A Double Standard on Religious Violence?

I used to blog at the Episcopal Cafe, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in how faith, politics and life intersect.  Follow them!  David Allen has a very interesting  post at the Episcopal Cafe discussing the double standard Americans have toward religious violence.  When Christians engage in religiously motivated violence, we reject them as legitimately Christian.  On the other hand, when Muslims commit such violence, not so much:

A recent poll by the folks at PRRI bears this out. 75% of the folks in the US believe that people who commit acts of violence in the name of Christianity are not Christian. But only 50% of the folks in the US believe that people who commit acts of violence in the name of Islam are not Muslim. That’s a double standard when it comes down to who folks in the US believe commit acts of violence.

It gets even more interesting when those who hold this double standard are broken into various groups, such as Republicans vs Democrats. 75% of Republicans don’t believe that Christians who commit violent acts are really Christians, while only 33% of Republicans don’t believe that Muslims who commit violent acts are really Muslims. The Democrats do a little better but still have a double standard. 79% of Democrats don’t believe that Christians who commit violent acts are really Christians, while 55% of Democrats don’t believe that Muslims who commit violent acts are really Muslims.

Read the full post here.  You can find the full survey results here.