Most Muslims are moderate, but ...

There is an old joke about the Pope landing in Paris and being asked if he was planning to visit nightclubs by the Press. The Pope responded with ``Are there nightclubs in Paris?", whereupon the next day the newspapers blared, ``Pope asks if there are nightclubs in Paris.'' A somewhat less funny situation has arisen with a so-called study of American Muslims which concludes that 1 in 4 young American Muslims say that suicide bombings are alright under certain circumstances. Here is a link to an odious article on the subject. I would like to know what was the question that was asked from which this conclusion was drawn. In fact the very sentence ``American Muslims are generally moderate and well-assimilated, especially when compared to Muslims in Europe and the Middle East.'' is itself quite odious. What does it mean to be `moderate' and `well-assimilated'? Does it mean that one can bull-shit at parties about music and literature and drink beer and hold a cigarette? As opposed to being pious and restrained and adhere to a dress code that one's culture may dictate. An old friend of mine once said that he has many friends who are `progressive' Muslims, and when I demanded a definition, someone else at the table said that that is one that behaves as Hindu! This is the tyranny of the mainstream discourse. In any case, I direct the interested readerof this blog to several articles at Sujaiblog. Another friend once said that the resistance in Palestine would have been no different if the oppressed there had been Milenisian frog worshippers. In other words, the national question there has nothing to do with Islam.