, 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
