An Open Letter to the American Muslim Council and the Council on American-Islamic Relations
Listed in: Other Foreign Policy, NJDC News, Press Releases
An Open Letter to the American Muslim Council (AMC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
NJDC: "We respectfully call on you to retract your inflammatory statements"
Washington: In an open letter to the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the American Muslim Council (AMC) on Monday harshly criticized a report issued by the AJC, asserting that the report had the effect of "persecuting the persecuted." The report in question used accepted social science methodology to conclude that "The average number being cited by the media at present - 6.7 million Muslims - is 2.4 to 3.6 times greater than the best available estimates, which are 1.9 million to 2.8 million." The AJC report was one in a series released by the organization analyzing emerging religious groups in the United States. According to the Associated Press, "Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR], a Washington lobby group, called the report a 'desperate attempt to discount the role of American Muslims.' 'Very often the representatives of the extremist wing of the pro-Israel lobby such as the American Jewish Committee seek to block Muslim political participation,' Hooper said."
The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) today released an open letter responding to both AMC and CAIR, the full text of which follows:
Dear Sirs,
The political climate of the past few weeks has understandably frayed the nerves of the Muslim-American community. Despite clear and consistent statements by every key leader - both Democratic and Republican - that we are not at war with Islam, many American Muslims have found a layer of apprehension added to their lives above and beyond the one felt by Americans at large. Some have even been victims of profiling and of hate crimes for no reason other than their appearance or their names.
These events may have heightened the sensitivities of various American Muslim organizations. While such a response may be helpful in some ways, it is also possible for heightened sensitivities to slip into paranoia - a situation unlikely to help anyone, least of all American Muslims. One such slip appears to have arisen in your organizations' reaction to an academic demographic study estimating the number of American Muslims as lying between 1.9 and 2.8 million, conducted by Dr. Tom W. Smith, the director of the highly respected General Social Survey at the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center and sponsored by the American Jewish Committee (AJC).
Your fear that this study - in the words of the AMC - somehow implies that "the response in America to persecution of an American minority group is less necessary and less urgent, when a population is not large enough to merit such concern or protection" is entirely misplaced. No one in America should be subject to persecution or discrimination of any kind for any reason, regardless of the size of the ethnicity to which they belong. Population figures are simply irrelevant to this principle. And you must know that as a minority group, American Jews have long championed this principle - and several generations of American Jews have dedicated their time, their money, and their blood to defending the core belief that persecution and discrimination against any American is wrong, period.
Even more disturbing, though, were your references to "Zionist falsif[ication of] U.S. Muslim Population Statistics," "Deni[al of] the existence of four and a half million American Muslims," and - in the words of CAIR - attempts by "the representatives of the extremist wing of the pro-Israel lobby...to block Muslim political participation." Such vitriolic name-calling has no place at all in civil political discourse. It is particularly disheartening to hear Muslim American groups resort to this sort of hate-mongering - particularly at a time when the American public has been begging its mainstream Muslim leaders to demonstrate the true tolerance and peace of Islam.
We respectfully call on you to retract your inflammatory statements.
Of perhaps greater long-term concern, though, is your apparent attempt to discredit an academic study through the use of heated, slanderous headlines. Questions pertaining to the demographic makeup of the American public have abounded since the release of the 2000 census data. Most of these questions have focused on obtaining the most accurate possible snapshot of the American population in order to better understand our people and their needs.
These inquiries into the relative sizes of various ethnic and interest groups have been conducted in a number of ways. For some groups, the census itself asked about membership - thereby easing the development of a reasonable estimate. Others had to make due with proxy questions from which to extrapolate. For still others, though, the census data was of little use. Because the census did not ask about religious affiliation, most religious groups have had to turn elsewhere to estimate the size of their American flocks.
How many Muslims are there in America? The truth is that no one knows. Not Dr. Smith, not the AJC, not the AMC, not CAIR. The press, however, likes to report numbers - and it has. The AJC, as part of its overall project investigating the emergence of various religious groups in America, asked a respected academic demographer to review the available data, assess its reliability, and express an objective professional opinion. That is precisely what Dr. Smith did. He studied the techniques applied by other researchers, discussed the reliability of those techniques, and adjusted the estimates as required. He did not conduct his own study. He simply concluded that a responsible professional extrapolation from published studies suggests a range of 1.9 to 2.8 million American Muslims.
Were Dr. Smith's numbers too low? Too high? About right? Is the American Muslim population closer to the high end or the low end of his range? These are hardly unanswerable questions about which accusations and names should be thrown. If the American Muslim community believes that the estimates are wildly inaccurate, its recourse lies within the well-accepted rules of academic social science. Let them sponsor an equally respected demographic researcher - or better yet, a team of researchers - to conduct a study, from the ground up, in conformity with the best available techniques of demographic statistical science. We can't know in advance how either Dr. Smith or the AJC might alter their conclusions after seeing such a study. But one thing is certain: they would respect it as a serious attempt to answer a challenging question. The AJC study deserved the same courtesy.
The bottom line is that the AJC study was a qualified academic study. It would appear to be the best scholarly review of the available studies and data on Muslim population that currently exists. The way to question its findings is not to allege that the study's authors and sponsors are filled with malice or the intent to persecute others; such wild rhetoric has no place in the world of informed social science. It is also woefully inadequate to just assert, as the AMC did while providing no sources or documentation, that it is "well established by several sources that American Muslims are presently over seven million in number." The way to improve upon the AJC study or its findings is to perform a more comprehensive, "true" academic study.
We agree with the AMC's closing statement in its own open letter to the AJC: "It is the responsibility of all Americans to guard against intolerance and discrimination and to do all that they can to achieve a true solidarity in these difficult times." The best way to start is by toning down the rhetoric.
