US Muslims and Suicide Bombings

25% of US Muslims under 30 support suicide bombings in some capacity. As a 26 year old American-Muslim, I am concerned about these findings.

The Pew Center for Research recently released the findings of a comprehensive survey about US Muslims, entitled "Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream." The study confirms the already obvious -- that US Muslims are mostly well integrated and quite well off. There is no reason to celebrate this "discovery" because US Muslims have known this for quite some time.

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. Political violence, except when authorized by the state, is supposed to be completely forbidden under Islamic Law. It is supposed to be the one area where traditionalists, reformists, progressives, and revivalists all agree. In fact, a favorite refrain among US Muslims about Bin Laden has been that he manipulated the Islamic sources to justify anarchist political violence. Yet 25% of American Muslim youth -- the future of Ameican Islam -- think political violence of this kind is OK? That is a problem, to say the least.

Not only that, but a suicide bombing is not actually a "defensive" act at all. It is affirmative, assertive, offensive. It requires getting pissed off over something, standing up from the couch, planning, deliberating, and then finding access to those who have experience in helping you blow yourself up.

I have some speculation about what may have occurred with this question. The young Muslim heard a question about justification of suicide bombings, took it as code for whether resisting Israeli occupation by way of suicide bombings was OK, and then said yes. Given that the survey did not ask about suicide bombings in the US, and that almost 90% of US Muslims under 30 are happy with their lives in the US, this, in fact, might be what happened. It might, therefore, be possible that US Muslim youth don't themselves want to do suicide bombings in the US, but still a quarter of them have no problems seeing Muslims engage in suicide bombings in other places.

I have to ask the apologists why I should be heartened by this. I also fail to see why I should accept it. Saying it is OK for others to kill themselves-and civilians-of-other-places is an obscene kind of bigotry. Strangely, the media has already welcomed commentators and researcher who make this doing-suicide-bombing-is-bad-but-espousing-suicide-bombing-is-not-as-bad argument. I hope US Muslims, my peers especially, reject this attitude. It isn't just wrong, but it demotes the dignity of Muslims in other parts of the world. Furthermore, it doesn't exactly matter what other Muslims in other parts of the world think. The benchmark for correct behavior for US Muslims isn't the rest of the world. It is America.

What adds to the problem, though, is that the under 30 group is also the one frequenting mosques the most.

50% of those under 30 go to a mosque at least once a week (presumably the Friday prayer), while only 35% of those above 30 do so.

This particular survey does not provide a conclusive way of making a correlation between going to mosques and espousing political violence. It is possible that a lot of those who are between 18 and 30 are at universities where attending a Friday prayer is much easier than in the working world. However, even the possibility of a correlation between increased religiosity and espousal of violence should be a cause of concern for US Muslims, especially because we know that hateful literature from overseas does enter US mosques.

Presumably, the Islamic Society of North America, the largest congregation of US Muslims, whose president was one of the advisors of this Pew Survey, will look into whether there is indeed such a correlation. However, that is what would happen in an ideal world. In the real world, ISNA takes a hands-off approach to what occurs in local mosques and universities around the country, both because it is strapped for resources, and because CAIR, the US Muslim organization with actual media clout, does not consider it part of its mission to deal with the radicalization of youth (as it is an advocacy organization). This means that at the moment there are no actual US Muslim institutions looking at what is happening with Muslim youth and radicalization. MPAC has been promising some kind of college program from Muslim students for so long that I have given up waiting for it.

Some cause for optimism comes from my immediate peers -- Muslim lawyers under 30. As I speak I have been informed that the New York chapter of the Muslim Bar is organizing an event catered towards Muslims showing that Islamic Law forbids suicide bombings. Similarly, Kamran Memon, a civil rights attorney in Chicago, and founder of Muslims for a Safe America, has been engaged in raising significant awareness on national security issues that relate to US Muslims.

My sense is that a lot of Muslim organizations will hail the fact that US Muslims are now considered "mainstream" while simultaneously leaving it to scattered activists here and there to deal with the actual problems discovered.

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In my next post, on Saturday, I will look at the social ramifications of some of the findings.

Discussion about these matters can continue at States of Islam, an interactive inter-faith forum set up akin to Daily Kos. Register here.