Institutional Breakdown - Whitewashing the Problem

Our institutions are failing us and here is one of the more recent examples; The Pew Research Center recently published the results of a poll of 55,000 American Muslims which it and much of the Media have characterized as showing that Muslims in America "are largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world." As was pointed out by Dennis Prager, Pew and much of the media have tried to put "lipstick on a pig." To their credit though, unlike the buried EU study showing rampant Muslim youth hate crimes there, Pew has not tried to lock away the bad news.

Relatively few Muslim Americans believe the U.S.-led war on terror is a sincere effort to reduce terrorism, and many doubt that Arabs were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Just 40% of Muslim Americans say groups of Arabs carried out those attacks.

The poll reveals that Muslims in the United States reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries, when compared with results from a 2006 Pew Global Attitudes Project survey. However, there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are more likely than older Muslim Americans to express a strong sense of Muslim identity, and are much more likely to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified.

Very few Muslim Americans – just 1% – say that suicide bombings against civilian targets are often justified to defend Islam; an additional 7% say suicide bombings are sometimes justified in these circumstances.

Views about terrorism are broadly shared by all segments of the Muslim American population, but the polling does find pockets of support for extremism. Overall, just 5% of Muslim Americans express even somewhat favorable opinions of al Qaeda. Yet strong hostility toward al Qaeda varies widely – 63% of foreign-born U.S. Muslims say they have a very unfavorable opinion of al Qaeda, compared with 51% of all native-born Muslims, and just 36% of African American Muslims.

Pew's narrative explanation of the poll tends to highlight the positive results while downplaying the negative. For instance 5% of all American Muslims have a favorable opinion of Al-Qaeda. In addition to that, 27% chose to express no opinion of Al-Qaeda. Based on Pew's estimate of 2.35 million Muslims in America, nearly 120,000 Muslims in America have a favorable view of Al-Qaeda while a whopping 23,500 approve suicide bombings! Does that represent Mainstream America? More than 1 out of 4 American Muslims (or nearly 600,000 people) refuse to express a negative opinion of the world's most virulent cancer yet are presented as "mainstream." Yeah, right! 60% of mainstream America do not believe Arabs carried out the 9/11 attack. Would the Pew people or the media have us believe that 17% of mainstream America believe suicide attacks are justified (8%) or refused to condemn them (9%)? BTW - 12% of foreign born Arabs think that suicide bombings may be justified. Pew says "not to worry", compared to other countries our Mohammedans are wonderful liberal people.

Muslim Americans hold liberal political views on questions about the size and scope of government. At the same time, however, they are socially conservative and supportive of a strong role for government in protecting morality. When asked to choose, 70% express a preference for a larger government providing more services; just 21% prefer a smaller government providing fewer services.

"Institutional breakdown" is how I describe the media's ideological whitewash of critical issues facing this country. More and more, it seems that the truth is subverted in order to advance a left wing secular, anti-Christian agenda. Think I'm crazy? Substitute the word Christian for the word Muslim and imagine the media's enraged reaction. What is this country coming to?