c. 2004 Religion News Service

Americans’ Perceptions of Muslims Mixed, Poll Shows

(RNS) One in four Americans agrees with at least one anti-Muslim statement like “Muslims teach their children to hate unbelievers” and “Muslims value life less than other people,” a new survey has found.

But the poll also reported that 64 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “The people who use Islam to justify violence are misinterpreting its teachings.”

The poll, “Islam and Muslims: A Poll of American Public Opinion,” was released Oct. 4 and based on 1,000 telephone interviews the California-based market research firm Genesis Research Associates conducted in late June and early July. The respondents were evenly divided by gender, and the margin of error for the study was plus-or-minus 3.1 percentage points.

Researchers found that the survey revealed significant segments of the population on both the positive and negative ends of the attitude spectrum.

“There’s a pretty consistent 25 (percent)-to-30 percent of people who have negative attitudes,” said Jeni Sall, who was the principal investigator on the survey and the president of Genesis. “About half of the people have generally neutral or positive attitudes,” she said.

When asked in an open-ended question to say what came to mind when they heard the word “Muslim,” about one out of three respondents had something negative to say, from “war, hatred, violence” to “terrorists, enemies, Osama bin Laden,” the survey reported.

Further, 51 percent of those surveyed agreed either somewhat or strongly with the statement, “Islam encourages oppression of women.”

At the same time, favorable attitudes emerged in the survey.

Half of those surveyed agreed with one or more favorable attitudes about Islam, such as “Muslims have family-oriented values.”

The poll showed a correlation between knowledge about Islam and personal relationships with Muslims _ something three-quarters of Americans don’t have _ as the best predictors of positive attitudes toward the religion.

“It is clear from the results of this survey that we have our work cut out for us in terms of educating other Americans about Islam and providing opportunities for positive interactions with the Muslim community,” said Omar Ahmad, the board chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which sponsored the survey.

_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi

Robertson Warns Bush Not to Compromise on Jerusalem

JERUSALEM (RNS) Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has warned President Bush that any attempt to change the political status quo in Jerusalem would mean the loss of evangelical support at the ballot box.

Speaking at a press conference Monday (Oct. 4), Robertson insisted that Bush must not cave in to international pressure to make half of Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian state. He was in Israel as the guest of the International Christian Embassy, a pro-Israel evangelical organization.

Robertson said that “the president has backed away from” the peace plan known as the `Road Map’ but if he were to touch Jerusalem, “he’d lose all evangelical support.”

The Palestinians claim eastern Jerusalem as its capital, while Israel insists that both eastern and western parts of the city must remain under Israeli sovereignty, as they have been since 1967. Robertson and other evangelicals, sometimes called “Christian Zionists,” quote Old Testament Scriptures as a mandate from God to suppport Israel.

They consider any deviation from that support at odds with God’s plan.

Rather than vote Democrat, the evangelist said, pro-Israel Christians would “form a third party” if Bush softened his support of Israel. Exit polls have shown evangelical Christians heavily favoring Republicans in recent presidential elections.

Robertson, based in Virginia Beach, Va., is a former presidential candidate and founder of The Christian Coalition. The co-host of “The 700 Club” television show, he has made numerous comments in the past that have offended Muslims.

At the news conference, he again blamed Muslim countries for violence in the Middle East.

“Arab nations want a conflict and want to keep the suffering of people in Gaza,” said Robertson. “They don’t want peace. They want the destruction of Israel.”

_ Michele Chabin

St. Louis Archbishop Says No Issue Trumps Abortion

(RNS) Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis, who has led an effort to deny Communion to Sen. John Kerry because of his support of abortion rights, said no other issue, “no matter how good,” can trump a candidate’s position on five key issues, including abortion and gay marriage.

In a 13-page pastoral letter issued on Friday (Oct. 1), Burke expanded the list of policy issues that Roman Catholic voters must consider before casting a vote to include abortion, gay marriage, cloning, stem-cell research and euthanasia. It was his most detailed teaching on the subject to date.

Burke had been criticized for saying Catholics who vote for politicians supporting abortion rights must go to confession before seeking Communion. In his letter, Burke seemed to create more room for voters to support such candidates in specific situations.

“If a candidate supports abortion in a limited number of cases, but is opposed to it otherwise, Catholics may vote for this candidate,” he said. “This is not a question of choosing a lesser evil but of limiting the evil.”

Burke said there is “a certain order of priority” in policy positions, with abortion topping the list. Burke said a candidate’s other positions on war, the death penalty, poverty or education are secondary.

“The sum total of all social conditions … depends on the protection of human life,” he said in a brief question-and-answer supplement to the letter. “Without this fundamental protection, it makes no sense to consider other social conditions.”

Burke said there is “no element of the common good, no morally good practice, that a candidate may promote and to which a voter may be dedicated” that would justify a vote for a politician who supports any of the five issues.

“These elements are so fundamental to the common good that they cannot be subordinated to any other cause, no matter how good,” he said.

The five priorities laid out by Burke are the same five “non-negotiables” highlighted in a voting guide for “serious Catholics” prepared by Catholic Answers, an apologetics group. Burke has allowed the voters guide to be distributed in his archdiocese, while other bishops have banned them.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

U.S. Supreme Court Closes Door on `Ten Commandments’ Judge

(RNS) Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s efforts to return to office reached the end of the line Monday (Oct. 4), when the U.S. Supreme Court refused without comment to hear his case.

Lawyers for Moore asked the nation’s highest court two months ago to rule that he was denied due process of law and subjected to an unconstitutional religious test when he was removed from office Nov. 13 by the state Court of the Judiciary.

“I am disappointed but not surprised that this liberal Supreme Court, which opens every session with `God save the United States and this honorable court,’ would now simply ignore the fact that the chief justice of a state was removed from office because he acknowledged who God is,” Moore said Monday.

Moore was ousted from office for refusing to obey an order from U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson. The federal judge had told Moore to remove his monunument to the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building rotunda. Thompson said the monument violated the First Amendment’s ban on state-established religion. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Thompson’s decision and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review it.

“Now no court on this planet has ruled in Moore’s favor,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Lynn’s group, along with the American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center, sued to have the monument removed.

In another religious development Monday, the Supreme Court also declined to consider a ruling that requires some California religious organizations to pay for the contraceptive health insurance benefits of workers. The justices chose not to hear an appeal from Catholic Charities of Sacramento.

_ Stan Bailey

Religious Filmmakers Say Hollywood Still Doesn’t Get It

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (RNS) With Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” creating strong DVD sales that add to his record-breaking box office profits, religious conservatives gathered at a film festival questioned why Hollywood continues to keep its distance from religious movies.

“If there has ever been a sure-fire box office formula, it’s the religious epic. How can this mighty engine of popular culture that flourishes beyond these walls ignore that?” said film critic and conservative radio talk show host Michael Medved, who spoke at the Oct. 1-3 Liberty Film Festival, held at West Hollywood’s Pacific Design Center.

The festival’s slate of conservative and new religious movies included the screening of a rare print of Cecile B. DeMille’s 1959 blockbuster “The Ten Commandments.”

The film showcase added to a trend over the past five years of religious conservatives producing their own films such as the end-times “Omega Code” movies and films made by, about and for Mormons. The event’s 19 feature-length and short films included three much-discussed documentaries chastising filmmaker Michael Moore and a short comedy called, “Greg Wolfe: Republican Jew.”

Asian-American filmmaker and former atheist Tim Chey, who converted to Christianity four years ago, said his “Impact” film, about how lives were changed after “Passion” viewings, was seen in late September by Gibson, who was, “delighted,” by it.

Govindini (SIC) Murty, a Hindu immigrant from India and one of the festival’s co-directors, said a festival theme was to show film characters answering to, “a power higher than the state.” Her own festival film was “Terminal Island,” which Murty called, “a politically incorrect” comedy in which she portrays a woman being chased by Islamic terrorists.

Cheryl Rhoads, a Roman Catholic acting coach, said she volunteered to work at the festival because she got, “very frustrated,” with the dominant Catholic circles in Hollywood, which tend to be left-of-center. “It’s so important for true intellectual diversity,” she said.

_ David Finnigan

Quote of the Day: Boston Archbishop Sean O’Malley

(RNS) “Too often when politicians agree with the church’s position on a given issue they say the church is prophetic and should be listened to, but if the church’s position does not coincide with theirs, then they scream separation of church and state.”

_ Roman Catholic Archbishop Sean O’Malley of Boston, during a homily at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington on Sunday (Oct. 3) for the annual Red Mass to honor the legal profession.

MO/JL END