Good news and bad news - what the new Pew survey reveals about America's Muslims

The non-partisan Pew Research Center has a highly revealing new survey on America's Muslims.

It was done utilizing over 55,000 interviews to obtain a national sample of 1,050 Muslims living in the United States. Interviews were conducted in English, Arabic, Farsi and Urdu and the resulting study also draws on Pew's survey research among Muslims around the world.

For starters, the Pew report reveals that contrary to CAIR and the MPAC's outlandish estimates of 7 million Muslims in America, the actual numbers are more like 2.35 million, based on data from this survey and the available Census Bureau data on immigrants' `nativity and nationality'.

Here's the good news - Muslims in America are mainly mainstream and middle class, as compared to Western Europe:



Here's the bad news.

While Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism and consider themselves Americans first and Muslims second by larger percentages than European Muslims, those statistics looked at through the telescope are nothing to celebrate...and indeed, cause for concern among both non-Muslims and moderate Muslims.

For instance, if only 47% of America's Muslims feel they owe their first allegiance to the Muslim umma as opposed to America, that is still almost half...around a million Muslims if Pew's figures are to be believed.

And only 43% say that Muslims should assimilate with mainstream America and adopt American customs.

Moreover, the overall trend is away from the present mainstream, as the survey reveals that younger Muslims are much more likely than older Muslims to support Islamic extremism and say that homicide bombings and other terrorist attacks can be justified in `defense of Islam.' Around 15% of Muslims 30 and under support terrorist attacks on civilians to `defend Islam', as opposed to around 8% of American Muslims overall...and 60% of Muslims 30 and under think of themselves as Muslims first and Americans second.

Only a relatively few American Muslim Americans believe the U.S.-led war on terror is about combating Islamic extremism, and only 40% of American Muslims say that al Qaeda and Arabs were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. What's more, the percentage rises significantly with Muslims 30 and younger.

Those jihadi mosques financed by the Saudis are bearing their poisoned fruit.

One thing I found questionable ( and frankly, a nauseating example of moral relativism) about the survey was the politically correct attempts to compare Muslim attitudes with the attitudes of Christians expressed on previous surveys on some topics concerning the importance of faith and religion in daily life.

Significantly, there was no comparison of Muslim and Christian attitudes on topics like support for al Qaeda or justification for homicide bombing and terrorism.

Hat tip to Charles over at lgf