The "Religion of Peace," as usual...

According to a recent poll, ten percent of Muslims in Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority nation, support violent jihad (terror attacks on non-Muslim civilians).

"Jihad that has been understood partially and practiced with violence is justified by around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims," the Indonesian Survey Institute said in a statement.

"They approved the bombings conducted ... in Bali with the excuse of defending Islam," it added, saying the percentage of such support "is very significant."

Does this result surprise anyone? To put the poll's conclusion into more tangible numbers, if 85 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people are Muslim and ten percent support jihad as being perfectly in keeping with Islamic morality and tradition, that means roughly 18,700,000 people in Indonesia alone support the slaughter of innocent civilians enjoying a holiday. This sobering figure compares with previous polls of Muslims (mostly Pakistanis) living in Britain and of Muslims throughout the Middle East. Since the only similarity between these disseparate peoples in Islam, what can one reasonably conclude about what Islam really motivates in the hearts of its adherents?

While the vast majority of Indonesia's Muslims are relatively moderate, there has been an increasingly vocal militant minority and political pressure for more laws that are in line with hardline Muslim teachings.

The poll surveyed a random sample of 1,092 Muslim men and women.

Bombings in Bali in October 2002 blamed on the militant Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiah network killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. Suicide blasts in Bali a year ago killed 20.

The survey found one in five Indonesian Muslims more generally supported the aims of Jemaah Islamiah -- an armed movement backing the creation of an Islamic superstate linking Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia, and Muslim areas in the Philippines and Thailand.

In the past, it has cooperated closely with al Qaeda's global anti-Western campaign, but in recent years many in Jemaah Islamiah have focused more on the regional struggle.

Indonesia has had a major attack against high profile Western-linked targets each year from 2002 through 2005. Authorities tied all the attacks to elements of Jemaah Islamiah.

Trying to defuse the poll's appalling results by noting that most Indonesian Muslims are "moderates" is nothing but lame political correctness, stretched to cover an embarassing truth. Apparently, the moderates - who never seem to come out and restrain their "extremist" brethren, though they allegedly outnumber them - are perfectly willing to tolerate the extremists among them. Of course, the same is true throughout the Muslim world. Moderate Muslims are rather like Big Foot. They get a lot of press, but never seem to show up.

Since there is no way to determine which one-in-ten Indonesias approve of mass murder (until it is too late), the US and other Western nations would be well advised to immediately cease all immigration from Indonesia - and other Muslims states. It does no good to import people who wish to kill us.

President Bush and his neo-con/multiculturalist chorus can chant "Islam is a religion of peace" until they are collectively blue in the face, but saying it doesn't make it so. The sooner the West drops its ideological blinders and deals with the reality of Islam, the better it will be for everyone.