Salon.com > Rachel Zoll

Mormonism, voter enthusiasm concern evangelicals

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 19:15:00 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) — Evangelical leaders worried that Mitt Romney's Mormonism could suppress conservative turnout are intensifying appeals for Christians to vote.

About two dozen prominent evangelical leaders issued a statement last month emphasizing conservative moral values over a candidate's particular religion.

Influential Pentecostal publisher Steve Strang has also been working to get out the vote. He told a group of pastors last week that many churchgoers are having trouble setting aside theological concerns about Mormonism to back the Republican presidential nominee. Strang fears Christian conservatives will stay home on Election Day.

Romney is the first Mormon presidential nominee from a major party. Evangelical voters have said repeatedly in polls that they'd back Romney despite concerns about his religion. But Southern Baptist leader Al Mohler says that hypothetical question now faces a real-word test.

Park 51 reaction impacts young U.S. Muslims

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:22:00 +0000

Adnan Zulfiqar, a graduate student, former U.S. Senate aide and American-born son of Pakistani immigrants, will soon give the first khutbah, or sermon, of the fall semester at the University of Pennsylvania. His topic has presented itself in the daily headlines and blog posts over the disputed mosque near ground zero.

What else could he choose, he says, after a summer remembered not for its reasoned debate, but for epithets, smears, even violence?

As he writes, Zulfiqar frets over the potential fallout and what he and other Muslim leaders can do about it. Will young Muslims conclude they are second-class citizens in the U.S. now and always?

"They're already struggling to balance, 'I'm American, I'm Muslim,' and their ethnic heritage. It's very disconcerting," said Zulfiqar, 32, who worked for former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat, and now serves Penn's campus ministry. "A controversy like this can make them radical or become more conservative in how they look at things or how they fit into the American picture."

Whatever the outcome, the uproar over a planned Islamic center near the former World Trade Center site is shaping up as a signal event in the story of American Islam.

Some Muslims question mosque near ground zero

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:43:00 +0000

American Muslims who support the proposed mosque and Islamic center near ground zero are facing skeptics within their own faith -- those who argue that the project is insensitive to Sept. 11 victims and needlessly provocative at a time when Muslims are pressing for wider acceptance in the U.S.

"For most Americans, 9/11 remains as an open wound, and anything associated with Islam, even for Americans who want to understand Islam -- to have an Islamic center with so much publicity is like rubbing salt in open wounds," said Akbar Ahmed, professor of Islamic studies at American University, a former Pakistani ambassador to Britain and author of "Journey Into America, The Challenge of Islam." He said the space should include a synagogue and a church so it will truly be interfaith.

Abdul Cader Asmal, past president of the Islamic Council of New England, an umbrella group for more than 15 Islamic centers, said some opponents of the $100 million, 13-story project are indeed anti-Muslim. But he said many Americans have genuine, understandable questions about Islam and extremism.

In light of those fears, and the opposition of many relatives of 9/11 victims, Asmal said organizers should dramatically scale back the project to just a simple mosque, despite their legal right to construct what they want.