By Rexcel Sorza, IOL Correspondent

MANILA, November 16 (IslamOnline.net) – The majority of Filipinos gave Islam a positive view, according to a recent survey by an independent and popular polling firm.

The Social Weather Stations (SWS) said 52% of their 1,200 respondents gave Islam a positive view while 41% gave an opposite view.

The results were released to the public  Saturday, November 13, the same day Filipino Muslims celebrated `Eid Al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, with congregational prayer and festivities.

“The August 5-22, 2004 Social Weather Survey found 52% with favorable view towards Islam, while 41% have an unfavorable opinion. Those with favorable opinion were 58% in June 2003 while those with unfavorable opinion were unchanged at 41%,” the firm’s statement read.

The result showed a 9% increase from a similar survey done almost two years ago, on November 2002. In that survey, positive view registered only 43% against the negative at 54%.

Muslims are a minority in this largely Roman Catholic Southeast Asian state, where only 10-15% of the 84 million people are believers of Islam.

SWS used face-to-face interviews of a national sample of 1,200 representative adults, for an approximate error margin of ±3% at the 95% confidence level for national-level percentages.

It further found out that opinion favorable on Islam “is evident in all areas and economic classes except in Visayas where the opinion is predominantly unfavorable.”

Islam got its highest favorable score of 66% in the National Capital Region, the Philippine capital, followed by the Luzon and Mindanao regions, which both registered 56%. Islam seems to be unpopular in the Visayas as it got a favorable score of only 27%.

The positive view of Islam compared to the 2002 survey registered an improvement in all the regions of this predominantly Christian country, except in the Visayas.

In the National Capital Region, the improvement was 20%, from 46% in 2002 to 66% this year. In Mindanao, an increase of 4% was noted, 52% to 56% and 14% in Luzon region, or from 41% in 2002 to 56% two years later.

Filipinos belonging to the A, B and C classes had the most positive view of Islam with 63%, followed by those in the E class, at 51%, and then by the D class, with 50%.

According to SWS’s Vladymir Joseph Licudine, “religion is not a factor in having a favorable or unfavorable opinion about Islam, as no difference of opinion is recorded among Filipino Catholics and Christians.”

Some 50% of the Catholic respondents gave Islam a positive view while 54% belonging to other Christian sects did the same.

And despite the common traditions of Islam and Christianity, a large majority (81%) say Islam is very different from Christianity. This perception holds true across all areas, economic classes and religion.

“Unlike a large majority of Filipinos (81%), only 57% of the Americans say Islam is different, while 27% say otherwise. The remaining 16% do not have enough knowledge to give an opinion.”

Licudine said the poll was not commissioned, but were included on SWS's own initiative.

During Ramadan, Filipino Muslims embarked on one task to accomplish, namely to prove that Islam and Muslims have nothing to do with terrorism and violence.

Source : http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-11/16/article04.shtml