| Thank you for reading Muslim Connect. Sometimes I can’t believe I get to write this and people actually read it! It’s both an honor and great fun.
It’s fun when people write in with helpful critique or additions. Sometimes people agree with what I wrote the previous week, like the guy who said, “You’re right! You are politically naive!” Occasionally people will ask for advice in responding to something a friend sent them. Such an email arrived this week. It raised some interesting and valid questions. Then just before the apparently obligatory, “with the ACLU, there is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on!” I read this line: “In 20+ years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. to elect the President.” If you were to read this, you’d probably think, “How can that be true?” But you have a life and might not get around to actually doing the math. Lucky day! I did it for you. (Yeah, pretty much don’t have a life!) NPR says that it’s mathematically possible to win the Electoral College with only 30,000,000 votes. That’s only 10% of the voting age population! Crazy, but that’s our system and this email is not about bashing the Electoral College! Solid research estimates that 3,500,000 Muslims live in the U.S. right now. This number grows by 100,000 per year or about 3%. At that rate, in twenty years, the Muslim population will be 6.3 million; in 50 years, 15 million. That means it will take 73 years to produce 23,000,000 voting-eligible Muslims, who would all have to vote for the same person, in an wildly unlikely scenario to “elect the President!” This also assumes a stagnant non-Muslim U.S. population. “20+ years?” Right! Twenty years, plus fifty more and bucket full of magic dust! Let’s be innocent as doves, but not forget to also be wise as serpents. When someone is obviously trying to scare you on the one hand, they’re likely going for your wallet with the other! |