"About 1 in 4 young adult American Muslims says suicide bombings against civilian targets 'to defend Islam' can be justified"

Such a comforting thought, isn't it? "About 1 in 4 young adult American Muslims says suicide bombings against civilian targets 'to defend Islam' can be justified rarely, sometimes or often, according to a new Pew Research Center poll," says an article in today's San Francisco Chronicle.

Several American Muslim leaders said survey respondents, particularly those 18 to 29, were probably thinking about foreign policy and Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation -- and do not support attacks such as the Sept. 11 hijackings or the train bombings in London and Madrid.

"To believe that Palestinians are justified in retaliating and fighting back is a different animal than attacking America," said Ihsan Bagby, an Islamic studies professor at the University of Kentucky and an adviser to the Pew Research Center poll. "One does not have any security implications for America, and the other is a localized struggle to fight an occupier."

How reassuring, isn't it? (Not!)

Farid Senzai, a Fremont resident and director of research for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, which helped shape the questions on the survey . . . cautioned that the figures should be kept in context: Only 1 percent of Muslims overall said suicide bombings are "often" justifiable and an additional 7 percent said they are "sometimes" justifiable.

No need for worry! "Only" one in a hundred American Muslims think a lot of suicide bombs are justified; one in fourteen think it's okay at least sometimes. Oh. And a "mere" 26 percent of American Muslims under 30 think suicide bombings are ever justifiable.

Commenting on the positive spin placed upon these numbers by Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C., Ace of Spades HQ says,

I ask of Mr. Hooper: Would he feel relieved if I told him right now 69% of young non-Muslim[s] opposed, but 26% supported, killing you and fellow Muslims? . . .

I don't think so. I think he'd call that "hatred" and "backlash."

So I'm not getting why he thinks that we should be happy that only one in four young Muslim[s] are open to murdering the rest of us.

Ace of Spades HQ continues:

The Voice of America is a government outfit. So of course they must give us the straight dope, right?

Poll: US Muslims Feel Post-9/11 Backlash Despite Moderate Outlook

Psst: Some of that "backlash" you feel may be due to the 26% of young American Muslim[s] who [have few compunctions about random mass murder]. Just a thought. Sometimes people take a little thing like murder personally.

Also, I don't know if support for murder is technically "moderate."

D*mn bigoted Americans. Giving us dirty looks and harassing us just because an alarmingly high number of us support random mass murders. . . . The very nerve.

The New York Times-owned International Herald Tribune must get it right, right? Paper of record and all.

Muslims assimilate better in U.S. than Europe, poll finds

Better? Yes. US Muslims wish to murder their fellow citizens at [a] rate lower by at least ten percent. Isn't that terrific?

You can find more details about the survey in the full, PDF-based Pew Research Center report, "Muslim-Americans."