A new Pew poll indicates that as many as one in four young American Muslims condones suicide bombings against civilians, at least sometimes.
That adds up, the New York Post writes, to about 117,000 Muslims between ages 18 and 29. Another 6 percent of those aged 30 and above – that is, 63,000 more – also assert terror strikes at times may be acceptable.
These are “hair-raising” numbers, says Radwan Masmoudi, of the Center for Islam and Democracy.
Yet perhaps the issue should lift even more hair than the Pew poll suggests. That is, perhaps Pew did not pose some of the more awful questions.
For there is another global poll – a stringently conducted face-to-face University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org interview survey of 4,384 Muslims. It raises questions about what should have been asked of U.S. Muslims, specifically, about support for the worldwide imposition of Islam, the caliphate, and strictly imposed Islamic law (sharia).
Andrew Bostom comments at American Thinker on the university-WPO poll that
the preponderance of contemporary mainstream Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia, apparently share with their murderous, jihad terror waging co-religionists from al-Qaeda the goal (if not necessarily supporting the gruesome means) of re-establishing an Islamic Caliphate. Polling data just released (April 24, 2007) in a rigorously conducted face-to-face University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org interview survey of 4384 Muslims conducted between December 9, 2006 and February 15, 2007-1000 Moroccans, 1000 Egyptians, 1243 Pakistanis, and 1141 Indonesians-reveal that 65.2% of those interviewed-almost 2/3, hardly a “fringe minority”-desired this outcome (i.e., “To unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or Caliphate”), including 49% of “moderate” Indonesian Muslims. The internal validity of these data about the present longing for a Caliphate is strongly suggested by a concordant result: 65.5% of this Muslim sample approved the proposition “To require a strict [emphasis added] application of Shari’a law in every Islamic country.”
How would have American Muslims responded? This, in the next U. Md or Pew poll, demands to be answered.