Lies, Damn Lies and Surveys

Andrew Sullivan has a succinct critique of a disturbinglyingly unAmerican and disturbingly poorly written post at the The New Republic. Marty Peretz seems to revel in his social-criticism/make-out-session with a New York Times poll showing that New Yorkers have some kind of opinion about Muslim-Americans:

The newspaper (NYT) 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.

Before he goes on to slander the overwhleming majority of Muslim Americans, Peretz does take the time to say that he doesn't trust opinion surveys. I disagree. Opinion surveys do a half-way decent job of assessing opinions. What would happen if the Times sent some reporters out to assess some facts? Like if they spent some time at various mosques around the Big Apple or even around the country and reported on what was actually preached by Muslim-American religious leaders. Wouldn't that be more in line with the higher aims of journalism than taking a poll about what New Yorkers think might be in other people's hearts? Even by opinion survey standards, what is this particularly inane question trying to mean? Lets think it through for a moment:

If there are tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Muslim Americans and probably tens (ones?) of Muslim terrorists in the US, that would ascribe criminal intent to about .1 - .001 percent. How many Christians have ever committed a violent crime in the US? But the question at hand is how many Muslims are "sympathetic" to terrorists? Or actually do "more" Muslim Americans sympathize with terrorists than non-Mulsim Americans. I'm starting to think Kevin Bacon may be involved.

Let's assume in context that the question is only concerned with Al Queda-associated terrorists (what percentage of American Muslims are sympathetic to the terrorists who burned down the mosque in Kentucky?). Let's also assume for argument's sake that there are very, very few Muslim Americans who are sympathetic to Al Queda. But lets also assume that there are roughly zero non-Muslim Al Queda sympathizers out there. If one single practitioner of Islam is sympathetic to Al Queda's cause, that still constitutes "more".

So, even given my total lack of any relevant knowledge or facts, I can surmise that the question is nearly a tautology, or at least just as meaningless. Yet only 33% of New Yorkers responded in the affirmative. I am guessing that the other 77% said "no" to make a point about how stupid and racist it is to even ask this question.