Quote:Americans are learning more about Islam, and familiarity with the faith makes people more likely to view Muslims favorably and less likely to believe Islam encourages violence, according to a study last week from the Pew Research Center.

The findings can be linked because increased knowledge about Muslims is tied to more sensitivity about bias they face, said Greg Smith, the report's senior researcher.

"To say that Muslims are discriminated against ... it's not the same thing as expressing an unfavorable view of Muslims. In fact, it's just the opposite," he said. "People who are most sympathetic to a group are more likely to see that group as being discriminated against."

The survey said:

• 58% of Americans believe there was "a lot" of discrimination against Muslims. Jews were seen as the religious group with the next highest level of bias against them, 35%.

• Gays and lesbians were the only group seen as facing more discrimination than Muslims, with almost two-thirds of Americans saying homosexuals are discriminated against a lot.

• In 2007, 45% of Americans believed Islam was more likely than other faiths to encourage violence. This year, that number fell to 38%.

• 41% knew that the Muslim name for God is Allah and the Quran is the Islamic sacred text, compared with 33% in March 2002.

The survey, conducted Aug. 11-17 among 2,010 adults, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

ZEN-hut! A military first

When Thomas Dyer heads to Afghanistan in December, the former Marine and onetime Southern Baptist pastor won't take a rifle with him. He won't take a Bible, either.

Instead, Dyer, a Tennessee Army National Guardsman from Memphis and the first Buddhist chaplain in the history of the Army, hopes to bring serenity and calm, honed by months of intensive meditation.

Dyer's deployment is another step in the U.S. military's attempt to meet the diverse spiritual needs of America's fighting forces. It's no easy task.

For one thing, the military chaplaincy is facing all the complications that have affected U.S. religion over the past 40 years, such as the decline of mainline Protestants and the shortage of Catholic priests.

source: http://www.freep.com/article/20090913/NE...s-on-Islam

Most times we tend not to separate Islam and Arabs from terrorism, to some the three are one and the same. But i ask myself, what do the American moslems have to say to defend themselves when they are blamed for terror? According to what i know about the Quran it encourages violence and harsh treatment for the kaffirs (non-moslems) especially after the month of violence. Some of these things are overlooked as people go on getting absorbed in Islam. In my opinion Islam has fueled the greed and selfishness of Arabs, that is, they hide their greed under the harsh Islamic law to commit acts of terror. If there was no greed then the Palestinians would have settled down comfortably with the Isrealites. But i don't mean that every Arab or moslem is a torrorist. So my question is, how do American moslems work out the sharia law as they interact with the people who have faced cruel death at moslem extremists who kill in the name of Allah?

Who cares.A rag head is a rag head.

you are completly fuckin' nuts if you beleive the sh1t you post. no one sees them differently, their still a bunch of idiots looking for 700 virgins .