Are Young American Muslims To Be Suicide Bombers?

I was just reading the story on line about the new Pew Research Center survey which shows that one in four younger U.S. Muslims said in a poll that suicide bombings to defend Islam are acceptable in at least some circumstances, although most Muslim Americans overwhelmingly rejected the tactic and said they are critical of Islamic extremism and al Qaeda.
It is one of the most exhaustive ever of the country's Muslims, revealed a community that in many ways blends comfortably into society. Most of the members express nearly as much happiness with their lives and communities as does the general public. They are mostly willing to adopt American customs and have income and education levels similar to others in the U.S.
The trend that is most disturbing is that while nearly 80 percent of U.S. Muslims said suicide bombings of civilians to defend Islam cannot be justified, 13 percent said they can be, at least rarely.
That sentiment was strongest among those younger than 30. Two percent of them said it often can be justified, 13 percent said sometimes and 11 percent said rarely.
At first read I was very concerned about this view, that it is alright to use suicide bombers to kill civilians, but it is a view that can be understood in the context of the question asked. The bases of the question was to defend their religion if it was under attack. Now we all know of homegrown terrorists, like the Columbine kids, and other young who “have” already killed, in kill and die scenarios, and they did it for much less laudable goals than protecting their religion. The hypothetical attack on religion might provoke a similar response if asked of any young person of any religious background if it were put in the right context.
I think we, all of us are more fearful of this scenario from muslims, because of the 9/11 attacks than anything else. I know that was my first thought when I read this report, but after a little more thinking I realized that most of the young people attacking and killing people in this country are school children, who are killing their peers, because they were picked on or some other reason to satisfy their feelings or a need to “go out in a blaze of glory”. These people choose the more bloody course of killing and then being killed by police or killing themselves if they are trapped. The better choice would be to just kill themselves if they are so miserable, but they are too selfish to do that.
The point of this is that while we should be alert to potential trouble from this sector of society, we should not automatically assume they will carry out suicide bombings. We were all young and made outrageous comments on occasion, or at least most of us did.
The truth is that no matter the number of people who believe this way, the majority are just people trying to live their lives as normally as possible. This is true of violence everywhere, from the KKK, Aryans, Latino gangs, Bloods, the Crypts, other black gangs, and groups in every nation on this planet have a minority who will kill for their beliefs, whatever those beliefs may be. Many are about religion as the Catholics against the Protestants in Ireland, or Sunni against Shiite in Iraq, but others are about money, turf, drugs, and other causes. The sad truth is people who want to commit violence will always find a reason to justify their actions and still the majority in each case do not believe this way.
We should just be thankful that so far these young “suicide bombers to be” have not felt sufficiently under attack to carry out any such bombings. This means there is still time to assimilate and Americanize these young people and then perhaps the only violence they will perpetrate will be through their video game systems.
Hopefully, they will discover over time that there is no war against Islam, except in the minds of the Islamic terrorists who want to over turn Western Civilization, and who see infidels everywhere.


Young Muslims