Poll shows frustration of young Muslims in the US

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A show of sympathy for suicide bombers among some young, American Muslims has raised new concerns about homegrown extremism in the US, but also is highlighting calls to engage the country's growing Muslim population. A Pew Research Center poll released late last month found that, while US Muslims are largely the picture of assimilation, about a quarter of Muslims ages 18 to 29 said the use of suicide bombing against civilian targets to defend Islam could be justified, at least on rare occasions. The finding was described by some as a trouble spot, and even a hair-raising statistic, but many Muslim scholars had another reaction to the Pew report: What did you expect? "Given what's happened in Iraq and Palestine, I would be shocked if there wasn't discontent," said Omid Safi, professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.