UPDATE: I have written an apology for one sentence written below.

Of course, this first sentence presumes that the Times in its olympian wisdom has a more accurate view--one it could describe as both "shrewdly knowing" and "sensitively knowing"--of this group and its beliefs than ordinary metropolitan mortals. The newspaper has done a poll of New York City residents which found that 33% of them thought Muslim-American "more sympathetic to terrorists" than other citizens. Frankly, I don't trust opinion surveys on matters like this. But I'd guess that if respondents were truly honest with the pollsters and with themselves the percentage would be considerably higher. Which, of course, means that the Times could go into even higher dudgeon than it actually has.

Where does the Times get reliable data on the feelings of American Muslims (or, for that matter, Arab Americans) about terrorists and terrorism? Forgive me: I don't think such data even exists...and just maybe that's a consequence of the pollsters' fear that gauging these sentiments would be very desolating, indeed.

And, to tell you the truth, I d not think there's much reliable data on how Americans see American Muslims either.

But the Times survey does infer some knowledge about this matter. Remember, though, that these responses are from New Yorkers and New Yorkers alone. If you believe, as I do, that citizens of the five boroughs are not only more "diverse and cosmopolitan" but also more tolerant and condoning than most other Americans than you might come to the conclusion that our non-New Yorker fellow citizens are far more deeply biased and warped than the Gotham locals.