his kids pictures in uniform 'on the sly'. This is comforting to me because if they all knew the recruits we're doing the taqiya (sp?) thing, then he wouldn't be secretive about showing their pictures to us. I believe they are genuine.
Islam is weak. When exposed to the light of day and much deserved criticism, it will fold just like any cult.
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