The Pew Forum released a major poll on American Muslims yesterday. It's title strikes an optimistic note: Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream. Among its encouraging conclusions: Muslims in America have a high degree of optimism regarding their future prospects for living a good life, do well economically, and are far more integrated into American society than European Muslim communities. These conclusions resulted in headlines like this one from the Los Angeles Times: American Muslims: Mostly moderate, not monolithic.

However, the right wing is not to be placated by such good news. Conservative bloggers and media commentators have picked up on findings that show that very small percentages of the Muslim community express limited support for suicide bombing to reinforce their calls to ship American Muslims to internment camps. Glenn Greenwald does a nice job of taking this apart over at Salon.

There is some cause for concern, particularly regarding the fact that younger Muslims are more prone to supporting violence than their older co-religionists. Still, it bears remembering that the American Muslim community is more integrated, and more concerned about Islamic extremism, than anywhere in Europe. If the right wing wants to protect America, they won't make the same mistake as our European allies of alienating their Islamic communities and cutting them off from mainstream culture.

See the below video from Anderson Cooper to get a sense of how the Pew report is playing in the press.