“Never doubt the power of clan identity. Perhaps gen 2 or 3 will move away from the clannishness of gen 1.”

To be fair, I have met some 1-gers who are not clannish at all (and others sometimes actually shirk from being seen with other Desis), and I have known many a 2-ger who is clannish as hell. You just have to walk around any university campus with a large number of Desis, locate the Indian Club, and revel in the clannishness of it all.

“However, the beer chugging variety of muslims that are my friends tend to stay away from such sectarian issues : )”

Yup, I also know peeps who identify themselves as Muslims and will down lots of laal paani with me without any compunction. I meant the politically active ones and the personages who speak as a “Muslim American” on “Muslim issues”. Which is why I said:

“I agree with Sid, many WHO ARE INVOLVED IN POLITICS and religiously identify themselves as Muslims launch everything from the religious platform.”

Of course, there is the issue of whether these people get a lot of coverage BECAUSE they are talking in the language that others want to hear, and some of this I suspect has to do with multiculturalist ideologies that reign in the US. It does not mean that these well-known people actually represent everyone else, and in fact, more often than not, they do not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1x81XODP-o&feature=related

You are soo right : P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNbLQ6DC8mw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O4y-G5idbE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pts0zrSRfQo

The women in the second video is down right pathetic and the allegations in the last video have been easily refuted. I can see it now, droves of right wing rednecks heading off to Indonesia to look to see if Obama was consuming halal meat or if he refused to partake in some bacon.

Sounds like the same situation as with blacks and latinos over here. You would expect them to be natural allies since they both experienced discrimination, however they seem to despise one another. Which probably explains why latinos vote for Hillary disproportinately. No offense to them, but it seems WC people have a tougher time working with people from different races and cultures.

I don’t doubt many of the devout muslim americans identify in a ethnoreligious fashion. However, the beer chugging variety of muslims that are my friends tend to stay away from such sectarian issues : ). Nevertheless even many religious muslims are ambigious on this issue.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6071738

“Makes everything worse and does a disservice to so many issues that can be framed in a more accurate way, and does not get to the root of the real problems, which is inequality, economic imperialism, blah blah.”

Never doubt the power of clan identity. Perhaps gen 2 or 3 will move away from the clannishness of gen 1.

Both parties have always tended to support Israel. However, Jews tend to support the Democractic party to a large extent. Thus the Democratic party was and still is more pro-Israel than the Republicans.

http://njdc.typepad.com/njdcs_blog/2007/12/steve-sheffey-g.html

“What I don’t understand is the persistant rumours of Obama being a Muslim in the face of the Rev. Wright fiasco.”

Some right-wingers argue that Obama is a closet muslim or was in the past a practising muslim. The view his connections to Rev. Wright as merely an alliance of political expediency to attract the black vote.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=60559

Here in the UK, old school socialist politics of Labour has been replaced by the New Labour version of Thatcherism. Traditional support of the left wing came from the white working class (WWC) and the brown working class (BWC: read Muslims). Now the two groups have drifted electorally towards their own flavour of identity politics.

English Pundits and politicians have tended to blame this drift on class in the case of the WWC and on loyalty-issues in the case of the BWC. The language they use is a pungent mix of middle class snobbery and racism.

The last thing they will blame is the ideological bankruptcy and ineptitude of centre-left politics.

“- the democratic system actually works quite well

- people are free to follow a religion of their choice without the intervention of the state (i.e. no anti-conversion/apostasy laws)

- the state ensures equal rights to members of minority communities

- politicians don’t generally magnify and exploit divisions between religious communities to stay in or gain power

- the state does not stand by and allow pogroms on minoity communities

- no politician is above the law and immune to scrutiny

- society in general has embraced the values of the Constitution”

Not in the US, you are right, but the US sure does support most of the things above in other countries (some of the happenings above that occur in other countries, however, are cherry picked to prove a point and/or convince the masses that we need to intervene to ‘bring democracy’…ahem.

But I do beg to differ on this point:

“politicians don’t generally magnify and exploit divisions between religious communities to stay in or gain power”

Not divisions, but evidently, there are some religions that are the bogeymen of the day, and I don’t need to say which one that is right now.

- the democratic system actually works quite well

- people are free to follow a religion of their choice without the intervention of the state (i.e. no anti-conversion/apostasy laws)

- the state ensures equal rights to members of minority communities

- politicians don’t generally magnify and exploit divisions between religious communities to stay in or gain power

- the state does not stand by and allow pogroms on minoity communities

- no politician is above the law and immune to scrutiny

- society in general has embraced the values of the Constitution

Not anymore, with the advent of Republican “Christian Zionists”.