The study, which was also sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, interviewed 2,000 American adults by telephone between July 7, the date of the first terrorist attacks on London, and July 17. The margin of error for the study was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
A majority, 55 percent, of those surveyed expressed a ''favorable'' view of Muslim Americans, a figure that has risen from 45 percent before the 9/11 attacks.
Fewer people, 39 percent of those surveyed, said they hold a ''favorable'' view of Islam in general.
The survey reported the number of Americans who believe Islam encourages violence is falling, with 36 percent of respondents ascribing to that view, down from 44 percent in 2003.
Basic knowledge about Islam was found to correlate with favorable views of the world's second-largest religion.
- Religion News Service
Don't look for witches to be dancing with delight around their caldrons over the removal from the statute books of ancient laws that criminalized witchcraft and fortune-telling.
"In some ways it's irrelevant," said Caroline Tully of Melbourne, Australia, who says she's a witch. "I've only known one person to be busted in the past 20 years."
Tully said "witch" was a pejorative term that had come to be associated with "nefarious deeds," but "a witch was really only a wise old woman who dealt in herbs and potions." She described modern witchcraft as a form of neopaganism. "These days it has become quite a popular alternative religion."
Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls said the repeal was about bringing legislation into the 21st century.
- The Australian
A group of religious Jewish extremists opposed to the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reportedly placed a death curse on Sharon on July 21.
Ynet, an Israel-based news Web site, reported that about 20 extremists took part in the ''pulsa denura'' ceremony, during which they prayed Sharon would die within the next 30 days.
Rooted in the Kabbalah, a stem of Jewish mystic philosophy, the ceremony made headlines in Israel a decade ago, when extremist right-wing rabbis prayed for the death of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was later gunned down by an Orthodox Jew in 1995.
In an interview Tuesday with the newspaper Ha'aretz, Michael Ben-Horin, one of the ceremony's organizers, said the curse was necessary because security around Sharon ''is 10 times tighter than [was] the security around Hitler and Stalin.''
- Religion News Service
One million candles lit up the ancient Borobudur Buddhist temple, about 250 miles east of Jakarta, in predominantly Muslim Indonesia as 5,000 people of all faiths prayed for an end to acts of terrorism, such as the deadly bombings that have rocked Egypt and Britain.
''Terrorism must be regarded as the enemy of all religions,'' said Syafii Maarif - a past leader of the nation's largest Islamic group, Muhammadiyah - at the July 23 vigil. ''In the end, the forces of light, reason and hope must overpower the forces of darkness, despair and violence.''
Worshippers prayed for victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami that killed more than 170,000 people across Asia, and an end to suffering of all kinds worldwide, from poverty to war.
- The Associated Press
