Trump position:
“Assimilation has been very hard... They come — they don’t — for some reason, there’s no real assimilation”
Politifact response:
“[only]56 percent of Muslim Americans said that most Muslims...want to adopt American customs and ways of life....20 percent said most Muslims coming to the U.S. want to be distinct from the larger American society..about half of Muslims said they thought of themselves first as a Muslim, rather than as American...84 percent of 12-to-18-year-old Muslim Americans... were comfortable with their “hyphenated identities”... “They don’t feel the need to pick one over the other.”...”In the 1970s and 1980s, Muslim leaders explicitly urged their people to avoid assimilating into the American mainstream and to withdraw into Islamic community centers, schools, and colleges,” ...Sarah Lyons-Padilla... and Michele Gelfand...describe “assimilation” as part of an older “melting pot” model...”We should not confuse integration with assimilation,” Lyons-Padilla and Gelfand have written. “Integration means encouraging immigrants to call themselves American, German or French and to take pride in their own cultural and religious heritage.”...Muslim-Americans’ support for “assimilation” — essentially, the melting-pot model — is low, statistically, at 1.76 on a 6-point scale...”This tells you that Muslim Americans don’t want to assimilate into American culture at the expense of giving up their own cultural identity
CONCLUSION: Politifact did an excellent job proving Trump’s position for him.
Muslims are not interested in assimilating, and in response, liberal scholars are insanely demanding we throw out the ‘melting pot’ model in exchange for a Balkanization, not loyalty to America, model.
It matters not what the majority of Muslims want or believe. What sets them apart are the attitudes of a minority, which condone the killing of civilians for whatever reason they see as advancing Islam. It’s this minority that has caused havoc around the world. Those few who carry out attacks are sheltered by others.
The Pew results, therefore, are not good news for the rest of us. It will not be until Muslims control their own that threat will pass. Sadly, I see scant evidence that the Muslim community is or will do so soon.