Election '08: The tireless Right-wing effort to convince America that Barack Obama is a Muslim

Tell me that isn't a mosque in the background

Yesterday, 2008 Presidential hopeful Barack Obama won the Iowa Caucuses, taking 38% of the vote to John Edwards' 30% and Hillary Clinton's 29%. The results solidified Obama as a real contender to win the Democratic nomination and eventually the General Election. Many on the Right, however, have realized the Obama threat a while ago, and haven't waited until the General Election to start smearing him. His supposed inexperience, his position on Pakistan, his sex education policy, even his choice of fashion accessories. But a somewhat more subtle, and in my opinion irrelevant, tactic has been to question Obama's religion. While some have chosen to attack Obama's church, essentially lumping the Trinity United Church of Christ in with Jim Jones, David Koresh, the Reverend Moon and Tom Cruise, others have taken a different approach: prove to the world that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

• Conservative website Insightmag.com peddled a since-debunked story that Obama was educated at a Madrassa, a Muslim seminary school, and attributed the false story to the Hillary Clinton campaign.


• In a December, 2007 interview with Good Morning America, Right-wing pundit Glenn Beck "mistakenly" referred to Obama as "Osama" before correcting himself. "Unfortunate name," was Beck's excuse for the supposed flub.


• Conservative Frontpagemag.com published an article on December 26, 2007, using discredited accounts of a childhood acquaintance to answer that age-old question, "Was Obama Ever a Muslim?"


• Debbie Schlussel has devoted at least three blog posts to cracking the case of Obama's secret Muslim identity. In Schlussel's view, we should apply Islamic law:

  In Arab culture and under Islamic law, if your father is a Muslim, so are you.
  And once a Muslim, always a Muslim.

• Schlussel later outdid herself, posing the question of whether Barack Obama was a "man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?"
  
• Bernard McGuirk, former executive producer of Imus in the Morning, criticized Obama for having a "Jew-hating name." Really.


• Radical right-wing website Freedomsenemies.com, states that Obama has been "a Muslim for 31 years."


• CNN Correspondent Jeff Greenfield suggested that Obama and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad somehow have similar tastes in fashion, adding:
  

  Now, it is one thing to have a last name that sounds like Osama and a middle name, Hussein, that is probably less than helpful. But an outfit that reminds people of a charter member of the Axis of Evil?

• In an apparent slip of the tongue, presidential hopeful Mitt Romney committed the common mistake of confusing Obama with Osama bin Laden:
  
  

  Actually, just look at what Osam—Barack Obama—said just yesterday. Barack Obama, calling on radicals, jihadists of all different types, to come together in Iraq.

• Rush Limbaugh referred to the Senator as "Obama Osama" no less than seven times during the June 11, 2005 edition of his radio program.
  

In addition to these concerted efforts to link Obama with Islam, the somewhat more innocent practice of using Obama's full name, Barack Hussein Obama, has become part of the right-wing canon. While I'm sure Obama appreciates the courtesy, the fact that these conservatives fail to refer to other politicians by their full names makes it clear that the real, not so innocent, intent is to make Obama appear more Muslim. The following pundits have all used this tactic:

• Ed Rogers, former advisor to Bush, Sr.
• Ann Coulter
• Richard "Bo" Dietl, frequent Fox News "analyst"
• Rush Limbaugh
• Chris Matthews
• Bill Bennett
• Bill Cunningham, conservative radio talk show host (actually falsely added "Mohammed" to Obama's name to give it some extra Muslim flair)

While the attacks by the "professional media" have been petty enough, those lobbed at Obama by Joe Righty have been truly idiotic:

• "There's no way that anyone with the middle name 'Hussein' could rise to that level of power in the United States without being the devil, in my opinion." - caller on The John Gibson Show


• "He's not open about being a practicing Muslim." - poster validuscustodiae on redstate.com


• "Hussein Obama is a dangerous covert muslism." - poster huckabeefan on redstate.com


• An email circulating in 2006 claimed that Obama's father was a "radical Muslim" and that Obama swore his oath of office on the Koran, both outrageously false.


• Conservative "blog," (to put it nicely) http://barack-hussein-obama.blogspot.com/, claimed that "Barack Obama is a MUSLIM. No ifs ands or buts," and placed this tasteful picture of Obama in front of the burning World Trade Center on the website:

Why is this a big deal? Well, it shouldn't be. A candidate's religious background means almost as little to me as his or her middle name. But as I'm beginning to discover, I'm not always like most Americans. A Pew research survey conducted in 2007 found that 45% of Americans would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is a Muslim.

So clearly, religion does matter. (Interestingly enough, and in spite of the anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. after 9/11, Americans would still prefer a Muslim president to an atheist.) But even without the anti-Muslim hostility, the United States is still overwhelmingly a Christian nation, and candidates who appear to have more in common with the average American are traditionally seen to have an advantage. That is where I believe this effort to Muslimize Barack Obama stems from. I have to give the average American some credit. Despite the Arab name and Muslim stepfather, and even though 9/11 is still very fresh in people's minds, I don't think people are going to believe Obama is the Trojan Horse of radical Islam. But as many analysts expect another tight election in 2008, every vote counts, especially among independents. Evangelicals are not going to vote for Barack Obama, but your average, moderate Christian might, which is why conservatives are trying so hard to make Obama's "Musliminess" a wedge with which the GOP can create distance between Obama and independent voters. If Obama retains the momentum garnered from his victory in Iowa and wins the nomination, expect this sort of nonsense to increase exponentially. Because, while it is not okay in this country to attack a candidate for being black or being a female, sadly it's still okay to attack them for being Muslim.