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Welfare critics have argued that reliance on government assistance instead of “legitimate” work has created a class of people so dependent on help that they lack the ability to care for themselves.

These are the people, the party line goes, who failed to evacuate prior to Hurricane Katrina.

To test this “welfare dependency” theory, Timothy Brezina (Social Problems, February 2008) used data from the Survey of Hurricane Katrina Evacuees to examine the characteristics of the New Orleanians hit hardest by the storm.

His findings indicate, contrary to the claims of welfare dependency theorists, that more than half of these New Orleanians were employed full time before Katrina and many showed great initiative after the storm. Upwards of 60 percent, for example, were already seeking new jobs just two weeks after the evacuation.

Brezina found the best predictor of pre-storm evacuation was awareness of the evacuation order, not employment or welfare status, a result consistent with previous research on evacuation. J.W.

have daughter will vote

Ebonya Washington (American Economic Review, March 2008) found legislators—especially dads—with more daughters voted more liberally than their colleagues with more sons, particularly on reproductive rights issues:

Voting also shifted to the left for issues like the environment, foreign policy, and health. The chart depicts the average voting score given by the National Organization for Women for U.S. Representatives in the 105th Congress with only two children.W.L.

why women give life

Surrogate pregnancy and egg donation are often viewed as altruistic actions or opportunities for profit. 

In interviews with a large number of women in New Zealand who have donated eggs or been surrogates, Rhonda Shaw (Sociology, February 2008) found women also give these reproductive gifts for personal reasons, rather than motivations of either profit or altruism.

New Zealand highly regulates surrogate pregnancy and egg donation, and actually makes it illegal for a woman to profit from them. These restrictions have limited surrogate pregnancies to a few a year and egg donations to just 20 or 30 a year.

The restriction on profit has created a social and institutional structure that reinforces the altruistic nature of reproductive gifts. But according to Shaw, this isn’t why women give.

Some women gave as a way to move past painful memories such as abortions and relationship break-ups. Others gave as a way to mourn the death of loved ones. Still others indicated they wanted to experience something they had yet to experience.

Though on the surface these responses appear quite different, Shaw argues they all represent the idea that women have highly personal reasons for their reproductive gifts. K.C.

growing into your own

Studies of shy young adults born in the 1920s and 1950s indicated men felt more stress and anxiety than women as they moved into adulthood. That’s because shy women were more likely to settle quickly into isolating roles as housewives, which allowed them to avoid the many difficult transitions young men experienced in their greater contact with society.

Looking to update this research, Larry J. Nelson and colleagues (Journal of Youth and Adolescence, May 2008) explored how shy young adults today make the adjustment from adolescence to adulthood.

They found shy young women now have the same problems transitioning to adulthood as young men did in the ’20s and ’50s. Today, both shy young women and men are likely to have low self-worth and report low levels of relationship quality with friends, parents, and romantic partners.

The authors speculate the change in shy women’s experiences is related to broader changes in American society for women that promote a culture of personal exploration, developing relationships, paid work, financial independence, and delays family life. K.C.

jesus may not ­rehabilitate ­criminals…

Many rehabilitation programs center on the healing and reformative power of spirituality. Yet sociologists studying delinquency usually emphasize the impact of non-spiritual factors like marriage, job stability, and the criminal behaviors of friends and close relatives.

To see which factors had the most impact on leaving or staying in a life of crime, Peggy C. Giordano and colleagues (Criminology, February 2008) followed 152 serious offenders from 1982 to 2003.

They found that while many participants spoke of the importance of spirituality, neither perceived closeness to God nor church attendance had any effect in helping people stop criminal behavior.

Instead, the researchers’ findings were more in line with previous sociological research on the subject. It’s the much harder-to-obtain positive catalysts for change—steady employment and housing, non-criminal social networks—that truly made the difference between successful rehabilitation and a relapse into crime. J.W.

…but he’ll keep you from cheating…

Turns out it’s not so much faith and prayer that keeps the religious from coveting their neighbors’ wives. Rather, it’s merely religious attendance that predicts marital fidelity, according to David Atkins and Deborah Kessel (Journal of Marriage and Family, May 2008).

Using data from the 1998 General Social Survey, the authors constructed nine different ways of measuring religiousness. Among indicators such as nearness to God, attendance, prayer, and taking a punitive view of God, religious attendance was the only measure that significantly predicted infidelity.

Individuals who rarely, if ever, attended services were roughly four times more likely to have an affair than those who attended services with great frequency. (Higher education, extreme high or low income, previous divorce, and marital unhappiness were also predictors.)

The authors argue religious attendance helps prevent infidelity because it’s often a shared activity among spouses, implying shared values, and opens up cheaters to shame and embarrassment from a community if revealed.

Apparently, dragging our spouses to church on Sunday morning does more than restore their faith in God. H.M.

…and making money

Praying may have its benefits, but it won’t necessarily bring you wealth—especially if you’re a conservative Protestant.

According to Lisa Keister (American Journal of Sociology, 2008), conservative Protestants maintain specific cultural values that limit asset accumulation over their lives. Lower educational achievement expectations, having children early, larger families, and limited labor force participation are all partially responsible for curbing a family’s long-term income. Religious beliefs may also be part of the problem. Because adherents believe money belongs to God, they seek divine guidance in managing their wealth and avoid amassing more than they need. Doing so reduces accumulation over time because they don’t reap the benefits of compounding interest, which in turn reduces money inherited by the next generation. 

Along with beliefs, Keister found that more exposure to the conservative protestant values often left members with fewer resources. Those who were raised in and maintained the faith had the lowest wealth, those raised in and who subsequently left the church had the second lowest wealth, and those who only joined the faith as an adult were the least disadvantaged.

Known for its high levels of inequality and religiosity, the United States offers an important case study in understanding how religion, in contrast to The Protestant Ethic, may inadvertently cause poverty. R.A.

meet the new ­medium, same as the old medium

In this age of mass media and corporate news giants, many hope blogs will revolutionize a stagnant news industry.

Ray Maratea (Social Problems, February 2008) examined the role of blogs in today’s news culture and found they do, in fact, offer many advantages over traditional media.

Thanks to the speed at which blogs can be updated and posts quickly spreading through the Internet via hyperlinking, blogs can be an effective means of drawing public attention to issues.

However, in other respects blogs aren’t as revolutionary as they may seem. The blogosphere is very hierarchical, for example, with a small number drawing most of the traffic. Moreover, blogs tend to use the same criteria as traditional media when deciding what deserves attention, such as drama and novelty. J.S.

the digital echo chamber

Like analog communities, digital communities often consist of like-minded individuals and discourage dissent and diversity. But does the Internet’s promise of being “just one click away” from anything diminish the echo chamber effect of social groups, or simply amplify it? 

Eszter Hargittai, Jason Gallo, and Matthew Kane (Public Choice, January 2008) studied the most popular political blogs and found some evidence for both. 

On the one hand, conservative blogs were more likely to link to conservative blogs and liberal blogs were more likely to link to liberal blogs. Moreover, when cross-ideological links did occur, the most common treatment of these links was a “straw man” approach that simply dismissed the other sides’ views.

However, they also found that conservative bloggers were more likely to link to liberal bloggers. Conservative bloggers were also more likely to agree (if only 14 percent of the time) with liberal blogs they link to, while liberal bloggers agreed with conservatives only 5 percent of the time. J.S.

surfing the internet may make you richer

Internet surfers of the world, stop feeling guilty. Some skills and behaviors developed while using the Internet may help you on the job market.

Paul DiMaggio and Bart Bonikowski (American Sociological Review, April 2008) found evidence to suggest that Internet users benefit from access to better job information and from the signaling effects of using fashionable technology. The evidence? Between 2000 and 2001, U.S. workers using the Internet increased their earnings at a faster rate than those stuck offline.

Most existing studies attribute increased earnings to increased productivity at work. But DiMaggio and Bonikowski found at-home Internet users also see an earnings boost, suggesting other factors than just productivity are at play.

It seems Internet use not only gives people access to information, but it broadens social networks and functions as a cultural signal of competence and intelligence. C.S.

women faring worse in democracy

With the transition from state socialism to liberal democracy, countries in Central and Eastern Europe also experienced a precipitous and unexpected decline in the number of women in government.

Although this fact is old news to those who study the region, scholars still disagree over why this gap persists. Yvonne Galligan and Sara Clavero (Gender and Society, April 2008) interviewed 71 female politicians in seven of these countries to better understand the situation from the women’s points of view.

The authors found that while these political women feel the lack of women in politics is a problem, they don’t think they can do much about it.

Whether conservative or liberal, the female politicians unanimously named family responsibilities as an important reason why so few women are in politics. A strong majority also thought it was important for more women to be in the political arena.

Unlike their counterparts in established democracies, however, these politicians didn’t see themselves as acting on behalf of their countrywomen. In fact, the authors found even as the interviewees saw politics as a male world that could benefit from the influence of more women, these elite women didn’t place the responsibility for the lack of women on party gatekeepers or a masculine political system, but rather on individual women themselves.

The authors noted the female politicians all believed vehemently in the fairness of democratic electoral rules, suggesting that faith in the power of democracy may itself be part of the problem with gender inequality in politics. M.K.

hold the phone

Because 32 percent of low-income young adults live in households with only a wireless phone, traditional telephone surveys may be misjudging important health behaviors. 

According to Stephen J. Blumberg and Julian V. Luke (Public Opinion Quarterly, Special Issue 2007), low-income and young adults smoke and binge drink more than previously measured, but they’re also more physically active, less obese, and more likely to have been tested for HIV than previously thought. 

There’s good reason to think telephone survey validity is the culprit. Blumberg and Luke found that even when limiting the population they analyzed to low-income and young adults, there were small but significant differences between those with landlines and cell-phone only households. Perhaps more importantly, the authors found that standard techniques for adjusting the bias of landline-only surveys work only when applied very carefully.

The spread of cell phones may mean survey researchers need new techniques for gathering crucial information about the public. M.K.

other consequences of immigration policy

Stringent U.S. immigration laws and the deportation of non-citizens can have consequences Americans fail to realize.

Jacqueline Hagan, Karl Eschbach, and Nestor Rodriguez (International Migration Review, Spring 2008) drew on a random sample of 300 Salvadoran deportees in their home communities and found that when non-citizens are deported, it actually puts families in two countries in jeopardy.

Deportees are likely to have families and dependents in the United States. Because 95 percent of deportees are male, sending them back home removes the family’s breadwinner and may lead to a greater reliance on the state.

As well, 72 percent of deportees remit to extended family (especially parents) in El Salvador. These remittances actually surpass national exports as a source of foreign exchange, and many families rely on the cash flow for survival. R.A.

the writing is on the wall

Jailhouse graffiti reveals interesting differences in how men and women cope with their time in short-term jails as they await trial and transfer to prison.

Focusing on gender, Jacqueline Wilson (Ethnography, March 2008) examined the pencil markings, scratches in paintwork, and carvings in wooden fittings of the decommissioned Melbourne City Watch House in Australia.

While male inmates were primarily interested in asserting themselves by simply “tagging” their names, women were more social in their statements overall, Wilson found.

Specifically, graffiti in the women’s section showed more emphasis on networking and relationships between female inmates. Because Melbourne had only one facility for women with a small inmate population, the women’s graffiti demonstrated a pervasive concern with establishing alliances before arrival in the prison. They demonstrated their connections by writing “Mandy L’s Wendy,” by which the writer meant “Wendy has Mandy’s back, and vice versa.” M.K./E.B.

many paths to ‘white’

Despite the fact that the United States became a less hospitable place for them in the aftermath of 9/11, more Arab Americans than ever are declaring their racial identity as white.

Seeking an explanation for why, Kristine Ajrouch and Amaney Jamal (International Migration Review, Winter 2007) turned to the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS)—the first-ever representative sample of Americans with Arab ancestry living in the Detroit metro area. (Unbeknownst to many, Detroit has one of the largest densities of Arab Americans in the United States.)

Different experiences with assimilation appear to be crucial. Being Lebanese/Syrian or Christian, for example, made a respondent more likely to identify as white. Being older was also linked with a higher likelihood of identifying with the white majority, as was having strongly held feelings about being Arab American (the pan-ethnic category, as opposed to smaller, more localized national or religion affiliations). Indeed, while some Arab Americans reported only a strong white identity, many expressed a strong pan-ethnic attachment as well.

Like many other immigrant groups, Americans of Arab descent don’t necessarily see a conflict between their ethnic and racial identities in the United States. Being ethnic and white seems to be a way to claim a distinctive identity and place in the mosaic that is contemporary America. M.K./E.B.

Several of those were exceptional, and you’ll read them here, but writing about politics remains a challenge for a publication like Contexts, not to mention for the discipline of sociology in general.

Part of the problem has to do with the constraints of time. As a quarterly, we obviously can’t be as limber as newspapers, magazines, and online media. But even if we published every week, sociological analysis doesn’t always come quickly or easily. By the time we’ve properly formulated our questions, gathered our data, come to our conclusions, and assessed their public significance, the political process has sometimes moved on. There are some exceptions, to be sure: spot commentaries delivered by informed sociological bloggers, expert opinion pieces by sociologists in The New York Times or The Nation, and, we would add, interactive features at contexts.org, such as our roundtable on the social significance of Barack Obama’s candidacy.

Sociological content itself presents other difficulties. What we have to say often doesn’t lend itself to a 10-second soundbite or one-page press release. Our critical perspectives and insights into the complexity of the world can also be tough to translate into action or concrete policy. Sometimes, in other words, politicians, pundits, or ordinary citizens just aren’t ready to deal with the sociological take.

Other issues are also in play, issues that force us to confront some of the deepest fault lines in the discipline. For example, many get into this field because they see profound public and political value in the systematic study of social life. Yet there are many different visions of how sociologists and sociology properly engage and impact the world. On one extreme are those who believe sociologists must actively engage the social world with their research and commentary. On the other are those convinced the most appropriate sociological contributions must be made above the political fray, offering more detached and objective analysis. Suffice it to say, these different orientations—both of which, in our view, have their time and place—yield very different approaches to politics.

And then there’s the political orientation of sociologists themselves. Many people these days (some sociologists foremost among them) assume we’re a uniformly liberal or progressive lot, and that politics and political analyses are, therefore, as biased as they are predictable and uninteresting. We refuse to concede these assumptions. Not only do we know more than a few conservative sociologists (we’ve been trying to get more of them to write for us, by the way), we also believe that in certain respects—its skepticism about radical social change, for example, or its understanding of the limits of human consciousness and comprehension—sociology is profoundly conservative. All of which helps to explain why some of the best sociology can’t be shoehorned into conventional left/right boxes.

You may not agree with us on all these points, of course, and Contexts won’t adopt an editorial stance on any of these debates. We see sociology as a big disciplinary tent marked by its unique ability to both contain and engage these different perspectives. If that lack of a singular perspective makes it difficult for us to comment decisively on politics, so be it. But there is a unifying force that connects disparate sociological approaches to politics: the recognition that all politics is social.

The social dimensions of political life color debates, shape legislation and policy, and call forth the very issues framed as “political.” Our job is to analyze and dissect these aspects of the political process as issues are debated and decisions are made—and to do all we can to inject these analyses into the public agenda.

The latter half of the 1990s witnessed a spate of court decisions and public referenda outlawing the use of affirmative action in college admissions decisions. In response to a judicial ban on affirmative action imposed by the 5th Circuit Court, for example, the Texas Legislature passed a law guaranteeing admission to any state public university to all seniors who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school classes.

In force since 1998, the top 10 percent law disregards standardized test scores for students eligible for automatic admission. When the outcome of the 2003 Supreme Court decisions involving the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policies was uncertain, supporters touted the Texas law as a race-neutral strategy to increase campus diversity because it applies a uniform merit criterion to all high schools, whether rich or poor, large or small.

Although diversity of the freshman class plummeted the year affirmative action was banned and diversity rebounded after the uniform admission law was implemented, it doesn’t follow that the percent plan is race-neutral or that it is responsible for the rebound.

The percent plan capitalizes on Texas’s highly segregated high schools to boost minority representation at the state’s public flagships—University of Texas at Austin (UT) and Texas A&M University (TAMU). What’s more, both institutions began an aggressive outreach campaign that targeted poor high schools with low college-going traditions, offering scholarships to rank-eligible students. In Texas, high schools that fit this description tend to be predominantly black or Hispanic. On average, minority students are less likely to qualify for automatic admission if they attend integrated schools, but their chances are much higher if they graduate from predominately minority schools.

The uniform admission law didn’t have uniform impacts at both public flagships. Representation of minority students rose at both premier campuses, but not equally. In fact, African-Americans and Hispanics were better represented at TAMU under affirmative action than the top 10 percent regime. Black and Hispanic enrollment at UT has returned to levels achieved before affirmative action was outlawed, but this is mainly because these minorities represent a much larger percentage of the college-eligible population and not because of the admission guarantee. Today, less than half of Texas high school graduates are white, and despite their elevated high school drop-out rates, Hispanics are currently more than one in three Texas high school graduates.

Although many minority students qualify for admission to selective institutions under the percent plan because standardized test scores aren’t considered for top-ranked graduates, an admission guarantee doesn’t guarantee enrollment. This is particularly important in the quest to diversify campuses because minority students are more likely than their white counterparts to attend resource-poor high schools with low college-going traditions. Simply put, not enough minority students are taking advantage of the plan.

Finally, the top 10 percent law did broaden access to the public flagships, as intended by the legislation’s architects. Today, a larger number of high schools send students to UT and TAMU than before the admission guarantee was in force. In fact, application rates of top-ranked graduates from affluent high schools rose, while application rates from top 10 percent graduates from poor schools remained constant (at UT) or fell (at TAMU). Apparently the playing field is more uneven than advocates of the law admit.

At its 10th anniversary, the top 10 percent law has become as controversial as the race-sensitive admission regime it replaced. Critics from affluent districts claim the uniform admission law gives unfair advantage to highly ranked students from low-performing schools who are presumed less well prepared for high level college work compared with lower ranked students from competitive high schools. Support for the percent plan also has eroded among UT administrators, who complain that diversity in a broad sense is compromised when more than 80 percent of students are admitted using a single metric—top 10 percent high school class rank.

There are many different arguments for (and against) programs designed to foster diversity in our nation’s colleges and universities. The major lesson for the country is that even in a majority minority state like Texas, no viable race-neutral alternatives currently exist. States like Michigan that are considering a percent plan after a decisive ballot initiative outlawed affirmative action should understand that the unintended consequences of a percent plan will likely outweigh the benefits. Fortunately, the 2003 Supreme Court Grutter decision upheld narrowly tailored consideration of race in college admissions, which is the most efficient and effective strategy to diversify college campuses.

Seven years after the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil catapulted Muslims into the American spotlight, concerns and fears over their presence and assimilation remain at an all-time high.

Recent national polls find that four in 10 Americans have an unfavorable view of Islam, five in 10 believe Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence, and six in 10 believe Islam is very different from their own religion. All this despite the fact that seven in 10 admit they know very little about Islam. And yet Americans rank Muslims second only to atheists as a group that doesn’t share their vision of American society.

These fears have had consequences. In 2001, the U.S. Department of Justice recorded a 1,600 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes from the prior year, and these numbers rose 10 percent between 2005 and 2006. The Council on American-Islamic Relations processed 2,647 civil rights complaints in 2006, a 25 percent increase from the prior year and a 600 percent increase since 2000. The largest category involved complaints against U.S. government agencies (37 percent).

Clearly, many Americans are convinced Muslim Americans pose some kind of threat to American society.

Two widespread assumptions fuel these fears. First, that there’s only one kind of Islam and one kind of Muslim, both characterized by violence and anti-democratic tendencies. Second, that being a Muslim is the most salient identity for Muslim Americans when it comes to their political attitudes and behaviors, that it trumps their social class position, national origin, racial/ethnic group membership, or gender—or worse, that it trumps their commitment to a secular democracy.

Research on Muslim Americans themselves supports neither of these assumptions. Interviews with 3,627 Muslim Americans in 2001 and 2004 by the Georgetown University Muslims in the American Public Square (MAPS) project and 1,050 Muslim Americans in 2007 by the Pew Research Center show that Muslim Americans are diverse, well-integrated, and largely mainstream in their attitudes, values, and behaviors.

The data also show that being a Muslim is less important for politics than how Muslim you are, how much money you make, whether you’re an African-American Muslim or an Arab-American Muslim, and whether you’re a man or a woman.

The notion that Muslims privilege their Muslim identity over their other interests and affiliations has been projected onto the group rather than emerged from the beliefs and practices of the group itself. It’s what sociologists call a social construction, and it’s one that has implications for how these Americans are included in the national dialog.

some basic demographics

Let’s start with who Muslim Americans really are. While size estimates of the population range anywhere from 2 million to 8 million, there is general agreement on the social and demographic characteristics of the community.

Muslim Americans are the most ethnically diverse Muslim population in the world, originating from more than 80 countries on four continents. Contrary to popular belief, most are not Arab. Nearly one-third are South Asian, one-third are Arab, one-fifth are U.S.-born black Muslims (mainly converts), and a small but growing number are U.S.-born Anglo and Hispanic converts. Roughly two-thirds are immigrants to the United States, but an increasing segment is second- and third-generation, U.S.-born Americans. The vast majority of immigrants have lived in the United States for 10 or more years.

Muslim Americans also tend to be highly educated, politically conscious, and fluent in English, all of which reflects the restrictive immigration policies that limit who gains admission into the United States. On average, in fact, Muslim Americans share similar socioeconomic characteristics with the general U.S. population: one-fourth has a bachelor’s degree or higher, one-fourth lives in households with incomes of $75,000 per year or more, and the majority are employed. However, some Muslims do live in poverty and have poor English language skills and few resources to improve their situations.

One of the most important and overlooked facts about Muslim Americans is that they are not uniformly religious and devout. Some are religiously devout, some are religiously moderate, and some are non-practicing and secular, basically Muslim in name only, similar to a good proportion of U.S. Christians and Jews. Some attend a mosque on a weekly basis and pray every day, and others don’t engage in either practice. Even among the more religiously devout, there is a sharp distinction between being a good Muslim and being an Islamic extremist.

None of this should be surprising. Many Muslim Americans emigrated from countries in the Middle East (now targeted in the war on terror) in order to practice—or not practice—their religion and politics more freely in the United States. And their religion is diverse. There is no monolithic Islam that all Muslims adhere to. Just as Christianity has many different theologies, denominations, and sects, so does Islam. And just like Christianity, these theologies, denominations, and sects are often in conflict and disagreement over how to interpret and practice the faith tradition. This diversity mimics other ethnic and immigrant groups in the United States.

Evidence from the MAPS project, Pew Research Center, and General Social Survey demonstrates that Muslim Americans are much more politically integrated than the common stereotypes imply. Consider some common indicators of political involvement, such as party affiliation, voter registration, and contact with politicians. Compared to the general public, Muslim Americans are slightly less likely to be registered to vote, reflecting the immigrant composition and voter eligibility of this group (63 percent compared to 76 percent of the general population), slightly more likely to have contacted a politician (51 percent compared to 44 percent of the general population), and slightly more likely to affiliate with the Democratic Party, which falls in line with other racial and ethnic minorities (63 percent compared to 51 percent of the general population).

All these data demonstrate that, contrary to fears that Muslim Americans comprise a monolithic minority ill-suited to participation in American democracy, Muslim Americans are actually highly diverse and already politically integrated. They are also in step with the rest of the American public on today’s most divisive political issues.

attitudes, values, and variation

The majority of both Muslim Americans (69 percent) and the general public (76 percent) oppose gay marriage, favor increased federal government spending to help the needy (73 percent and 63 percent, respectively), and disapprove of President George W. Bush’s job performance (67 percent and 59 percent). Muslim Americans are slightly more conservative than the general public when it comes to abortion (56 percent oppose it, compared to 46 percent) as well as the federal government doing more to protect morality in society (59 percent compared to 37 percent).

The one area in which American Muslims are not entirely in step with the general public is foreign policy, especially having to do with the Middle East. In 2007, for example, the general public was nearly four times as likely to say the war in Iraq was the “right decision” and twice as likely to provide the same response to the war in Afghanistan (61 percent compared to 35 percent of Muslim Americans).

In short, these numbers tell us that Muslim Americans lean to the right on social issues (like most Americans), but to the left on foreign policy. But these generalizations don’t tell the whole story—in particular, these averages don’t demonstrate the diversity that exists within the Muslim population by racial and ethnic group membership, national origin, socioeconomic status, degree of religiosity, or nativity and citizenship status.

Consider, for example, Muslim Americans’ levels of satisfaction and feelings of inclusion (or exclusion) in American society—major building blocks of a liberal democracy. In examining how these perceptions vary by racial and ethnic group membership within the group, we see that African-American Muslims express more dissatisfaction and feel more excluded from American society than Arab or South Asian Muslims. They’re more likely to feel the United States is fighting a war against Islam, to believe Americans are intolerant of Islam and Muslims, and to have experienced discrimination in the past year (whether racial, religious, or both is unclear). South Asians feel the least marginalized, and Arab Muslims fall in between. These racial and ethnic differences reflect a host of factors, including the immigrant composition and higher socio-economic status of the South Asian and Arab populations and the long-standing racialized and marginalized position of African Americans. Indeed, many (though not all) African Americans converted to Islam seeking a form of religious inclusion they felt lacking in the largely white Judeo-Christian traditions.

(Incidentally, most African-American Muslims adhere to mainstream Islam [Sunni or Shi’a], similar to South Asian and Arab Muslim populations. They should not be confused with the Nation of Islam, a group that became popular during the civil rights era by providing a cultural identity that separated black Americans from mainstream Christianity. Indigenous Muslims have historically distanced themselves from the Nation of Islam in order to establish organizations that focus more on cultural and religious [rather than racial] oppression.)

Before we can determine whether religion is the driving force behind all Muslims’ political opinions and behaviors—whether Islam, as is popularly assumed, trumps Muslim Americans’ other commitments and relationships to nationality, ethnicity, race, and even democracy—let’s step back and place Muslim Americans in a broader historical context of religion and American politics.

when religion matters, and doesn’t

Muslim Americans aren’t the first religious or ethnic group considered a threat to America’s religious and cultural unity. At the turn of the 20th century, Jewish and Italian immigrants were vilified in the mainstream as racially inferior to other Americans. Of course today those same fears have been projected onto Hispanic, Asian, and Middle Eastern immigrants. The Muslim American case shares with these other immigrant experiences the fact that with a religion different from the mainstream comes the fear that it will dilute, possibly even sabotage, America’s thriving religious landscape.

Yes, thriving. By all accounts, the United States is considerably more religious than any of its economically developed Western counterparts. In 2000, 93 percent of Americans said they believed in God or a universal spirit, 86 percent claimed affiliation with a specific religious denomination, and 67 percent reported membership in a church or synagogue. The vast majority of American adults identify themselves as Christian (56 percent Protestant and 25 percent Catholic), with Judaism claiming the second largest group of adherents (2 percent), giving America a decidedly Judeo-Christian face. There are an infinite number of denominations within these broad categories, ranging from the ultra-conservative to the ultra-liberal. And there is extensive diversity among individuals in their levels of religiosity within any given denomination, again ranging from those who are devout, practicing believers to those who are secular and non-practicing.

This diversity has sparked extensive debates among academics, policy-makers, and pundits over whether American politics is characterized by “culture wars,” best summarized as the belief that Americans are polarized into two camps, one conservative and one liberal, on moral and ethical issues such as abortion and gay rights. Nowhere has the debate played out more vividly than the arena of religion and politics, where religiously based mobilization efforts by the Christian right helped defeat liberal-leaning candidates and secure President Bush’s reelection in 2004. Electoral victories, however, haven’t usually translated into policy victories, as evidenced by the continued legality of abortion and increasing protection of gay rights. So when does religion matter for politics and when doesn’t it?

Here we come back to the Muslim American case. Like Muslim Americans, Americans generally have multiple, competing identities that shape their political attitudes and behaviors—93 percent of Americans may believe in God or a universal spirit but 93 percent of Americans don’t base their politics on that belief alone. In other words, just because most Americans are religiously affiliated doesn’t mean most Americans base their politics on religion. To put it somewhat differently, the same factors that influence other Americans’ attitudes and behaviors influence Muslim Americans’ attitudes and behaviors. Those who are more educated, have higher incomes, higher levels of group consciousness, and who feel more marginalized from mainstream society are more politically active than those without these characteristics. Similar to other Americans, these are individuals who feel they have more at stake in political outcomes, and thus are more motivated to try to influence such outcomes.

Muslims, on average, look like other Americans on social and domestic policies because, on average, they share the same social standing as other Americans, and on average, they are about as religious as other Americans. Consider two common indicators of religiosity, frequency of prayer and frequency of church attendance, and compare Muslim Americans to Christian Americans. Both groups are quite religious, with the majority praying everyday (70 percent of Christians compared to 61 percent of Muslims) and a sizeable proportion attending services once a week or more (45 percent compared to 40 percent). And they look similar with respect to attitudes on gay rights and abortion, in part because Christian and Muslim theology take similar stances on procreation and gender roles.

Again, these numbers tell only part of the story. What’s missing is that religion’s relationship to politics is multidimensional. In more complex analyses it has become clear that the more personal dimensions of religious identity—or being a devout Muslim who prays everyday—have little influence on political attitudes or behaviors, which runs counter to stereotypes that link Islamic devotion to political fanaticism.

In contrast, the more organized dimensions of Muslim identity, namely frequent mosque attendance, provide a collective identity that stimulates political activity. This is similar to what we know about the role of the church and synagogue for U.S. Christians and Jews. Congregations provide a collective environment that heightens group consciousness and awareness of issues that need to be addressed through political mobilization. Thus, it is somewhat ironic that one of the staunchest defenders of the war on terror—the Christian right—may be overlooking a potential ally in the culture wars—devout Muslim Americans.

an exceptional experience

In many ways these findings track closely with what we know about the religion-politics connection among other U.S. ethnic and religious groups, be they Evangelical Christians or African Americans. They also suggest that the Muslim experience may be less distinct than popular beliefs imply. In fact, Muslim Americans share much in common with earlier immigrant groups who were considered inassimilable even though they held mainstream American values (think Italian, Irish, and Polish immigrants).

At the same time, though, we can’t deny that the Muslim American experience, particularly since 9/11, has been “exceptional” in a country marked by a declining salience of religious boundaries and increasing acceptance of religious difference. Muslim Americans have largely been excluded from this ecumenical trend. If we’re going to face our nation’s challenges in a truly democratic way, we need to move past the fear that Muslim Americans are un-American so we can bring them into the national dialogue.