RUSH: I was preparing for this program last night and spinning through the news, kept seeing all these news stories on this Pew study about how moderate Muslims in America are. I ignored it because the instincts just took over. I got a collection here of headlines to illustrate things that I saw last night, and these headlines seem to present a uniform picture of the good assimilating moderate American Muslim. My experience with the Drive-By Media is that once one of them reports something, they all pick up on it, the same theme — I just don’t trust it. So I got in here today and I really wasn’t going to pay much attention to this, and I read a piece by Debbie Schlussel at her blog, DebbieSchlussel.com, and she starts out this way. She says, ‘For almost six years, we’ve heard the constant chorus: ‘Muslims in America are different.’ On 9/11, we were told that American Muslims would never commit the attacks like those perpetrated upon 3,000 Americans by 19 foreign Arab Muslims in our midst. The 19 men were different than Muslims in America, because they ‘hijacked their religion,’ we were told. On 7/7, we were told that European Muslims are different. We were told that American Muslims would never try to blow up subways and train stations here, unlike those in London who did it … twice, and those in Madrid who killed far more on their trains. We were told — and continue to be told — that American Muslims would never continuously riot in the streets, burning hundreds of cars a day, as they’ve been doing throughout France, going on 3 years, and violently attacking and injuring more than a dozen police per day. American Muslims are different, we’re told. They’re far more assimilated, far more successful financially,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
‘Well, now we’ve come to find out that Muslims in America are not so different from their co-religionists around the world. In fact, their viewpoints are pretty much the same as that of their religious counterparts around the world, and getting more extreme with age and American upbringing. The message of the just-released Pew Research Center study on ‘Muslim Americans’ is clear (if you can get beyond the biased press coverage and headlines): America hasn’t moderated Islam or its adherents. Islam has made America Muslim residents more extreme, just as with its European counterparts. Wealth and education and opportunity and freedom have done nothing to moderate them.’ Here are some of the details from this survey. If you only read the headline, and you didn’t read deep in any of these stories, this might come as a surprise to you. ‘More than one in four Muslims (or 26%), aged 18-29, said ‘Suicide Bombing is Justified.”
Now, lets run the numbers. What do we have, two and a half million Muslims in America, living here, break it down, whatever percentage of them are between 18 and 29, then take 26% of that. You’re talking about a significant number of people in the demographic group that do take action like this around the world. ‘Two percent of them say it can often be justified, 13% say sometimes, and 11% say rarely.’ So let’s add it up, 26 and 2 is 28, so 31% think to one degree or another, suicide bombing is justified. If you add to that the 5% that don’t know or refuse to answer, it’s even worse. So almost a third of young American Muslims who support in one way or another homicide bombings according to the Pew poll. ‘12% of foreign-born Arab Muslims said that ‘Suicide Bombing Can be Justified Often/Sometimes.’ That’s more than one in ten. 10% of them don’t know/refused to answer. That’s a total of 22% who apparently support homicide bombings. That’s more than one in five and almost one in four.’ Yet the headlines all last night on this story were, ‘Muslims assimilating in America. Muslims are moderate.’
‘Eight percent of all U.S. Muslims said suicide bombing is justified. Add to that the 9% that don’t know/refused to answer, and you get 17%, almost 1 in 5 American Muslims,’ support suicide bombings. It goes even further. We’ve heard for a long time that American Muslims, that Al-Qaeda doesn’t represent Islam, and Al-Qaeda’s hijacked the religion. ‘More than one in four American Muslims, aged 18-29, support Al-Qaeda. 7% outright viewed it favorably, plus 19% don’t know/refused to answer–for a total of 26%. Yup, more than one in four young Muslims in America supports Qaeda. One third of American Muslims age thirty or more support Al-Qaeda. 4% support the group outright, plus the 29% that refused to answer, for a total of 33%. If you can’t answer an outright no to this question, you support Al-Qaeda. Of all American Muslims, only 58% have a very unfavorable view of Al-Qaeda.’ Well, okay, fine, but 42% do.
Now, as I say, I’m not surprised by this. None of this surprises me. The point that I wish to make is the headlines that heralded all of this, and let me just share some of them with you, thanks to the people at Ace of Spades headquarters at Pajamas Media, I guess. USA Today poll: ‘Most Muslims seek to adopt American lifestyle.’ And then they give supporting quotes. Voice of America poll: ‘US Muslims feel post-9/11 backlash, despite moderate outlook.’ New York Times and their International Herald Tribune: ‘Muslims assimilate better in US than Europe, poll finds.’ Medialine: ‘Pew poll shows American Muslims believe solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict is possible.’ Chicago Tribune: ‘US Muslims more content, assimilated than those abroad.’ The Pew polling organization itself headlined their own story with, ‘Muslim Americans: middle class and mostly mainstream.’ USA Today’s blog headline: ‘Muslim Americans overwhelmingly Democratic but conservative on many issues.’ And the Detroit News: ‘Survey: Muslims largely assimilated in United States.’ Yet we have significant numbers of them who say they support Al-Qaeda, that they support suicide bombings, they support other types of violence. So why these headlines? Because the Drive-By Media, in concert with the Democrat Party, cannot permit the American people to agree with George Bush or to understand that Bush is right about the threat that we face from Islamofascists.