In Theory:

When you consider the horrible acts of violence committed by Muslims all over the world, I think it is a testimony to the goodness and kindness of Americans that only 31% have a “not favorable at all” view of Muslims. Americans are by and large a forgiving and non-judgmental people. We evaluate people not by their religious creeds but by their deeds.

Pastor Dwight Tomlinson

Liberty Baptist Church

Newport Beach

Every day we are appalled by the gory spectacles of Muslim-on-Muslim violence. The Taliban gleefully blow up their co-religionists; Sunnis and Shiites reduce each other’s mosques to rubble and murder each other in marketplaces and on sacred pilgrimage; autocratic leaders violate the human rights of their own Muslim citizens.

It is Muslims who kill and maim American soldiers, destroy churches, persecute Kurds and Copts, treat women as chattel, hijack, behead and kidnap, burn the American flag, hang American presidents in effigy, teach the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as fact, deny the Holocaust, and threaten Israel with annihilation. Restrictions at airports are not in place to protect from Christian or Jewish terrorism. The repugnant “Hate Week” at UCI teaches much about what even highly educated Muslims think about Israel and the West.

I will help foster a positive view of Muslims when they offer a positive view of themselves.

Rabbi Mark S. Miller

Temple Bat Yahm

Newport Beach

As a Christian pastor, I have three operating principles about other faiths. First, every human being has faith in something. If I am to help people grow spiritually, I cannot do so by attacking anything that builds faith, including other religions. Second, God is bigger and deeper than every denomination and religion, and God is present in every faith. We can always find ways to share spiritual wisdom and learn from each other without compromising theological differences. Third, scriptures teach us that God is love. If we are acting or thinking in ways that foster, condone or cause hate or fear or violence, then we have failed as spiritual leaders and churches. When we learn what each other values, understand each other’s rituals, and work side by side for healing the world, we will fear each other less and serve God better.