Submission:
The Next American Religion?

[This article consists of excerpts taken from “Islam: The Next Ameri-can Religion?” which appeared on beliefnet.com. The web address of the original article is provided at the end, below author’s name.]

The U.S. began as a haven for Christian outcasts. But what religion fits our current zeitgeist [spirit of the time]? The answer may be Islam.

Americans tend to think of their country as, at the very least, a nominally Christian nation. Didn’t the Pilgrims come here for freedom to practice their Christian religion? Don’t Christian values of righteousness under God, and freedom, reinforce America’s democratic,

capitalist ideals? True enough. But there’s a new religion on the block now, one that fits the current zeitgeist nicely. It’s Islam. Islam is the third-largest and fastest growing religious community in the United States. This is not just because of immigration. More than 50% of America’s six million Muslims were born here. Statistics like these imply some basic agreement be-tween core American values and the beliefs that Muslims hold. Americans who make the effort to look beyond popular stereotypes to learn the truth of Islam are surprised to find themselves on familiar ground. Is America a Muslim nation? Here are seven reasons the answer may be yes.

Islam is monotheistic. Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christians. They also revere the same prophets as Judaism and Christianity, from Abraham, the first monotheist, to Moses, the law giver and messenger of God, to Jesus—not leaving out Noah, Job, or Isaiah along the way. The concept of a Judeo-Christian tradition only came to the fore in the 1940s in America. Now, as a nation, we may be transcending it, turning to a more inclusive “Abrahamic” view….

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