An interview with Zahid H.Bukhari, Director of the American Muslim Studies program at the Georgetown University, by Rita Rudusa.

You have conducted a study of Muslims living in the US[1]. What were your key findings about the distinctive characteristics of an average American Muslim?
During the Project MAPS we came up with five characteristics of the American Muslim community. But before describing them, I would like to say, briefly, that nobody knows the exact number of American Muslims, because this question is not asked in census. There are different estimates — some say there are about six million, in 1989, The New York Times published that figure. Some scholars contest it and think there are three million. Interestingly, Hollywood also mentioned American Muslims. In the movie Syriana one of the characters says that there are ten million. So, we are between three and ten million (laughs). However, there is consensus among scholars that numbers are growing.
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Washington DC, the capital of the United States, is also called a city of strangers. Each election cycle brings several thousands newcomers, elected and nominated, to this city. They make policy decisions about the future of the nation during their tenure and then at the beginning of the new cycle the majority of them decide to stay in the city permanently.

The DC diamond, surrounded by a circular road, the Beltway, has its own unique attraction. Every politician of the country dreams about joining the DC circle. However, during the election process the candidates campaign on the slogan that he or she doesn’t have any connection to Washington. While the media pundits around the nation always talk about ‘who controls this city’ and ‘how it works?’

Professor Sulayman Nyang of Howard University describes Washington as a city of twelve tribes who have their own sub-cultures, maintain and developed their own streets, restaurants, languages, abbreviations, etiquettes and sets of agenda. These tribes and their off springs could be explained as follows:
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The Pew Research Center has issued an interesting study of Muslim Americans on May 22 and it was reported widely in the American media. The thrust of the Pew study, “Muslim American: Middle Class and mostly Mainstream” is that Muslim Americans are “decidedly American in their outlook, values and attitudes.” It is, however, shocking that several media outlets and political pundits projected Pew’s overall positive picture of the American Muslim community in a very negative and biased way.

Three issues from the Pew study have become the focus of media reporting and discussion: support of suicidal bombing and al-Qaida among youth under 30 and African American Muslims; Muslim’s belief that the Arabs were not responsible for the 9/11 attack; and the low count of Muslim Americans (2.35 million). The wildly different interpretations of some of the Pew study results remind me of the classical story of the ‘blind men and the elephant’ when the blind men tried to explain the elephant by touching one part and then describing it with their own perspectives or prejudices.
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