Posted on 07/12/2009 6:04:40 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraqi Americans Wasan Alqaisi and Sumer Majid made a Fourth of July family picnic of kebab -- served on hamburger buns with slices of American cheese.
Celebrating Independence Day in the U.S. capital, the two Muslim women were doing what generations of Americans have done before them: blending their faith and lifestyle with a U.S. national identity.
Eight years after Middle East militants carried out the September 11 attacks, Muslim Americans are raising their profile, encouraged by the election of Barack Obama, a U.S. president proud of his Kenyan father's Muslim heritage.
The president, who is a Christian, used his middle name, Hussein, at his inauguration. He called for new dialogue with Islamic nations and named a special envoy for the Middle East on his second full day in office.
"We are more optimistic about the future for us here," said Alqaisi, an accountant. "They changed the way they communicate with the Muslim countries. We feel like we have more value here now. We hope that will continue in the future."
Like other immigrant groups in a country of immigrants, Muslims were drawn to the United States seeking opportunity and relief from poverty in their home countries. Arabs went to industrial centers, south Asian Muslims to the West Coast. Some arrived to study in universities; some arrived as slaves.
A 2007 Pew Research Center study says 21 percent of Muslim Americans arrived from abroad during the 1990s.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
What a load of BS. Muslims have been here at least as long as I’ve been working (25+ years). How did they survive in the “bad days”?
Al Reuters BS.
During the campaign no one was allowed to even say "Hussein".
Proud my arse. More like gloating and rubbing it in.
Why, to kill - uh - convert us of course!
Conquest by colonization and out reproducing the West.
Hussein probably not on his birth certificate......Fake, just as everything else he claims to be.
I hope and pray that some day we find out who he really is and where he was born. Two autobiographies written (or ghost written) before 50 do NOT constitute a resume.
Impatience is the curse of the West. They will just wait another 80 years and have the whole ball of wax. George Washington and John Adams must be crying in heaven.
Muslim American = oxymoron
“Yea, well the muzzies better enjoy Hussein while they can because he’s gonna be another Jimmy Carter...one & done!
I hope you’re right. I’m concerned about increased voter fraud this next time around.
The truth will come out,maybe to late for us,but more than two people know who he is.)
For important things I agree. For trivial things? American Idol, The Bachelorette, The View, Michael Jackson, Princess Dianeam and any number of inane inconsequential people?
24/7 coverage and attention.
All the signers are spinning in their graves.
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