c. 2004 Religion News Service

Survey: 44 Percent Favor Curtailing Civil Liberties for Muslims

(RNS) Americans are almost evenly divided between those who believe that civil liberties for Muslim Americans should be restricted and those who do not, a national study has found.

Forty-four percent of those surveyed by the Media and Society Research Group at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., said they believe the U.S. government should curtail civil liberties for Muslim Americans in some way.

Forty-eight percent said that such liberties should not be restricted in any way.

The survey, which was released Dec. 17, polled 715 people nationwide by telephone. The margin of error was 3.6 percent.

Some of the restrictions that survey participants supported were that Muslims should be required to register with the federal government (27 percent), government agencies should be allowed to closely monitor mosques (26 percent) and undercover law enforcement agents should infiltrate Muslim civil and volunteer organizations (29 percent).

Sixty-five percent of those who described themselves as “highly religious” said that Islam encourages violence more than other religions do, the survey reported. Only 42 percent of nonreligious respondents expressed this view.

Intensity of religious belief was not the only factor measured. Survey organizers also noted that exposure to television news correlated with responses: Those with more exposure to TV news tended to favor restricting civil liberties more than those who weren’t TV news consumers.

“We need to explore why these two very important channels of discourse may nurture fear rather than understanding,” said James Shanahan, principal investigator in the study and an associate professor of communications at Cornell.

Muslim organizations reacted with dismay to the study’s findings.

“Our nation and its values are diminished whenever any faith or ethnic group is viewed with such suspicion and hostility,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based civil liberties group.

_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi

Holocaust Victims Database Attracts More Than 3 Million Visitors

(RNS) More than 3 million people from 163 countries have visited the Web site of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, since it uploaded a database of victims’ names in November.

The Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names was launched Nov. 22 with 3 million entries, about half of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Prior to the database’s launch, the Web site, http://www.yadvashem.org, attracted about 150,000 visitors monthly.

The database is an effort to compile as much information as possible about the full list of Holocaust victims before the generation who witnessed it is gone. Organizers say they hope the high traffic will lead to the discovery of stories yet to be told.

Visitors can create a “page of testimony” for victims whose names are not yet recorded in the database. They can include information about the person’s life before the Holocaust, the circumstances of death, personal details or stories about the person and photos.

The high number of visitors is an encouraging sign that as Holocaust survivors age, the atrocities they survived are not being forgotten, organizers say.

“These numbers illustrate the place of the Shoah in the public consciousness, and the desire of people to remember it and know more about its victims,” said Avner Shalev, chairman of the Yad Vashem directorate.

_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi

Seminary Awards Master’s Degree to Black Student Denied Decades Ago

(RNS) Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary recently awarded a master of divinity degree to a 100-year-old African-American alumnus, making amends for an old rule that prevented black men from receiving the degree.

Eugene Florence, who was born Feb. 29, 1904, was honored during a special segment of the Dec. 10 fall commencement service at the Fort Worth, Texas, seminary, reported Baptist Press, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“There is no way, of course, that Southwestern Seminary can go back and atone for all of its mistakes in days gone by,” said seminary President Paige Patterson. “But we can do at least one thing to say to all of the watching world, `We are sorry for where we got it wrong.”’

Patterson said the trustees and faculty voted to change the degree Florence received in 1951 from a diploma of theology to a master of divinity degree after it was verified that he had earned it.

At the time the Fort Worth man took classes in the school’s “Negro extension centers” because the master’s program was not available to blacks. He spent eight years taking night classes because he wasn’t permitted to study with white students during the day.

The ceremony prompted damp eyes and shouts of “Glory” and “Hallelujah” from those in attendance, Baptist Press said.

“I feel good about it,” Florence said. “It was so long coming; I never did think it would come.”

A pastor for 65 years, Florence has served at churches in several Texas cities and worked construction and janitorial jobs. He continues to preach when asked.

“If I am invited, I go,” he said.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Ad Citing `Immaculate Contraception’ Banned

LONDON (RNS) An advertisement for the “morning after” pill has been withdrawn because its reference to “Immaculate Contraception” has been deemed religiously offensive.

The advertisement, for Levonelle One Step, manufactured by Schering Health Care, appeared as a poster on the London Underground and was also intended for press advertisements. It featured a headline saying: “Immaculate contraception? If only …”

Following complaints, the company removed the posters and canceled press bookings.

In its adjudication, the Advertising Standards Authority _ which received 179 objections, the most this year for a non-broadcast advertisement _ concluded that the headline, with its reference to the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception, was “likely to cause serious or widespread offense” and welcomed the advertisers’ decision not to use the advertisement again.

While upholding the complaint that the advertisement was offensive on religious grounds, the authority rejected the complaint that it was irresponsible because it could encourage casual sex and trivialized unwanted pregnancy. The authority said such effects were “unlikely” given the advertisement’s reminder that the “morning after” pill ought not to replace normal contraception.

_ Robert Nowell

Quote of the day: The Rev. Arni Jacobson, speaking of NFL great Reggie White, who died Sunday at age 43.

(RNS) “He was more real-world fellow Christian than bigger-than-life famous football player. People just loved him.”

_ The Rev. Arni Jacobson, pastor of Bayside Christian Fellowship in Green Bay, Wis., the church White and his family attended when White, “The Minister of Defense,” played defensive end for the Green Bay Packers. Jacobson was quoted in The Green Bay Press-Gazette, which had a large, front-page headline Monday saying “Goodbye and Godspeed.”

MO/PH RNS END