American Morning
Engaging with Muslim communities
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on Engaging with Muslim Communities
Eboo Patel's comments/recommendations
February 26, 2009
Increased communication and new technology has led to new forms of identity engagement amongst youth, which are less reliant on traditional nation-state boundaries and more likely to be influenced by transnational factors.
There is a youth bulge in Muslim countries. In Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip, the median age is about 17 years; in Iraq and Pakistan it is barely 20, and in Syria and Saudi Arabia the median is about 21.5 years. This trend extends all over the Middle East and North Africa – the median age is under 27 in Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan.
These youth are faced with changing socio-economic factors that create insecurity. There is a clear lack of job opportunities and services to meet the needs of these youth. The unemployment rates in Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip have been estimated at close to 40%, and in Jordan and Iraq this number is around 30%.2 Without gainful employment and the potential for traditional social roles or upward social mobility, these young people are becoming frustrated and lost.
As of 2003, there were 15 million Muslims in the European Union (three times more than in the United States at the time). Moreover, in 2003 the Muslim birth rate in Europe was triple that of the non-Muslim birth rate. By 2015, the Muslim population in Europe will have doubled, while the non-Muslim population will have declined by 3.5%. Many of these European young Muslims face issues such as discrimination, economic deprivation, underemployment, and residence in ghettoized communities. Among native-born Muslims in Europe, there is often a feeling that they do not have a stake in larger society, and must choose between their religion and citizenship. On a recent trip to Europe, Patel's team observed a widespread sense of frustration amongst Muslim youth at their inability to freely express their religious identity, a feeling of isolation, and a willingness to identify oneself in opposition to the larger society.
Osama bin Laden is a brilliant youth organizer. Like entrepreneurs, they realized the potential of this massive market of young Muslims for the "product" of totalitarian Islam. The result of this recruitment was an international network of Muslim youths schooled in the ideology of totalitarian Islam, taught to hate the "imperialist infidel", and trained to kill – and that is who became Al Qaeda.
What’s on Tap – Thursday August 13, 2009
Here are the big stories on the agenda today:
- President Obama is getting ready for another road trip to pitch health care reform, but at town hall meetings yesterday in Pennsylvania, Iowa and Maryland, senators were shouted down. Rumors of death panels and worries about “grandma” are putting health care reform on life support. We are here to separate fact from fiction and filter out the noise. And we’re live at the White House with the president’s plans to turn around an angry tide.
- The town hall tear up controversy. A man takes a poster of Rosa Parks and rips it in half at a town hall meeting on health care outside St. Louis. The man was arrested and the woman was escorted out. A new angle of the confrontation is revealing a whole new side to this story today. And the woman who brought that sign in will join us live with her side of the story.
- Back from the brink? The Federal Reserve said that the economy is “leveling out,” following the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. It's the closest to an official pronouncement of the end of the recession so far. But it comes with a word of caution: most Americans won't feel like things are significantly better right away. So, how do you feel. Let us know right here or at 877-MY-AM-FIX.
Mapping the world, one street at a time
CNN
(CNN) - Between GPS devices on your car's dashboard and digital maps of almost any locale in the world on your smartphone or laptop, it's hard to get lost these days.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/TECH/08/12/digital.mapping/art.car.cnn.jpg caption="Each orange Tele Atlas mapping van has six cameras, two side-sweeping lasers and a GPS on its roof. "]
We may take these 21st-century services for granted. But someone still needs to do the actual legwork of mapping these places and making sure the information is accurate.
Meet the people at Tele Atlas, the company that provides so-called "base maps" to such high-profile clients as Google, MapQuest and RIM, the maker of the BlackBerry. Tele Atlas also provides digital-mapping services for its corporate owner, the portable-navigation company TomTom.
You can't say the company isn't ambitious.
"Our ultimate goal would be to map the entire world," says Pat McDevitt, vice president of engineering at Tele Atlas, which is based in the Netherlands and has its U.S. headquarters in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
Base maps are the raw data - highways, streets, stop lights and exit signs - that navigation companies use as a starting point before adding their own applications.
Most of the industrialized world has been base-mapped already. But Tele Atlas is constantly updating pre-existing maps to include new roads, traffic signals and buildings.
Tele Atlas gets this information by combining satellite imagery, local, state and federal maps and most importantly, putting the rubber to the road in its Mobile Mapping Vans.
Congressman: Hate mail, Nazi graffiti follow health care protests
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) - A Georgia congressman said Wednesday he's received death threats and found Nazi graffiti outside his office in the aftermath of heated protests about health care reform.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/POLITICS/08/12/congressman.swastika/art.swastika.cnn.jpg caption="Rep. David Scott's staff found a swastika on a sign outside his district office in Georgia."]
David Scott, a Democrat from north-central Georgia, told CNN he has received several offensive faxes and letters, including some with death threats and racial abuse.
Scott is black. His district includes part of metro Atlanta.
The congressman showed CNN a cartoon of Barack Obama, depicting the president as a clown with a swastika on his head, which Scott said he had received in the mail.
Tuesday, his staff found a swastika painted over Scott's name on a sign outside his office.
"I was just simply appalled," he said.
"This symbol represents the most heinous period in world history, indicative of man's greatest inhumanity to man, where nearly 6 million Jewish people and others were murdered purposely by Adolf Hitler," Scott said. "So when you reach that point ... this is very, very dangerous."
Local police and the F.B.I. are investigating.
Scott said he believes the swastika and hate mail are a result of the acrimonious health care debate.
About this Show
Welcome to the American Morning blog where you can get daily news updates from American Morning's reporters and producers. Join us for "the most news in the morning," weekdays from 6-9 a.m. ET, only on CNN.
On Twitter
