So What If He Were Muslim?

The assumption is that to the extent Obama can be made out to be a Muslim, his presidential prospects will wither. It is an assumption Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, finds troubling. "It's strange to acknowledge that calling someone a Muslim is a smear," he says. He added that CAIR and others had been urging Obama to "speak out forcefully against the anti-Muslim bigotry at the core of this smear."

Since certain Muslims see America as Satan, some Americans consider it perfectly acceptable to be anti-Muslim. So though the rules of civilized engagement prohibit Obama's enemies from making a big deal of his race, many feel comfortable linking him to a religion that is not his own in the hopes of triggering anti-Islamic (and other associated) anxieties. They can then claim, somewhat disingenuously, that they are not exploiting bigotry—at least not racial bigotry.

Asked how they hoped to counter efforts linking Obama to Islam, Valerie Jarrett, a top Obama adviser, replied, "We continue to talk about his Christian faith." The problem is that such an approach implicitly accepts the necessity of distancing Obama from Islam—as opposed to making the arguably more prototypically American point that one's religion is one's business, that no candidate should be subjected to tests of religious faith as long as that candidate believes in separating faith from governance.

Is there any bright side to the Obama-Muslim controversy? Hooper sees one. It "raised the issue of Islamophobia and allows it to be acknowledged and openly discussed." Certainly, there should be room for an intelligent discussion of religious bigotry—of whether religion actually makes a difference in how one governs, and of whether America's growing religious diversity will somehow change the political character of this nation. That discussion will not take place in the context of a political campaign, when the object is not elucidation but the taking down of an opponent. And it will not be given much attention at a convention, where the task is presenting the candidate in the most broadly appealing way. But at some point, these are issues thoughtful people will need to face head-on—rather than cede the ground to propagandists who traffic in intolerance, and who, deprived of the ability to make racial slurs with impunity, simply shift their focus to religion.

© 2008