And so it came to pass, that the muslim community of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, ran out of space: it seems that hey have grown quite a lot these years.

I suspect it is due to immigration: I really do not think it is due to the conversion of locals, I do not know why... :)Anyway, the community buys this parcel to build a community center/mosque, and ( Read more... )

It seems that not all those illegal (brown) immigrants are semi-literate monolingual Spanish-speakers, good only for picking tomatos. Some of them can form full sentences in English. And even some of them can make it into Ivy League colleges. Go figure:

When Mirta Gonzalez was accepted to Harvard in 2004, her relief was mixed with trepidation. As ( Read more... )

As you can see, the idea of immigrants revitalizing the decaying cities in the Rust Belt is gaining force. This time, the city is Detroit, and the new-comers are (gasp!) Arabs:

To disprove the charge that Detroit is in terminal decline, Nafa Khalaf offers himself as Exhibit A. In 1999, when he co-founded his business, which builds water systems ( Read more... )

For some reason, I am fascinated with depopulation: first, it was the rural states of the U.S., with their youth-less demographics. And now, with the urban blight, especially in and around the Rust BeltSome of those cities, like Detroit, Michigan, and Youngstown, Ohio, are dealing with their shrinking population (and tax base) with radical measures ( Read more... )