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Journalism of Courage
The stretch of Devon Avenue in North Chicago also named for Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, seems as if it has been transplanted directly from that country. The shops are packed with traditional wedding finery, and the spice mix in the restaurants’ kebabs is just right.
Similar enclaves in Britain have been under scrutiny since they have proved to be a breeding ground for cells of terrorists, possibly including the 24 men arrested recently as suspects in a plot to blow up airliners flying out of London.
Yet Devon Avenue is in many ways different. Although heavily Pakistani, the street is far more exposed to other cultures than are similar communities in Britain.
“There is integration even when you have an enclave,” said Nizam Arain, 32, a lawyer of Pakistani descent who was born and raised in Chicago. “You don’t have the same siege mentality.”
The most common response is no, at least not now, because of differences that have made Pakistanis in the US far better off economically and more assimilated culturally than their counterparts in Britain. The idea of a relatively smaller, more prosperous, more striving immigrant community inoculated against terror goes only so far, they say. “It makes it sound like it couldn’t happen here because we are the good immigrants: hard-working, close-knit, educated,” said Junaid Rana, assistant professor of Asian-American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and American-born son of Pakistani immigrants. “But we are talking about a cult mind-set, how a cult does its brainwashing.”
Yet one major difference between the US and Britain, some say, is the United States’ historical ideal of being a melting-pot meritocracy. “You can keep the flavour of your ethnicity, but you are expected to become an American,” said Omer Mozaffar, 34, a Pakistani-American raised here who is working toward a doctorate in Islamic studies at the University of Chicago.
Britain remains far more rigid. In the US, for example, Pakistani physicians are more likely to lead departments at hospitals or universities than they are in Britain, said Dr. Tariq H. Butt, a 52-year-old family physician who arrived in the US 25 years ago for his residency. Nationwide, Pakistanis appear to be prospering. The census calculated that 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.
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.
NEIL MacFARQUHAR
