Rick Santorum obliquely referenced reports Tuesday about his 2008 remarks at Ava Maria University in Florida in which he claimed Satan has his "sights" on the U.S. in a battle of good versus evil, and said he won't be distracted from his campaign message.

"You guys, these are questions that are not relevant to what's being discussed in America today. What we're talking about in America today is trying to get America growing. That's what my speeches are about, that's what we're going to talk about in this campaign. If you want to dig up old speeches of talking to a religious group, go right ahead and do so, but I'm gonna stay on message, I'm gonna talk about things that Americans want to talk about which is creating jobs, getting our country safer and secure, and yeah, taking on the forces around this world who want to do harm to America. You bet I'm gonna take them on," he said in a post-speech media scrum in Phoenix.

Fox News' Nick Kalman contributed to this report.

American Muslims from across the country launched, "My Faith, My Voice," an online campaign designed to give the Muslim community an open forum where they can provide a direct response to the controversial conversation surrounding the proposed Islamic Center in New York.

Project Manager, Hassan Ahmad, described the website as an effort to build bridges and, "serve as completely neutral ground." Ahmad added, "There is no organization behind this, there is no mosque that can take ownership of this. This is just the voice of American Muslims. Plain and simple."

The group does not take a formal stance on the mosque's location and whether or not it's appropriate to build so close to the footprint of the Twin Towers. In fact, organizers were very careful to point out they are only providing the soapbox for others to stand on. "The organization doesn't have a position, it can't...it's a grassroots coalition of people who may have views on this end of the spectrum, and may have views on that end of the spectrum," said Ahmad.

Nadia El-Khatib decided she wanted to get involved in the project because as the mosque conversation escalated, so has discrimination. "I have had hatred thrown at me, simply because I look Muslim and it's really upsetting," said El-Khatib. "Just a week ago, driving by me, someone threw out some words and sped on. I haven't felt like that since right after 9/11. It was a real shock." (read more)

WASHINGTON - State Department officials say they are aware of the controversial remarks Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf made in 2005. Rauf is the Imam of the controversial so-called Ground Zero mosque and is presently on a State Department funded outreach tour of Middle Eastern countries.

During a 2005 conference in Australia, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf compared the United States to Al Qaeda and said, "We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than Al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims."

Rauf made the comments while speaking at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Center during a question and answer session, as part of what sponsors say was a dialogue to improve relations between America and the Muslim world.

Rauf added, "You remember that the U.S. led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations."

"We are aware of those remarks," said State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley. "I would just caution any of you that choose to write on this that once again you have a case where a blogger has pulled out one passage from a very lengthy speech, if you read the entire speech, you will discover exactly why we think he is rightfully participating in this international speaking tour." (read more)

WASHINGTON - State Department officials insist they are, "not hiding" Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf during his outreach tour of middle eastern countries in wake of the mosque controversy. However, the U.S. government has also refused to release a detailed itinerary of Rauf's day-to-day schedule.

Rauf, whose Cordoba initiative is behind plans for a $100 million Islamic center about two blocks from where the Twin Towers once stood, is in the middle of a State Department funded mission to Middle Eastern countries to provide insight into the role of Islam in U.S. society.

State Department officials say Rauf remains in Bahrain today and will travel to Qatar tomorrow, where he will visit mosques, attend private meetings and possibly speak to some university students. However, they will not provide detailed information about exactly where and when any of these events will happen.

When asked why the details of a trip that has been billed as a public outreach tour have been so tightly controlled, State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley said, "We have a set policy on how we approach these tours... We're not hiding him, but these are visits to groups and figures that are for the most part not available to the public." (read more)

President Obama began a 10 day family vacation on Martha's Vineyard confronted by poll numbers reflecting an increasing belief that Mr. Obama, a self-proclaimed Christian, is a Muslim.

Two national surveys, one taken before and one taken after the president spoke out about plans to build an Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero, reveal what pollsters call an unprecedented rise in misimpressions about a president's faith.

"I haven't seen any example, and I've been following polling of presidents for a long time now, of where we've seen increased confusion about religiosity the longer they're in office," says John Green. University of Akron politics professor and Senior Fellow with the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The Pew Forum found 18 percent of Americans now believe the president to be a Muslim, up from 11 percent a year ago. The percentage who believe Mr. Obama to be a Christian fell from 48 percent to 34 percent.

While Mr. Obama's political opponents are more likely to believe he's a Muslim, uncertainty has seeped into the president's political base.

"Now less than half of Democrats say the president is a Christian," Alan Cooperman of the Pew Forum says. "[L]ess than half of African Americans say the president is a Christian. Less than half of people who give Obama a positive job approval rating say he is a Christian." (read more)

An unexpected name has suddenly been thrown into the Ground Zero mosque debate: former President George W. Bush.

"I think it would be good if he stepped into the fray," said Ibrahim Hooper, the national spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), "and told other Republicans to cool it."

CAIR has been a primary leader in supporting the planned development of Cordoba House, an Islamic community center near Ground Zero that would include a mosque. Hooper told Fox Wednesday that he believes the former president would support the mosque plans, based on Bush's continual effort, during his administration, to separate the acts of the September 11 terrorists from the Islam religion as a whole.

"It's interesting to have people openly longing for the Bush administration," Hooper said, "but if he did anything right, it was that - to studiously avoid the perception that we're at war with Islam."

If Hooper's remarks about the former president seem surprising, it's with good reason. CAIR hasn't always bestowed Bush with praise, previously referring to some of his foreign policy decisions as "unjust" and "disturbing." The group also accused Bush of contributing to "a rising level of hostility to Islam and the American-Muslim community" after the former president declared in 2006 that America was "at war with Islamic fascists." (read more)

When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., split with President Obama over the proposed construction of an Islamic mosque and cultural center two blocks north of Ground Zero, it marked a rare disagreement between the capital's top two elected Democrats - and it ensured that virtually every Democratic candidate this year will now be asked which of the two men's positions he or she supports.

[See Carl Cameron's article on the Dem split HERE.]

Now Democrats appear eager to show that the mosque story, which has suddenly metastasized from a local zoning matter to a national political controversy, is exposing fissures within the GOP as well.

Democratic operatives on Tuesday alerted reporters to the fact that House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, a staunch opponent of the proposed mosque's current location, is keeping a planned fundraising appearance on Friday on behalf of Chris Gibson, a GOP congressional candidate in upstate New York with a history of conflicted statements about the mosque. (read more)

Democrats chalk up Harry Reid's break with President Obama (over the proposed mosque near Ground Zero in New York City) to Reid defensively positioning for re-election against a tough challenge from firebrand Republican Sharron Angle.

The race is a tossup and Reid is scrambling.

But the Nevada Democrat is much more than an endangered candidate for re-election--he's the Majority Leader of the United States Senate and that has global implications.

When visiting heads of state and world religious leaders arrive in Washington, they first go to the White House then make Reid's office their next stop.

His political positions have consequences beyond his 2010 race in the Silver State because he's boss of the Senate's controlling Democratic majority.

The Reid-Obama break is not just between two Democrats, it's arguably between the nation's two most powerful leaders. (read more)

While the 9/11 families don't speak as a block, Debra Burlingame, whose brother was one of the pilots killed that day, and who speaks for many of the victims' families, claims President Obama put the proposed mosque at ground zero ahead of the 9/11 trial.

"I think the president absolutely has [his] priorities confused," Debra Burlingame of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America told Fox. "He should be focusing on putting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his cohorts on trial and allowing them to plead guilty as they said they wanted to do, rather than lecturing the families of those firefighters and their children about religious tolerance at ground zero."

A White House spokesman said politics wasn't a factor in the president's comments about the proposed mosque near ground zero. Deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton said the president felt obligated to make sure all Americans are treated fairly, regardless of their religious views. (read more)

Is another (non-alcoholic) beer summit in order?  Perhaps this time to discuss the controversial plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero? That's what one lawyer joined lawmakers in suggesting Sunday in a fiery exchange on America's News Headquarters. Brett Joshpe, an attorney with the American Center for Law and Justice, says opposition to the planned Cordoba House has been mischaracterized and hijacked by politics.  Joshpe's organization has filed a lawsuit against the New York City Landmarks Preservation Committee for declining to grant landmark status to the proposed site.

"This is not about Islamaphobia," he said.  "This is deliberately provocative and inflammatory....If the president wants to show some leadership on this issue, rather than taking a stance and then backtracking from it, I think the president should invite both sides to the White House to sit down and discuss this."

The proposed project is a 13-story, $100 million Isamic center that would be built just two blocks from Ground Zero and include a mosque, a 500-seat auditorium, a swimming pool and a gym.  The plan has prompted both protest and support from the New York City community in recent weeks. (read more)