Thread: Pakistanis Find U.S. an Easier Fit Than Britain

Unlike the UK and ME, Pakistani community in the States has stablished itself and its propering.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Half a million Pakistanis prospering in US

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: There are 500,000 Pakistanis living in the United States and they are prospering, according to a forthcoming book by Adil Najam, a young Pakistani academic at Tufts University, Boston.

The mean household income in the United States in 2002 was $57,852 annually, while that for Asian households, which includes Pakistanis, was $70,047. By contrast, about one-fifth of young British-born Muslims are jobless, and many subsist on welfare, the book says.

A report on the Pakistani community appearing in the New York Times on Monday notes, “Hard numbers on how many people of Pakistani descent live in the United States do not exist, but a forthcoming book from Harvard University Press on charitable donations among Pakistani-Americans, ‘Portrait of a Giving Community,’ puts the number around 500,000, with some 35 percent or more of them in the New York metropolitan area. Chicago has fewer than 100,000, while other significant clusters exist in California, Texas and Washington DC.”

The newspaper report, filed from Chicago, describes in colourful terms a stretch of the sprawling city’s Devon Avenue, part of which is named for Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and part for Mahatma Gandhi. Comparing Pakistani-Americans with their British counterparts, the report quotes Nizam Arain, a lawyer of Pakistani descent who was born and who grew up in Chicago, “You don’t have the same siege mentality.” Asked whether terror cells like those found in Britain could also spring up here, Junaid Rana, an assistant professor at a local university, said, “It makes it sound like it couldn’t happen here because we are the good immigrants: hard-working, close-knit, educated. But we are talking about a cult mind-set, how a cult does its brainwashing.” Omer Mozaffar, a Pakistani-American working for a doctorate at the University of Chicago, stated, “You can keep the flavour of your ethnicity, but you are expected to become an American.”

The newspaper quotes Pakistani poet, broadcaster and gay rights activist Ifti Nasim as saying that in Pakistan, his “flamboyance” would not be tolerated, but here he calls his acceptance “the litmus test of the society”. Like many, however, he has moments of doubt, saying, “Pakistani society in Chicago has made a smooth transition so far, but you never know”. Outward signs of religious devotion will arouse little suspicion in America compared with how they tend to be now viewed in Britain.

However, a change would appear to have taken place because of recent accusations against Muslims of planning to stage terrorist acts in Europe and elsewhere. According to the New York Times report, “For the past eight years, Abdul Qadeer Sheikh, 46, has managed Islamic Books N Things on Devon Avenue, which sells items like Korans, prayer rugs and Arabic alphabet books. He says that since September 11, he has seen signs of the bias that has existed in Britain for decades developing here. He describes a distinctive fear of being seen as Muslim, even along Devon Avenue. Before, a good 70 percent of the women who came into his shop were veiled, he said. Now the reverse is true, and far fewer men wear traditional clothes.”

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...-8-2006_pg7_12