... Optimistic mainstream media (MSM) have understandably focused on the study's positive aspects indicating that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, assimilated, and condemn terrorism. This optimism is necessary because that same majority holds the keys toward decreasing the numbers of the more troubling minority. The realists, however, did the math and raised valid concerns about the implications of the number of potential militant Islamists. The statistics reveal that 1% of the study's estimated 2.3 million Muslim Americans say that suicide bombings against civilian targets are "often justified" and 7% felt, "sometimes justified." This demonstrates a potential threat of 184,000 potential Islamist terrorists in the United States. The study does nothing to connect the imminent responsibility of the remaining 92% in changing, deprogramming, and defeating this radical 8%. Moreover, even more concerning is the total 26% of those younger than 30 who even 'rarely' find justification for terrorism. Again, we find no questions or conclusions from Pew about the responsibility of the remaining 74% to lead a counter-jihad.

[...] The Pew Research Center interestingly sought the advice of some known leading Islamists such as Ingrid Mattson and Ihsan Bagby. Islamists will often try to obfuscate or deny the threat and the goals of political Islam. It doesn't seem that any anti-Islamist Muslims had any input on the poll, which perhaps would have clarified the results on political Islam. Regardless, the data still did not camouflage the problem of political Islam, and the hope from the study that there is a significant plurality if not a majority of Muslims who are potential anti-Islamists. We ignore the signs and symptoms of the threat of political Islam in the Pew study at our own peril.

Make no mistake: current Islamist leadership in America are already running away from the reality of political Islam revealed in this study. Ingrid Mattson, an adviser to the study and the head of the Islamic Society of North America released her "Reflection on the 2007 Pew Report". Her self-described 'Call for Moral Leadership' was not in any way a call against the ends of political Islam. It was not a clear, solitary call of moral courage against Islamist extremism. It was, rather, an apologetic against terrorism, which had the audacity to claim a moral equivalency of Al Qaeda's terror means with the claim by America's politicians that American armed forces also employ torture! Ms. Mattson equates the political ends of Al Qaeda with the ends of our armed forces intending to liberate Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a sweeping statement of grand moral equivalency between terror and torture, she says, "We have allowed the appropriation of sinful and immoral means for political ends."

Nowhere in Mattson's political screed presented under the laudable guise of theological leadership of "imagining of a new Heroism" is she actually able to condemn the ends of America's enemies--the Islamic state. Yet, she is able to juxtapose in an insulting equation a discussion of the barbaric evil of the likes of Al Qaeda with an admonition to our legislators and President to stop supporting torture--a classical Islamist doublespeak mixture of religion and politics. Such juxtaposition of radical Islamism with American political leadership feeds directly from the demagogic techniques of Islamists in order to speak to their Islamist constituencies under the guise of even-handedness. This technique actually perpetuates a greater divide between Muslims and the general American public. Is it any wonder that political Islam is thriving and continuing to provide political fodder for its militant offshoots when such a mixture of religion and politics speaks for American Muslims?

Much more here ...

Related:
Irshad Manji has a positive take on the Pew Research Center poll, and says that it provides a largely positive view of Muslim assimilation in the United States. She points out the results that show:

Seventy-one percent of Muslim Americans believe most people in the United States "can make it if they are willing to work hard."

Seventy-three percent of Muslims say they have never been discriminated against in the United States.

Most Muslims have close friends who are non-Muslims.

More than half of Muslims in the United States identify themselves as Americans first.

Manji says this contrasts with Muslims in Europe who she says face discrimination in employment, subsist largely on welfare, and face secular contempt toward their faith--circumstances that induce many to fall under the sway of radical clerics.