Romney has reportedly said both that he wouldn't consider a Muslim and that he wouldn't use religion as a deciding factor in making top-level appointments if he's elected.
Shuaib ud-Din of the Utah Islamic Center in Sandy said politicians often change their stands, so Romney's "clarification should be taken at face value."
That clarification came Tuesday, when Romney told reporters in Florida that he would choose Cabinet members "based on their merits. ... I'm open to having people of any faith, ethnic group."
However, at a private fund-raiser in Las Vegas earlier this month, Romney reportedly said: "Based on the numbers of American Muslims — as a percentage — in our population, I cannot see that a Cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration," according to a Christian Science Monitor opinion piece written by Mansoor Ijaz, an American-born businessman of Pakistani heritage.
Din said he hoped that Romney's statement that he would consider candidates based on their merits is the one that accurately describes his position.
"Even if the numbers don't add up to Protestants or Catholics, they (Muslims) have a lot to give to the security and stability of this country," Din said. "You can't find a better person to combat terrorism than a Muslim, if he is qualified."
In his remarks on Tuesday, Romney said he was responding to the narrow question about whether he needed to have a Muslim in his Cabinet to combat radical Islamic jihad.
"I said no, I don't think you need a Muslim in the Cabinet to take on radical jihad any more than we needed a Japanese American to understand the threat that was coming from Japan or something of that nature," Romney said.
"Ijaz simply got it wrong," said Kirk Jowers, head of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics and a Romney supporter who worked for the candidate as head of his former political action committee.
"I'm obviously biased," Jowers said, "but in my 13 years of knowing Mitt Romney and watching how he works, the comment attributed to him would be so completely out of character, it doesn't pass the straight-face test to me."
Jowers said Romney is "incredibly data-driven" when it comes to hiring and makes decisions based on merit. "People in Utah who worked for Mitt at the Olympics know that the best person got the job and the best person got promoted, period," he said. Romney led the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
Romney's initial remarks were surprising to Tarek Nosseir, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake. He said Muslims living in Utah share a unique connection with their Mormon neighbors. "We share similar beliefs of family, social justice," Nosseir said. "It is hurtful to me that a person who is seeking the highest office in the nation is just not willing to put the best person in the job according their qualifications."
Both religions are minorities in the United States, and Romney has often found himself defending his faith as a member of the LDS Church, saying it shouldn't be a factor in his campaign.
Mormons comprise roughly 1.3 percent of the nation's adult population, according to a 2005 Baylor Religion Survey. Surveys place Muslims at less than 1 percent of adults, though some estimates suggest the Muslim population in the U.S. is 2 percent or more.
In the Monitor article, Ijaz wrote that Romney's apparent rejection of Muslims for Cabinet-level positions "demonstrated an aggravating hypocrisy." Romney, a Mormon, "wants America to be blind to his religious beliefs and judge him on merit," Ijaz wrote. "Yet he seems to accept excluding Muslims because of their religion, claiming they're too much of a minority for a post in high-level policymaking."
Ijaz urged Romney and other presidential candidates to "actively begin searching" for American Muslims and Arab Americans to serve in Cabinet posts to diminish the "risk (of) promulgating policies that once again put the U.S. straight in the sights of the terrorists who seek to bring America down."
The Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling on Romney to meet with Muslim leaders, pointing to press reports the Council sees as troubling.
Romney apparently made similar remarks before, saying at an earlier fund-raiser that he probably wouldn't appoint a Muslim to his cabinet, according to a report in the Talking Point Memo, based on the account of Irma Aguirre, a former finance director for the Nevada Republican Party and another witness.
And Ijaz told the Huffington Post that Romney's response to his article was misleading because his initial remarks weren't made in the context of combating Islamic extremism, but to possible cabinet appointments.
Contributing: Hearst Newspapers