Friday, March 6, 2009

Religious Biases Coming Back?

Brad Greenberg writes a great article on racism and religious bias:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0227/p09s01-coop.html

Though some Jewish money managers have proved to be scoundrels at best, like Shylock, it is not because they are Jewish – just as Christianity did not inspire Ken Lay to cheat Enron's shareholders. Indeed, Jews may be the easy historical target, but scapegoating misses the moral of our own failures. The real responsibility lies with all of us.

More from Mr. Greenberg can be found here.

Also, from the NYT, here are some interesting survey results about American Muslims:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/us/02muslims.html

One excerpt, showing the diversity within Islam:

But American Muslims are not one homogeneous group, the study makes clear. Asian-American Muslims (from countries like India and Pakistan) have more income and education and are more likely to be thriving than other American Muslims. In fact, their quality of life indicators are higher than for most other Americans, except for American Jews...

American Muslims are generally very religious, saying that religion is an important part of their daily lives (80 percent), more than any other group except Mormons (85 percent). The figure for Americans in general is 65 percent.


By political ideology, Muslims were spread across the spectrum from liberal to conservative, with about 4 in 10 saying they were moderates. By party identification, Muslims resembled Jews more than any other religious group, with small minorities registered as Republicans, roughly half Democrats and about a third independents.

The poll shows that American Muslims tend to be diverse, highly educated, religious, and Democratic.

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