More Americans favor rights for Christians over Muslim ones

Eight in 10 Americans say it’s very or extremely important for people like themselves to be allowed to practice their religion freedom, but support for religious freedom plummets when people were asked about other traditions, a new survey found.

The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, released on December 30, found that a whopping 82 percent of Americans believe that preserving religious freedom is important for Christians, while about 70 percent said the same for Jews and 61 percent support it for Muslims.

The poll was conducted between December 10-13 just after the Islamic terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino.

“If we lose the hearts and minds … on religious liberty, we lose what’s enabled us to live with these differences” and maintain peace better than most, if not all, other nations facing religious divides, he says. Among Republicans, 88 percent said it was important to preserve the rights of Christians, while just 60 percent said the same of Muslims.

“Religious freedom is now in the eye of the beholder”, Haynes said. On a more general level, 42% in the poll said it was more important for the government to ensure Americans’ safety than to protect their rights, while 27% said rights are more important.

The poll finds that for most Americans, safety concerns trump civil liberties at least some of the time.

Sixty percent of Republicans, 67 percent of Democrats, and 49 percent of independents say it is important for Muslims to practice their religion freely.

The poll also found that people have mixed feelings about how good a job the government does protecting religious liberty. “Many in America have been educated about Islam as a unsafe, violent religion”, and those spreading that message have spent tens of millions of dollars to do so in various churches and tea party conventions, he says. “Now Jews are clearly inside the circle of religious liberty, and Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and nonbelievers are on the perimeter, protected in law but not so much in public opinion”. Civil libertarians use the same line of reasoning, albeit in a far less extreme example, against Christians who they say would deprive gay couples of the right to buy a wedding license or purchase a wedding cake.

“No religion is an island”, Eric Rassbach, an attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, told The Associated Press.

“No religion is an island”, Rassbach said.

The new survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

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