ANOTHER MUSLIM ADDRESSES THE NEW PEW SURVEY: At the Huffington Post, Ali Eteraz addresses one issue in the survey--and will be addressing others:

The focus must be on the problems discovered. 13% of US Muslims of all ages feel that there are scenarios in which suicide bombings are justified. Only 40% of all US Muslims believe that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks. US Muslims, in comparison with all Americans, favor governmental intrusion in morality almost 2 to 1. Numbers show that the Blackamerican Muslim population does not share the financial success or the social optimism of immigrant Muslims. Homosexuals are reviled. A large number of youth, almost three times as many as in Pakistan, believe that there is an inherent conflict between faith and modern life.

Over my next couple of posts I will be evaluating just a few of the troubling and startling discoveries in the survey, starting with the one that has been bothering me the most: 25% of US Muslims under 30 support suicide bombings in some capacity.

This one has plenty of apologists. They argue that the operative question -- "Can Suicide Bombings of Civilian Targets to Defend Islam Be Justified?" -- was phrased badly, because it is perfectly natural for a religious person to want to "defend" his or her faith.

This is bunk.

Read the whole thing.
[Hat tip: Instapundit]

So who is Ali Eteraz? According to his bio:

Ali Eteraz, 26, is an international finance and human rights lawyer. During law school he worked on litigation against US defense contractors involved in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, and since represented plaintiffs defrauded by Wall Street. He is the founder of Eteraz.Org: States of Islam, a think tank and interactive web portal dedicated to cataloging and taking action on legal and legislative reform in the Muslim world (soon to be available in Urdu, Farsi and Arabic). His essays have been published in Counterpunch, Killing the Buddha, The Revealer, and Identity Theory. His personal blog, Unwilling Self-Negation, was a 2006 finalist for an International Best Of Blogs Award. He is currently working on a book about children and Islamic militancy tentatively entitled Prophets in Dust.

Technorati Tag: Pew Survey and Moderate Muslims.