BOB ABERNETHY, host: Amid the continuing investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing, President Obama this week spoke of the threat of self-radicalized individuals here in the US and the difficulty of identifying them. He said his counterterrorism team has discussed ways it can engage communities where such radicalization can occur. In recent years, American Muslim groups have launched their own efforts to combat extremism.

For more on this, I’m joined by our managing editor, Kim Lawton, and Haris Tarin. He directs the Washington office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Haris, welcome. The president referred to self-radicalizing. What—how does that work, and what can the Muslim community do to prevent it?

HARIS TARIN (Muslim Public Affairs Council): Well, the phenomenon of self-radicalization is where individuals who do not find a place in mainstream Muslim institutions, places like mosques and organizations, they don’t find a place for their fiery rhetoric, for their violent, extremist rhetoric, so they go online, and they listen to sermons, and they listen to individuals like Anwar al-Awlaki or Adam Gadahn or other folks who misinterpret the religion to give it a violent, violent ideology, and they fall prey to these individuals who are basically online predators, and they get influenced by these individuals to address their grievances through violence.

ABERNETHY: And then what can you do about it?

TARIN: I think what we can do, number one, is to ensure that there’s a counter-narrative, that there’s a narrative of life, of positivity, that even if you have a grievance or you have a disagreement on policy, whether domestic or international, you can address those policy grievances through civic and political engagement and change that— maybe not overnight, but eventually you have the power to change policy.

KIM LAWTON: I know the Muslim community has been trying to offer these kinds of counter-narratives. Has that just not worked, or what do you need to do differently in order to combat this online issue?

TARIN: Well, I think, you know, I said before, I think to overwhelming extent the American Muslim community has not fallen prey to this. It’s individuals who are radicalized online, but I think what needs to happen is that we need to ensure that we have a narrative that goes viral. A lot of these videos, they are very emotive. These sermons they use violence and gruesome images to tug at the emotion of young people. And so we also need to ensure that when we put out the counter-narrative it’s as savvy, it goes as viral and addresses the same issues and that we’re not afraid to address some of the same policy grievances that they address, but to make sure that the outcome is positive and not negative.

LAWTON: And how do you deal with the perception that many outsiders have that the more religious someone, a Muslim, gets, the more prone he or she is to being violent or being an extremist?

TARIN: Well, I think that notion, fortunately, is false. There’s a notion that the more religious you get it leads to acts of violence. The studies have shown that when people go through rigorous religious training and understanding, they’re less prone to violence, but that people who skip that religious understanding part and have an awakening and then go straight to politics, that’s where they become more prone to violence and twisted ideologies and perverted interpretations of the religion.

ABERNETHY: Is there a special role here for young people? I mean, the perpetrators are young. Does that invite, then, or say that the people who can best correct that are young people?

TARIN: The first thing you have to understand is a lot of young American Muslims, they deal with everything else that all young Americans are dealing with—college tuition, jobs, but there is a place for them to ensure that their peers on college campuses and youth groups are having a conversation that’s positive, that when they see a negative conversation that they step in, and they interfere and ensure that they move the conversation towards a more positive aspect.

ABERNETHY: O.K. Haris Tarin of the Muslim Public Affairs Council and Kim Lawton, many thanks to you both.

TARIN: Thank you.

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KIM LAWTON, guest host: The House Committee on Homeland Security this week held the first in a series of controversial hearings examining what it called “radicalization in the American Muslim community,” and there was widespread religious reaction. The hearing was called by chair of the committee, New York Republican Peter King, who invoked the memory of the 9/11 attacks.

REP. PETER KING (R-NY): Today, we must be fully aware that homegrown radicalization is part of Al Qaeda’s strategy to continue attacking the United States. Al Qaeda is actively targeting the American Muslim community for recruitment. Today’s hearings will address this dangerous trend.

LAWTON: First up on the witness list was Congressman Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota, and the first Muslim elected to the House of Representatives.

REP. KEITH ELLISON (D-MN): It’s true that specific individuals, including some who are Muslims, are violent extremists. However, these are individuals, not entire communities. When you assign their violent actions to the entire community, you assign collective blame to a whole group. This is the very heart of stereotyping and scapegoating.

LAWTON: Ellison became emotional as he described a young Muslim paramedic who was killed on 9/11.

ELLISON: Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a fellow American who gave his life for other Americans. His life should not be identified as just a member of an ethnic group or just a member of a religion, but as an American who gave everything for his fellow Americans.

LAWTON: But several witnesses testified that the US Muslim community is not doing enough to counter radicalism in its midst. Family members described how two young American Muslims were recruited by extremists and persuaded to commit terrorist acts. The president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Zuhdi Jasser, said his faith is being hijacked by what he called a “theopolitical” movement that is promoting radicalization.

ZUHDI JASSER, M.D. (President, American Islamic Forum for Democracy): We have a problem internally. Where is that? It’s a minority, but there’s an ideology that exists in some mosques. Not all. Not a majority. But in some mosques. And it’s a significant number.

LAWTON: Throughout the week, religious groups mobilized around the hearing. In New York, interfaith supporters joined thousands of Muslims who rallied to show their support for America and their opposition to violence in the name of religion. A smaller counter-rally alleged that Muslims are linked to terrorism, and some in the faith community said Congress should be looking into this.

JORDAN SEKULOW (Director of International Operations, American Center for Law and Justice): Name another religion where there is an international coordinated effort today, where there can be an imam in Yemen talking to a member of our military in Texas to carry out an attack on troops, or young people recruited. It’s not happening. You can’t name another religion other than Islam.

LAWTON: US Islamic advocacy groups repeatedly accused Congress of unfairly singling out their community. On Capitol Hill, a coalition of prominent leaders from several faith traditions gathered to show their solidarity with American Muslims.

RABBI MARC SCHNEIER (President, Foundation for Ethnic Understanding): I feel Congressman Ellison’s pain. I share the pain. I share his concern that these hearings will only exacerbate anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamophobia in our country.

LAWTON: The group acknowledged that Congress has a responsibility to examine violent extremism, but objected to how this hearing was framed.

REV. MICHAEL KINNAMON (General Secretary, National Council of Churches): I can imagine hearings that would come under the heading of the role of religion in promoting violent extremism that would be able to address the real problem, not a group of people the vast, vast majority of whom have nothing to do with the problem, but rather are part of the solution.

LAWTON: Muslims in the group were grateful for the support.

IMAM MOHAMED HAGMAGID ALI (President, Islamic Society of North America): I do believe that by isolating and singling out a community we’re really feeding into the stereotyping and discrimination against the community. But this is the America that I know that is standing with me here—the America that I love.

LAWTON: The leaders announced a new interfaith initiative called “Shoulder to Shoulder,” which they said would promote tolerance and fight anti-Muslim bigotry. Congressman King said he thought the hearing generated a productive and worthwhile conversation. He plans to move ahead with other hearings on the topic in the future.

Joining me now is Gustav Niebuhr, associate professor in religion and the media at Syracuse University and author of the book “Beyond Tolerance: Searching for Interfaith Understanding in America.” Gustav, welcome. There certainly was an extraordinary conversation around religion this week. What do you think it says about this particular moment in the American religious landscape?

GUSTAV NIEBUHR (Syracuse University): Well, it’s really an extraordinary moment and somewhat ironic, too, given that the dominant images of Muslims are people fighting for freedom and human rights in North Africa at this point. But in terms of the United States, it says that there’s a lingering suspicion of Muslims as a community. It also says, given the push-back against the hearings, that there are a great many people who are invested in supporting American Muslims as part of the American community and interfaith dialogue.

LAWTON: We did see a big mobilization in the religious community, prominent leaders standing behind Muslims. But at the congregation level, at the pew level there are these questions lingering about links between violence and Islam. How big of a challenge is that for interfaith relations?

NIEBUHR: Well, it’s a big challenge. For one thing, the dominant media image of Muslims, say between 9/11 and up to 2009, was one of people who were associated with terrorist groups abroad. It was of fighting in—between U.S. troops and terrorists in Iraq. But I think things have begun to change over the last two years. For one thing, you had a tremendous and ultimately unsuccessful uprising in Iran against the disputed elections there, and then, as I say, very recently you’ve had a popular revolution sweeping across North Africa giving us a completely different image of Muslims, and I hope that does filter down to the pew level—that people do see that there are Muslims abroad and certainly Muslims in the United States with whom they can agree with.

LAWTON: And we did see diversity within the American Muslim community this week. A lot of people think of it as a monolithic body, but it’s really not.

NIEBUHR: It’s anything but. It’s anything but. There are, what—50, 60 different ethnic groups. There are people who are wealthy. There are people who are white-collar. There are all sorts of professionals. There are blue-collar people. There are people who have been here since the 1960s, people who’ve recently arrived, and geographically the community is very widespread.

LAWTON: How do you think the hearings, the images of this hearing is playing overseas among some of those people you were talking about?

NIEBUHR: In some ways I am concerned about that, because at the very time that you’ve got people fighting for freedom and human rights in North Africa you have internationally televised hearings questioning the patriotism of at least some American Muslims. On the other hand, what’s hopeful is that people from the administration, the national administration all the way down to the pew level, have stood with Muslims and stood with Muslims as Americans in this country, and I hope that the latter is received more strongly than the former, at least for American interests abroad.

LAWTON: All right. Gustav Niebuhr, associate professor of religion and the media at Syracuse University, thanks a lot for being with us today.

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Originally broadcast September 10, 2010

KIM LAWTON, guest host: Over the past year, several leading US Muslim groups launched new projects aimed at preventing extremism from taking hold in their communities. Last fall, I took a look at some of those efforts.

It’s late afternoon in Manassas, Virginia, not far outside Washington, DC, and at the Dar al Noor mosque they’re getting ready for a good all-American barbecue. The picnic is part of a new national initiative from the Muslim American Society called the Straight Path Campaign. It’s one of several new projects being launched by US Islamic groups in an effort to fight extremism within their community, particularly among young people.

IMAM MAHDI BRAY, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation: We want them to say to America and prove to America through their efforts that, you know, we’re not terrorist suspects. We are America’s brightest prospects.

LAWTON: According to a new poll by the Pew Research Center, Americans hold conflicted views about whether Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions. Forty-two percent of those surveyed said that Islam does not encourage violence more than others, but 35 percent said it does. Almost a quarter said they didn’t know. The survey also found that almost 40 percent of Americans said they had an unfavorable view toward Islam. That’s a significant increase from just five years ago.

Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, many American Muslims say it’s become increasingly difficult to counter the perception that their faith is linked to violence, and that job has been complicated by some recent high-profile terrorism-related arrests of Muslim Americans, including several who were born or raised in the US.

EDINA LEKOVIC, Muslim Public Affairs Council: The fact that there has been a string of incidents presents a reality that we cannot afford to ignore, regardless of whether it’s emanating from our own homes, or our own mosques, or our own communities.

LAWTON: A Duke University study released earlier this year found only a relatively small number of US Muslims who had planned or carried out terrorist attacks. The study concluded “homegrown terrorism is a serious, but limited, problem.”

BRAY: One is one too many, and so we have zero tolerance for that kind of seductive narrative and that seductive type of presentation that lures young people into things that will ultimately ruin their lives.

LAWTON: One of the first priorities for mainstream US Muslim groups has been trying to fight extremist messages online, including many from foreign-based English-speaking Americans.

Al-Qaeda Online Video: “I am calling on every honest and vigilant Muslim, unsheathe your sharpened sword and rush to take your rightful place among defiant champions of Islam…”

SALAM AL-MARAYATI, Muslim Public Affairs Council: What happens in extremist groups is that really there’s a cult mentality. There’s blind following of a charismatic leader, these pied pipers that are speaking to us now on YouTube from caves and jungles and war zones that are trying to glamorize violence. That’s basically what we’re dealing with.

LAWTON: Hoping to offer a different view, American imam Suhaib Webb has set up his own Web site where he challenges radical statements and answers questions about Islamic teachings.

IMAM SUHAIB WEBB: You know the Prophet, peace be upon him, said “If the day of judgment starts and you have a seed in your hand, plant that seed.” Stay positive. Never allow yourself to succumb to that negative discourse.

LAWTON: He’s been urging other Muslims to tackle the issue of extremism head on as well.

WEBB: If you’re not going to take the position, someone else will take that position for you. If you’re not going to step up to the mic, someone else is going to grab it and spit. That’s just the reality.

LAWTON: Webb says a major problem is that many of the radical Web sites twist and misrepresent Islamic teachings, either intentionally or through ignorance. He was one of nine US scholars and imams who denounced extremism in a recent video produced by the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

LEKOVIC: Communities really need to focus on religious literacy so that our young people start at an early age knowing what the Quran actually says, and what the Quran actually promotes us to do, which is to be a part of society, to be contributing, and to be good to our families, and to be model citizens within whatever countries we live in.

LAWTON: With the Straight Path Campaign, the Muslim American Society is also trying to educate Muslim young people about the tenets of their faith. Imam Mahdi Bray draws from his own experience in the US civil rights movement and talks about the importance of nonviolence within Islam as well.

BRAY (speaking at mosque): Nonviolence, the sanctity of life, is valued, and it’s not the sanctity of Muslim life. It’s the sanctity of all life.

LAWTON: The campaign is holding a series of meetings with youth and youth leaders across the country to discuss violence and Islam, and also how to address injustice and discrimination in positive ways. Bray says it’s important not to dismiss the very real concerns and frustrations among young Muslims.

BRAY: Providing young people with skill sets and tools that embrace nonviolence but at the same time doesn’t give them the feeling that they’re just rolling over and that they’re not really fighting back against some of the injustices that they see every day in their lives both here and abroad.

AL-MARAYATI (speaking in meeting): We don’t separate Islam from politics. This is actually an act of worship for us.

LAWTON: The Muslim Public Affairs Council is trying to help young Muslims address their concerns through the political process. The group holds a Young Leaders Summit in Washington, where participants learn how government works.

AL-MARAYATI: It’s easy for somebody to exploit people’s angers and frustrations and lead them to destructive behavior, so our approach is promoting the theology of life within Islam—that Islam is meant to be a part of a pluralistic society.

LAWTON: The students see the mechanics of politics up close and get to meet with politicians, this year including Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison and Indiana Representative Andre Carson, the only two Muslims in Congress. Organizers say the experience gives young Muslims a new vision for what can be accomplished.

LEKOVIC: In a post-9/11 reality, they sometimes have a hard time believing that their own government and their own elected officials want to hear from them, or even care about their opinions, because what they see on their campuses and in their hometowns is a rising level of Islamophobia.

LAWTON: The various projects are intended to be proactive against radicalism, but they have also provoked controversy. Several outsiders have accused the campaigns and their leaders of not being tough enough against extremism, while some Muslims fear the new initiatives could give the impression that the problem is bigger than it really is.

IBRAHIM HOOPER, Council on American-Islamic Relations: Some of the young people said, “Ah, yeah, before you get going on that, make sure it doesn’t portray us all as so-called radicalized,” that that’s a danger as well—to project something that isn’t there.

LAWTON: Some Muslims have accused Bray of perpetuating anti-Islamic stereotypes.

BRAY: There are some who say, oh, there’s no problem, everything is just fine, you know? Well, everything is not just fine.

LAWTON: American Muslim leaders say their young people, like young people of all faiths, are trying to figure out their identities, and, the leaders say, religion should be a culturally relevant part of the mix.

AL-MARAYATI: Islam is a religion that has a book that is supposed to be universal and is supposed to apply at different times. Therefore it is our responsibility to interpret the principles from the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet to America in the 21st century, and by and large that has not been done.

LAWTON: It’s a matter that hits all too close to home for students like these.

MATEEN RIAC: Saying that everybody, all Muslims are terrorists, I think that is like a big issue, so like it makes people feel left out, especially in schools, they’re like, “Wow, am I really like that?”

ATTIQAH SYEDA: The words “Muslim” and “terrorist” are not synonymous in any way, shape, or form.

LAWTON: And that’s the ultimate message they hope takes hold.

I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

An update: On December 30, Mahdi Bray suffered a serious stroke. I spoke with his office this week and they told me he’s now recuperating at home and doing physical rehabilitation. They say they’re optimistic about his recovery.

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: Welcome, I’m Bob Abernethy. It’s good to have you with us for this special report on the most important religion and ethics news of the year that’s almost over. Our panelists are E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a professor at Georgetown University; also Kevin Eckstrom, editor of Religion News Service, and Kim Lawton, managing editor of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. We begin with a video reminder of the major events of 2010 assembled by Kim.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: It was a challenging year for interfaith relations, as American Muslims faced new tensions on several fronts. Plans for an Islamic cultural center near the site of Ground Zero generated a firestorm of debate and protest.

Protester: No mosque, not here, not now, not ever.

LAWTON: And the proposed construction of mosques in other communities generated opposition as well. A Florida pastor’s announced intention to burn the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11 set off an international furor, including violent protests in several Muslim nations. The pastor eventually backed off his plan, but controversy continued. Leaders from several faith traditions joined with Islamic leaders to denounce what they called “growing Islamophobia” across the country. Meanwhile, amid several high-profile arrests of American Muslims allegedly plotting terrorist attacks, US mainstream Islamic groups launched new campaigns to combat extremism within their communities.

Imam speaking to Muslim students: Nonviolence, the sanctity of life is valued, and it’s not the sanctity of Muslim life, it’s the sanctity of all life.

Despite some limited signs of economic recovery, many American families continued to face unemployment and foreclosures. Religious institutions were called upon to do more to help the needy even as they dealt with their own sustained budget cuts.

On the political front, religious conservatives appeared to be reenergized by the Tea Party movement and its campaign for limited government. Although the focus of the midterm elections was on economics, many religious right activists were hopeful a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives will provide momentum for their social agenda. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats were criticized for failing to reach out more to religious voters. Many faith-based moderates and liberals were disappointed that President Obama did not employ more religious rhetoric when he discussed issues like health care and the economy. And according to one survey, growing numbers of Americans, nearly one in five, believe incorrectly that President Obama is a Muslim.

Issues surrounding homosexuality continued to pose difficult challenges for many in the religious community. Faith groups were on both sides of the issue as Congress debated lifting don’t ask don’t tell, the 17-year-old ban on gays serving openly in the military. They also filed briefs on both sides in several court cases over gay marriage. The Episcopal Church installed its second openly gay bishop, Reverend Mary Glasspool, a lesbian.

The Roman Catholic Church confronted the ongoing clergy sex abuse crisis, this time centered in several European countries, and there were more questions about how high-ranking church officials dealt with the crisis. Pope Benedict XVI offered renewed apologies about the problem and promised new guidelines for handling allegations of abuse.

Faith-based charities scrambled to meet needs in the wake of several humanitarian disasters. Here in the US, social service groups tried to help people along the Gulf Coast after the devastating BP oil spill. In Pakistan, religious relief groups rushed to deliver aid after a summer of massive flooding that has left an estimated four million people still homeless. And for nearly a year now, faith-based groups have been actively working in Haiti, providing emergency aid and helping to rebuild after the January 12 earthquake, which killed more than 220,000 people and displaced almost two million. A rising cholera epidemic is complicating those efforts.

ABERNETHY: Kim, many thanks for that. To you and to Kevin Eckstrom and to E.J. Dionne, welcome. I want to get to churches and politics and economics, jobs in just a minute, but first, Kevin, what do you make of all this Islamophobia?

KEVIN ECKSTROM (Editor, Religion News Service): It’s an extraordinary place for us to be in 2010. The most extreme example you can think of on this was in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where a zoning dispute over whether or not to build a mosque, whether they had the right to build a mosque, turned into a debate over whether Islam is actually a religion or not. And we saw it in New York in Ground Zero with the Park 51 mosque that Kim referred to in her piece. And what you saw this year was a fundamental debate over whether or not American Muslims are in a separate category or should be in a separate category from everyone else in terms of their rights, their responsibilities, and their place at the American table. And, you know, when you have a Florida pastor who can come out of nowhere and threaten to burn a pile of Qurans and get a call from the secretary of defense you know that we are not in …

LAWTON: … asking him not to do it …

ECKSTROM: That’s right. You know that we are not in an ordinary year when it comes to American Muslims.

ABERNETHY: But meanwhile there were legitimate threats. There was a Time Square bomber and others.

LAWTON: And this put a lot of pressure on the American Muslim community, as we saw, as they were trying to portray this message that Islam is not the same as terrorism. They are not mutually the same thing. But yet there were these arrests, and so they were really having to confront their own ideology and how they get their message across, and that was a big challenge for them this past year.

E.J. DIONNE (Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution): You know, we as a country have gone through bouts of this before, and I think when we confront this now it’s worth looking back. We had a party in our country formed in the 1850s in response to the big Catholic immigration, the American Party, also known as the Know Nothings, and it took us a long time to work through anti-Catholic prejudice. It wasn’t until 1960 that John Kennedy was elected president. We had enormous fights over the Mormons and their role in our society. I think what may be most distressing about this year is that the issue of reaction to Islam has become politicized in a way that it wasn’t immediately after 9/11. You know, it’s worth remembering that right after 9/11 President Bush went out of his way to visit the Islamic center here in DC. It kind of took any political sort of edge off this. I think in this election you have more of it occurring on the right and among Republicans. It was used in the campaigns by some Republican congressional candidates, and I think you are going to need some spokespeople on the conservative side who are very much opposed to Islamophobia to speak out so we can sort of go back to the moment, oddly, that we had after 9/11 when their was a lot of opposition in the country to Islamophobia, because everybody understood our need for Muslim allies around the world.

LAWTON: Well I was just going to go on top of that to say that it’s also been a challenge for leaders of other faith traditions. Muslims are looking to them, saying some of you experienced this yourselves. Where are you? Are you supporting us? Are you supporting our religious freedom? And you have seen some high-profile press conferences and statements by some of the leaders of the national religious organizations. Some Muslims wish that there were more of that going on. But I also think in some local communities, as a response to this protest in the streets, there are more interfaith dialogues going on at the local synagogue and at the local church as people try to figure out what is going on within the religious community.

ABERNETHY: There’s a correlation, isn’t there, with what’s happening to jobs and the economy and the fear a lot of people have about everything. And E.J., I wanted to ask you to move from this into the election of 2010, the Tea Party, and how some of these things appeared in the election returns.

DIONNE: What was striking about the election overall is that it didn’t shift religious alignments very much. I mean the Democrats lost ground pretty well across the board, not only among more religious voters but also among more secular voters, partly because a lot of their people didn’t show up this time around. But the Tea Party is fascinating, because on the one hand the poll data makes it very clear that there is a substantial overlap between support for the Tea Party and support for the religious conservative movement. But there is also some difference between the two. The Tea Party is mildly more secular, but what I think it is even more than the Christian conservatives were is a kind of assertively nationalist movement, and that there is a feeling—I think there is a feeling in the country that we have lost ground as a nation in the world over the last 10 years. That feels part of it. There is certainly some uncertainty over the economy, and that feeds a kind of “let’s take care of our own first” feeling in the country. And so I think watching the relationship between this new Tea Party movement and the older religious conservative movement is going to be one of the most interesting stories between now and the 2012 election.

ABERNETHY: And there was this phrase that we heard often—“We want to take back the country.” How do you transpose that? How do you interpret that?

DIONNE: Many people interpret this depending on their own politics, you know. Some people look at it and say this is a reaction to immigration and it’s a reaction of traditionally white or Anglo-Saxon Americans to the growing diversity of America. I think some people might look at it in more economic terms and say, boy, did we feel more secure 30 years ago. There was less income inequality 30 years ago. Average people could count on sort of decently paying jobs no matter what their education level was. Some of it is connected to that, and I think some of it is this sense of who are in the world now compared especially to China, but to some degree compared to India, and a lot of politicians are speaking more about American exceptionalism, we are still an exceptional nation, and I think that comes from a desire to hold on to that sense and that it’s been threatened by the downturn, by a sense our power has been depleted by the two long wars we’ve been in. And so I think there is this spiritual element to what is a national discussion about our national standing.

ABERNETHY: And Kim, between the parties did we see a God gap again in this last election?

LAWTON: Well, that’s what people used to talk about, the God gap—that Democrats appeared to be less friendly towards religion than Republicans, and President Obama and his campaign in the last presidential election and the Democratic Party had really seemed to make an effort to change that and had really reached out to the religious community. I’ve been surprised at the difficulty of President Obama’s relationship with the religious community over this past year. A lot of religious moderates and liberals have been very frustrated with him and some of his policies. They’ve been disappointed he hasn’t been speaking more about religion, and a lot of their community were frustrated that the Democratic Party didn’t appear to be reaching out to them in the past midterm election, so some of that separation still seems to be there.

ECKSTROM: I think the most interesting God gap you saw this year was the gap between perception and reality on whether or not the president is a Muslim or not.

ABERNETHY: What do you make of that?

ECKSTROM: I think when people say that he is a Muslim or that they think that he’s a Muslim, they are certainly not saying it as a compliment. It’s a way of smearing someone now in America in 2010. If you don’t like them, you can say that they are a Muslim. It’s a way of saying that he’s different, that he’s other, that he’s not like the rest of us. But you know, you have a president who speaks in Christian terminology, who went to church on Easter, who talked about finding salvation at the foot of the cross and all this. And yet there’s this gap, this interminable gap that they can’t seem to quite get over. As much as he talks, as many places as he goes, people still want to think that he’s not quite like us, and the Islam label or the Muslim label is a way of expressing that.

DIONNE: And I think there’s another side to it which Kim talked about in that excellent piece—more information per second that any video this year—and that is that President Obama talked quite a lot about religion and his own faith and his own views on the relationship between religion and public life from 2006 to 2008 when he was running for president. I think he’s done a lot less of that in the White House. Now he might defend himself saying I had awfully big problems to deal with out there. Nonetheless, I think that was a missing piece in the way he talked about issues. It was a missing piece partly, I think, on the grounds of persuasion; that providing an underlying philosophical rationale for what he was doing would have helped him, I think, in these two years. But also it’s a sort of a missing piece of who he is, and I think he does need to talk more about it. And it’s not just that minority that sees him as Muslim. I think there’s a minority that dislikes President Obama that would say almost anything about him. But there’s a larger group that just doesn’t have a sense of exactly who he is in this area, and I think he addressed it really well, I think, his critics believed that, from ’06 to ’08. I think he needs to address is again.

LAWTON: And it showed up in issues such as the health care debate or the economic issues, where a lot of times during the campaign trail he would use the phrase “we are our brothers’ keepers, we are our sisters’ keepers.” He would frame issues like health care as a moral issue and use sometimes religious language to talk about that, and he hasn’t done that as much in the Oval Office, and that has frustrated faith-based activists on the ground who believe that and who use that kind of language to mobilize their own people.

ABERNETHY: The recession continues and hurts everybody, and not least churches. Anybody want to talk about what the job problem has meant in churches?

LAWTON: Well, they’re having to do more to help people in their congregations. A lot of food banks and faith-based social services are saying they are seeing more and more people coming to them. People, middle-class people who’d never gone to a food bank before in their lives are now having to do that because of the ongoing economic problems, and at the same time religious institutions, like everybody else, are making budget cuts and slashing staff because of the difficulties.

ABERNETHY: Pastors, assistant pastors, associate pastors out of work.

LAWTON: A lot of congregations talk about that, really cutting back.

ECKSTROM: And what I’m hearing from clergy is that the recession that began in 2008 is actually now sort of catching up in reality with people as they are making their pledge payments for 2011 or going forward, where they are saying I’d like to pledge the same that I did last year but my husband just lost his job or we just don’t have as much money this year. So there’s going to be some difficult choices facing American congregations going forward from here about how they balance lower income from the pews with demand increase for services.

DIONNE: I was so struck in Kim’s piece that she kept coming back to what religious institutions are doing in the charitable sphere, whether it’s for the unemployed here or the suffering folks in Pakistan, and I think sort of one of the good news stories of the year was the publication of a book called “American Grace” by Bob Putnam of Harvard, David Campbell of Notre Dame, where they found that American—first of all, there is an enormous amount of charity that comes out of the religious community in America and that people connected to religious institutions seem to have more of a proclivity toward doing that, and that there is a kind of built-in religious tolerance in the country because of our religious diversity. It was actually a very optimistic book about the nature of religion in America, and I think Kim’s piece kind of underscored that.

ABERNETHY: Kevin, social issues. Don’t ask don’t tell was repealed. Proposition 8—I don’t know where that stands; maybe you do. Talk about those a little bit.

ECKSTROM: It was a significant year for the gay movement in all of its various forms. Gay and lesbian soldiers will now be able to serve in the military openly. On the marriage front, you had a federal court strike down California’s ban on gay marriage, and I think the most significant and often overlooked part of that ruling was that the judge said that religious feelings about homosexuality, religious bias if you will, is not enough to legislate on—that whatever your religious feelings are on the issue, that that’s not enough when it comes to civil rights, and that’s a fairly significant finding, and he found it as a finding of law, a finding of fact—that it wasn’t disputable, and that’s going to be going forward. But you also see in the sort of conservative resurgence that there’s a lot of resistance to going too fast on this issue. And so you’ll see, like in New Hampshire, where the Republicans have regained control of the legislature, they might try to repeal the gay marriage law there that’s a couple years old. You saw judges in Iowa who lost their jobs because they voted in favor of gay marriage last year. So it’s—this issue is always sort of two steps forward, one step back.

LAWTON: It’s been a difficult issue for a lot of people in the religious community whose religious beliefs teach that homosexuality is a sin, and that rubs up against civil rights and so you get to this very difficult place. So I was struck this past year by how people were examining their rhetoric, and you had the anti-gay bullying, the very tragic cases of young gay people committing suicide, and then people in the religious community looking at their rhetoric to say is it possible to oppose homosexuality without being a bully or appearing to be discriminating, and it’s a very difficult issue for a lot of people in the religious community, and how that gets worked out in society has been a challenge and will continue to be so.

ABERNETHY: And E.J., we had this interesting split within the Catholic Church this past year over the health care bill and the bishops on one side and the Catholic Health Association on the other—a lot of nuns.

DIONNE: This was a huge split. I just want to go back to the gay issue for one moment. The passage of don’t ask, don’t tell—it’s hard, I think, to fully appreciate how big a move that is. Think of where we were 15 years ago, and it passed because a number of Republican senators decided that a) they were for it on principal, but b) this is now the more popular position in the country. So we still have a lot of arguments over gay marriage, but the status of gay people has changed radically in this country in a very short time. To go to your question, this was a huge fight in the Catholic Church, and it’s going to have repercussions, where you really had a dispute over what the bill actually said. You had the Catholic bishops insisting that the language in the bill could still lead to federal financing of abortion. You had the Catholic Health Care Association, which is pro-life, and quite a large group of nuns who are also pro-life, saying we looked at this language; this bill does not finance abortion. And I think this has sort of implications for which side will the Catholic Church be on in a lot of other fights. Catholic social teaching, there’s always been a kind of amalgam: very pro-life on abortion but very much in favor of social justice. In this bill those two kind of collided. The Catholic Health Association said there is no conflict here, and I think you’re going to see a lot more arguments in the church about this in the coming several years.

ABERNETHY: And back to what you were saying before, Kevin. There’s a difference, isn’t there, between being for don’t ask don’t tell and on the other hand having that spill over into gay marriage. There’s a lot of resistance to gay marriage.

ECKSTROM: That’s right. There has been a 30-point shift in the last 15 or so years on the question of gays in the military. The shift on whether or not gays should be allowed to be married is somewhere more like in the five to ten range. It’s still very on the border of being a majority or minority of Americans who support it.

DIONNE: Although you still now have a substantial majority who support either gay marriage or civil unions. Civil unions in a very short time has gone from being a rather advanced or very liberal position to being a kind of middle-of-the-road position.

ABERNETHY: And Kim, quickly, are the Episcopalians still divided over gay bishops?

LAWTON: Many, many mainline Protestant denominations have been very divided over issues surrounding homosexuality/ Not just gay bishops—whether gay clergy can be in the pulpit, and gay marriage, whether their clergy can actually perform a same-sex marriage. So this has been and will continue to be a very difficult issue for many religious groups.

ABERNETHY: Our time is almost up. I wanted to ask each of you as you look back on the year whether you see something that we didn’t pay enough attention to—underreported. Who wants to begin? Kim?

LAWTON: Well, I was very struck by the Gulf oil spill and how that was an occasion for many conservative religious people to get a little more environmentally friendly. You saw Southern Baptists and others very struck by that tragedy and taking a look at some of their environmental positions.

ABERNETHY: Kevin?

ECKSTROM: I was struck by the change in rhetoric from the Mormon Church, actually, on the gay issue, where after the Prop 8 ruling came out and the gay bullying came, the church said, you know, we’ve been discriminated against in the past. We need to be much more careful about how we discriminate.

ABERNETHY: E.J.?

DIONNE: The decline of traditional culture-war politics on the one side and the rise of a different kind of cultural fight around immigration, Islam, Hispanics. I think that’s a shift we are going to be thinking about for a long time.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to you, many thanks. Our time is up. Many thanks to E.J. Dionne of the Brookings Institution, Kevin Eckstrom of Religion News Service, and Kim Lawton of this program.

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: A new report this week from the former heads of the 9/11 Commission says US authorities have not done enough to address the threat of homegrown terrorism. It urged new systems be put in place to counter radicalization. Kim Lawton reports that several leading US Muslim groups are already trying to confront those concerns with new efforts to prevent extremism from taking hold in their communities.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: It’s late afternoon in Manassas, Virginia, not far outside Washington, DC, and at the Dar al Noor mosque they’re getting ready for a good all-American barbecue. The picnic is part of a new national initiative from the Muslim American Society called the Straight Path Campaign. It’s one of several new projects being launched by US Islamic groups in an effort to fight extremism within their community, particularly among young people.

IMAM MAHDI BRAY, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation: We want them to say to America and prove to America through their efforts that, you know, we’re not terrorist suspects. We are America’s brightest prospects.

LAWTON: According to a new poll by the Pew Research Center, Americans hold conflicted views about whether Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions. Forty-two percent of those surveyed said that Islam does not encourage violence more than others, but 35 percent said it does. Almost a quarter said they didn’t know. The survey also found that almost 40 percent of Americans said they had an unfavorable view toward Islam. That’s a significant increase from just five years ago.

Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, many American Muslims say it’s become increasingly difficult to counter the perception that their faith is linked to violence, and that job has been complicated by some recent high-profile terrorism-related arrests of Muslim Americans, including several who were born or raised in the US.

EDINA LEKOVIC, Muslim Public Affairs Council: The fact that there has been a string of incidents presents a reality that we cannot afford to ignore, regardless of whether it’s emanating from our own homes, or our own mosques, or our own communities.

LAWTON: A Duke University study released earlier this year found only a relatively small number of US Muslims who had planned or carried out terrorist attacks. The study concluded “homegrown terrorism is a serious, but limited, problem.”

BRAY: One is one too many, and so we have zero tolerance for that kind of seductive narrative and that seductive type of presentation that lures young people into things that will ultimately ruin their lives.

LAWTON: One of the first priorities for mainstream US Muslim groups has been trying to fight extremist messages online, including many from foreign-based English-speaking Americans.

Al-Qaeda Online Video: “I am calling on every honest and vigilant Muslim, unsheathe your sharpened sword and rush to take your rightful place among defiant champions of Islam…”

SALAM AL-MARAYATI, Muslim Public Affairs Council: What happens in extremist groups is that really there’s a cult mentality. There’s blind following of a charismatic leader, these pied pipers that are speaking to us now on YouTube from caves and jungles and war zones that are trying to glamorize violence. That’s basically what we’re dealing with.

LAWTON: Hoping to offer a different view, American imam Suhaib Webb has set up his own Web site where he challenges radical statements and answers questions about Islamic teachings.

IMAM SUHAIB WEBB: You know the Prophet, peace be upon him, said “If the day of judgment starts and you have a seed in your hand, plant that seed.” Stay positive. Never allow yourself to succumb to that negative discourse.

LAWTON: He’s been urging other Muslims to tackle the issue of extremism head on as well.

WEBB: If you’re not going to take the position, someone else will take that position for you. If you’re not going to step up to the mic, someone else is going to grab it and spit. That’s just the reality.

LAWTON: Webb says a major problem is that many of the radical Web sites twist and misrepresent Islamic teachings, either intentionally or through ignorance. He was one of nine US scholars and imams who denounced extremism in a recent video produced by the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

LEKOVIC: Communities really need to focus on religious literacy so that our young people start at an early age knowing what the Quran actually says, and what the Quran actually promotes us to do, which is to be a part of society, to be contributing, and to be good to our families, and to be model citizens within whatever countries we live in.

LAWTON: With the Straight Path Campaign, the Muslim American Society is also trying to educate Muslim young people about the tenets of their faith. Imam Mahdi Bray draws from his own experience in the US civil rights movement and talks about the importance of nonviolence within Islam as well.

BRAY (speaking at mosque): Nonviolence, the sanctity of life, is valued, and it’s not the sanctity of Muslim life. It’s the sanctity of all life.

LAWTON: The campaign is holding a series of meetings with youth and youth leaders across the country to discuss violence and Islam, and also how to address injustice and discrimination in positive ways. Bray says it’s important not to dismiss the very real concerns and frustrations among young Muslims.

BRAY: Providing young people with skill sets and tools that embrace nonviolence but at the same time doesn’t give them the feeling that they’re just rolling over and that they’re not really fighting back against some of the injustices that they see every day in their lives both here and abroad.

AL-MARAYATI (speaking in meeting): We don’t separate Islam from politics. This is actually an act of worship for us.

LAWTON: The Muslim Public Affairs Council is trying to help young Muslims address their concerns through the political process. The group holds a Young Leaders Summit in Washington, where participants learn how government works.

AL-MARAYATI: It’s easy for somebody to exploit people’s angers and frustrations and lead them to destructive behavior, so our approach is promoting the theology of life within Islam—that Islam is meant to be a part of a pluralistic society.

LAWTON: The students see the mechanics of politics up close and get to meet with politicians, this year including Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison and Indiana Representative Andre Carson, the only two Muslims in Congress. Organizers say the experience gives young Muslims a new vision for what can be accomplished.

LEKOVIC: In a post-9/11 reality, they sometimes have a hard time believing that their own government and their own elected officials want to hear from them, or even care about their opinions, because what they see on their campuses and in their hometowns is a rising level of Islamophobia.

LAWTON: The various projects are intended to be proactive against radicalism, but they have also provoked controversy. Several outsiders have accused the campaigns and their leaders of not being tough enough against extremism, while some Muslims fear the new initiatives could give the impression that the problem is bigger than it really is.

IBRAHIM HOOPER, Council on American-Islamic Relations: Some of the young people said, “Ah, yeah, before you get going on that, make sure it doesn’t portray us all as so-called radicalized,” that that’s a danger as well—to project something that isn’t there.

LAWTON: Some Muslims have accused Bray of perpetuating anti-Islamic stereotypes.

BRAY: There are some who say, oh, there’s no problem, everything is just fine, you know? Well, everything is not just fine.

LAWTON: American Muslim leaders say their young people, like young people of all faiths, are trying to figure out their identities, and, the leaders say, religion should be a culturally relevant part of the mix.

AL-MARAYATI: Islam is a religion that has a book that is supposed to be universal and is supposed to apply at different times. Therefore it is our responsibility to interpret the principles from the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet to America in the 21st century, and by and large that has not been done.

LAWTON: It’s a matter that hits all too close to home for students like these.

MATEEN RIAC: Saying that everybody, all Muslims are terrorists, I think that is like a big issue, so like it makes people feel left out, especially in schools, they’re like, “Wow, am I really like that?”

ATTIQAH SYEDA: The words “Muslim” and “terrorist” are not synonymous in any way, shape, or form.

LAWTON: And that’s the ultimate message they hope takes hold.

I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

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