Wednesday, August 10, 2011 By Terence P. Jeffrey
     (CNSNews.com) -- Eighty percent of Muslim Americans approve of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president, according to a newly released survey conducted by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, a partnership between Gallup and the Crown Prince Court of Abu Dhabi.
Muslim college
Zaytuna College co-founder
Dr. Hatem Bazian,  foreground,
and co-rounder  and chairman
 of the board  Shaykh Hamza Yusuf pray
 at Zaytuna College in Berkeley,
Monday, Aug. 30, 2010. 
(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)     According to the survey, 65 percent of Jewish Americans approve of the job Obama is doing; 60 percent of atheists, agnostics, and those of no religion approve; 50 percent of Catholics approve; 37 percent of Protestants approve and 25 percent of Mormons approve.
     Although published this month, the survey of Muslim Americans was actually completed on April 9. (In Gallup’s overall polling in the week that ended April 10, Obama’s approval was at 45 percent, slightly higher than the 42 percent it hit last week.)
     Obama’s approval among Muslim Americans has declined since 2009 but still remains far higher than the approval President George W. Bush’s won among Muslim Americans in 2008.  In that year, only 7 percent of Muslim Americans said they approved of the job Bush was doing.
     In 2009, 84 percent of Muslim Americans said they approved of the job Obama was doing. That dropped to 78 percent in 2010 and then rose to 80 percent this year.
     The Abu Dhabi Gallup Center says it interviewed 3,883 self-identified Muslim Americans between Jan. 1, 2008 and April 9, 2011 to get its polling trends in that community. The interviews were part of Gallup’s ongoing polling of at least 1,000 American adults 350 days per year.