Opinion: In today’s pages: Punishing Michael Vick, polling Muslims, teaching meditation
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The editorial board reacts to a Pew report that Muslim support for suicide bombing is on the skids:
In Lebanon, for example, 63% of those polled this spring said they opposed the U.S.-led war on terror. But only 34% thought that suicide bombings against civilians were sometimes or often justified -- down from 74% who considered suicide bombing justifiable in 2002. Support for Bin Laden plummeted from 20% to 1% of those surveyed in Lebanon, and substantial drops were also registered in Jordan, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan and Kuwait.The exception to this trend is in the places where Muslims see themselves at war with a vastly stronger enemy: Israel and Iraq.
The board applauds a City Council committee for making the tough call to switch police from patrols to counterterrorism, and wonders how the NFL will handle Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, accused of helping run a brutal dogfighting ring.
On the op-ed pages, Soto Zen priest Nick Street notes that meditation in schools doesn’t mix church and state. Turkish TV host Senay Ozdemir praises Turkey’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party as expanding opportunities for women. KGO Radio host Gene Burns argues for an across-the-board budget cut instead of separate cuts that hit the homeless and other disadvantaged groups. And columnist Ronald Brownstein explores Rudy Giuliani’s states’ rights strategy on gay marriage and abortion.
Readers react to the editorial board’s long piece against nuclear power. UC Berkeley nuclear engineering professor Per Peterson thinks the editorial ‘misses the mark not just on the Japan quake but on assertions about the likely growth potential and cost of new nuclear plants....’