The Immigrant Experience: Pakistanis in America

New York, NY —

Faisal Shahzad, the suspect in the Times Square car bombing plot, is just one of approximately 650,000 people of Pakistani origin living in the U.S. For some details on the Pakistani diaspora, WNYC's Arun Venugopal spoke with Adil Najam, a professor of International Relations at Boston University and the editor of "Pakistanis in America: Portrait of a Giving Community," an examination of philanthropy.

Is Shahzad an anomaly among Pakistani-Americans, or do you worry about a possible trend?
In some ways it may be neither. A data set of one never makes a trend. So I think it's certainly too early to say this is a trend or there's some brewing larger problem. On the other hand, one knows that there is alienation in Muslim communities living in the U.S. --not just Pakistanis -- and that alienation sometimes leads to anger.

When I think of Indians in the U.S., I picture a fairly wealthy, highly educated community. What about Pakistanis in America – what can you tell us about them? Is the profile similar?
The profile is very similar. Pakistanis in America are generally educated. They are generally affluent. So the average Pakistani in America is likely to be more affluent than the average American in America. And they are dispersed all across the country. Part of the reason for that is the way Pakistanis come to the U.S. is for education.

We’ve heard a good deal about radicalized Pakistanis in the U.K. and Europe far more than here in the U.S. What do you think accounts for that difference?
The most important reason is really about how they came, when they came, and why they came. The Pakistani American community is a more recent community. They came usually individually or as families, not as communities. In Europe, on the other hand, they came at an earlier stage. Many of them came as refugees, which means that entire communities were moved, and when communities move they go and set up other communities. Part of the difference there is that you find concentrations of Pakistanis in Europe and particularly in the U.K., whereas you do not in the U.S.

Aside from the immigration patterns, is there something about American society or government policy that makes for a more well-adjusted population? What does the U.S. do right?
The U.S. has a much longer and deeper history of immigration and assimilation because it is a country of immigrants. So the immigrant experience in the U.S. also becomes different. But the geography of immigration in the case of Pakistanis and of Indians and many Asian immigrants is also different because they get dispersed over this very large country. And therefore you do not see these patterns, except in a few places, of very large concentrations around one geography. You see that a little in New York, you see that a little in Chicago, and some in Texas. But for the most part what you see is a spread out community. That forces a certain assimilation on the immigrant because you are surrounded by people who are also like you, but by different types of people. And you are also surrounded by a society that actually has a greater infrastructure for assimilation.

We don't know the specifics about Shahzad's religous leanings but let's talk briefly about religion. We occasionally hear about some really angry imams in other Western countries. Given all the hostility directed toward the U.S. government, how is it there aren’t more people like that, stirring up crowds at American mosques and in the community?
If you have dispersed, small communities you aren't going to have large concentrations for mosques. That means the mosque itself is going to be small -- and that means that very often you do not have full-time mosque leaders or imams as you might have in larger communities in Europe and elsewhere. Very often they are led voluntarily by people within the community. So that's one reason. The other is, because of the impact of 9/11 and because of the political costs of 9/11, the community itself has had a very visible vigilance in terms of what was being talked about in the mosque -- and not just in the mosque but in all sorts of community gatherings.

Are there other things you hope will happen in terms of people speaking out about these types of incidents or trying to "police" the community?
I think a key element here is for the media as well as society not to take an incident and extrapolate upon it to make large blanket statements about a community as a whole.