According to a recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll, 31 percent of Republican respondents believe that President Obama is a Muslim, reports Josh Gerstein on Politico's Under the Radar blog.

He compares the results to a recent Time Magazine poll, which asked 1002 respondents “Do you personally believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim or Christian?”

Gerstein points out that Time Magazine's question may have provoked a specific response. “Time asked a question that gave more prominence to the possibility Obama is Muslim, but also may have drawn out more subjective feelings from respondents,” Gerstein pointed out. 42 percent of Republican respondents answered that they thought that Obama was a Muslim.

Meanwhile, Pew asked respondents, “Is [President Obama] Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, agnostic or something else?” Regardless of the wording, both statistics indicate that the public perception of President Obama as a Muslim are on the rise.

According to Chris McGreal at The Guardian, White House spokesman Bill Burton addressed the issue of the president's faith. “The president is obviously a Christian. He prays everyday,” he stated.

Pew's Alan Cooperman analyzed the reasoning behind the poll results. “There are two things going on...one is the percentage of people who think Obama is a Muslim is rising and some of that, it is fair to surmise, is an indication of dislike and distrust of the president. But the other thing is that the percentage of Americans who say he is a Christian is dropping and the numbers who don’t know is rising. Those things are true not just among people who don't like the president.”

White House officials blamed “misinformation campaigns” and “folks who are intent on spreading falsehoods about the president and his values and beliefs” for the poll results.

Some commentators defended their viewpoints about the president and his relationship with the Muslim community. Jeff Crouere, a Louisiana-based radio talk show host, addresses President Obama's connections to Islam at Bayoubuzz News. “President Obama may not be a practicing Muslim, but he certainly favors giving Muslims preferential treatment,” he writes, referring to Obama's speech in Cairo.

“He has Muslim relatives and his father was a Muslim. He spent some of his formative years in a Muslim nation learning about the faith and appreciating its customs...all of a sudden, after his election, he was eagerly embracing his Muslim heritage,” Crouere continues. Although he acknowledges that there are billions of peaceful Muslims across the globe, the radio talk show host believes that President Obama favors “the interests of the Arabs over the Jews.”

Crouere also spoke about the recent controversy surrounding the Ground Zero mosque and community center. “Radical Islamic terrorists attacked this country on that day and our nation is still at war with those who want to kill Americans and our way of life. A mosque on that site is not appropriate and not wanted by the American people,” he asserted.

Crouere's opinions about the Ground Zero mosque reflect those of the Americans demonstrating in the streets. James Nachtwey for Time Magazine comments, “You don't have to be prejudiced against Islam to believe, as many Americans do, that the area around Ground Zero is a sacred place.” However, he also laments that the sentiments have erupted into a “political issue.”

Nachtwey believes that the debate over the proposed community center raises important questions: “Does America have a problem with Islam? Have the terrorist attacks of 9/11 — and other attempts since — permanently excluded Muslims from full assimilation into American life?”

According to a Time Magazine poll, 46 percent of Americans believes that Islam is more likely than other faith to encourage violence against non believers. Associating Islam with terrorism and violence may be indicative of a growing presence of “Islamophobia” in the United States.

“To be a Muslim in America now is to endure slings and arrows against your faith — not just in the schoolyard and the office but also outside your place of worship and in the public square,” Nachtwey observes.

Ali Ibrahim the Deputy Editor-in-Chief for Asharq-Alawsat addresses the issue in an article at the news site. “Muslims are not responsible for what the terrorists did on September 11th, and there were also Muslim victims in these attacks,” he asserts.

Ibrahim observes that the controversy has “rekindled an atmosphere similar to the Islamophobia that was apparent the period after the September 11th attacks.”

The editor notes that the controversy about the mosque is making it difficult for Islamic groups to correct misconceptions about the faith and the larger community's connection, or lack thereof, to the terrorists who perpetrated the attacks of September 11.

“The solution? Perhaps the way out is to return the issue to its local framework, as a matter for the residents of New York to decide what they want, within the framework of their local laws. However, there is nothing wrong with taking into account the feelings raised, on the grounds that the project serves Muslim Americans who must be a part of the interactions of their local community,” Ibrahim concludes.