What do American Muslims believe?Mike Rappaport

This poll of American Muslims, conducted by the Pew Charitable Trust, is disturbing in many ways, although it does suggests American Muslims as a group hold much better views than Muslims in other countries.

While nearly 80 percent of U.S. Muslims say suicide bombings ofcivilians to defend Islam can not be justified, 13 percent say they canbe, at least rarely.

“It is a hair-raising number,” said Radwan Masmoudi, president ofthe Washington-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, whichpromotes the compatibility of Islam with democracy.

Even so, U.S. Muslims are far less accepting of suicide attacks thanMuslims in many other nations. In surveys Pew conducted last year,support in some Muslim countries exceeded 50 percent, while it wasconsidered justifiable by about one in four Muslims in Britain andSpain, and one in three in France.

[O]nly one in four consider the U.S. war on terrorism a sincereattempt to curtail international terror. Only 40 percent said theybelieve Arab men carried out the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

This last point is striking.  I can believe that Muslims in the Middle East for a variety of reasons, including the dishonesty of their governments and their news media, could doubt that Arabs carried out the attacks on 9-11.  But only 40 percent in the US believe Arabs did it? 

Actually, having read some of the magazines that are available for American Muslims in my local library, this does not entirely surprise me.