Salam!

In the 2008 Presidential Campaign, and even before that back into the Democratic Primaries, there was a stinging accusation and subsequent myth surrounding Barack Obama: many claimed that he was a Muslim.

Now, to understand my confusion in why this became as big a deal as it did, one must first understand what a Muslim is. A Muslim is a believer in the religion of Islam, an Abrahamic religion not far separated from Christianity and Judaism. However, in our post-9/11 society, we as most Americans have been taught to group this term with that of “terrorist”. Thus, accusing Obama of “being a Muslim” was a blanket way to tie him to Anti-American ideology and tactics and in the end serve to make a loss for him more viable.

I am not here to defend Obama’s status as a Christian and debunk the myth of him being Muslim. I am here to ask one simple question: Why is being a Muslim a bad thing? When one reads into the religion, it is a religion that preaches just as much peace (and just as much violence, I might add) as Christianity does. Either religion has quotes that can be mined and taken out of context to serve some peaceful or violent end. So, again, why is it being used as a bad-word? If we go by the logic of some, that being Muslim carries with it some disposition to be violent against non-Muslims of the same fundamentalist persuasion, then we must also apply that same logic to most others in religious communities as well.

All in God's name.

Let’s take for example the loudest group that seemed to blow this horn - conservative Christians. Christianity has a long history of intolerance to non-believers where Muslims were generally more tolerant. It was Christianity that expelled Jews and Muslims from Spain in 1492. It was Christianity that fed the notion of “Manifest Destiny” and the killing and exhausting of resources of indigenous American peoples. It was Christianity that fueled the movement of the Ku Klux Klan. It was Christianity that fueled The Army of God, a fundamentalist group responsible for numerous bombings of abortion clinics, gay nightclubs, and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. However, we don’t see rabid conservatives ready to vilify Christians for the history of violence, hate, and intolerance tied to them.

While everybody was calling Obama a Muslim as though it were a bad thing (though his father was the only one raised a Muslim and who never actually raised Obama himself) nobody was saying that Timothy McVeigh’s devout Roman Catholic upbringing had anything to do with his actions in blowing up the Oklahoma City building. Nobody tied Christianity to violence when in July of 2008 Jim D. Adkinson shot several church members due to “liberal” viewpoints and teachings. Nobody called Christians are group of hate when in Indonesia, circa Sept 2006, 2 Muslim fishermen were murdered and beheaded by 3 Christian farmers.

Our anti-Muslim sentiment was so strong just a mere few years ago that of some respondents polled, nearly half believed that Muslim-Americans should have some rights suspended.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6729916/

Of course, those who believed this were more likely to be of this mindset after watching much of the American news media. Of course, there was no clamoring for Christians to have their rights suspended after their ties to violence acts in history, particularly the United States.

Naturally accentuating the Negative.

Conservative Christians are so quick to venerate people for being “good Christians”, yet so comforted in ignoring achievements by Muslim-Americans in our society. Of course conservatives fail to mention that a Muslim-American, Fazlur Khan, designed the Sears Tower and John Hancock Center, some of our mainstays in American tourist attractions. Nor do we hold up Ahmed Zewail, winner of the 1999 Chemistry Nobel prize. We are so quick to glorify Muhammad Ali, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar as sports icons and household names, yet ignore their Muslim backgrounds in the process.

Part of me suspects that race had a small hand in this as well. Late in campaign, a McCain supporter was on camera accusing Obama of being an "Arab", when none of his family is from the Arab Peninsula, but rather Africa and Kansas. Again, here they are attempting to tie "Arab" with "Muslim", thus perpetuating more obfuscation. If Arab identity really were an issue to these people, why then is Ralph Nader (a MUCH more left-wing candiate that Obama) ignored on grounds of ethnic suspicion, who has heavy Lebanese ethnic background? Could it have anything to do with his skin color? Just a thought, nomás.

America, in many respects, needs to grow up and get real. No, Obama was not and is not a Muslim. But so what if he were? Given the history of our Christian reared citizens propensity towards violent movements, I'd ask something to the contrary: "Why NOT a Muslim President?"