Are Muslims the New Gays?
Some American Muslim leaders say they're being snubbed by Barack Obama, who is of course battling those pesky and persistent online rumors that he is a Muslim. Some Muslim leaders say he's avoiding them while others point to his denials of being a Muslim as just a bit too strident and horror-filled. What, after all, they ask, is wrong with being a Muslim?
Rep. Keith Ellison, the only Muslim in Congress and an Obama supporter, has some strong words for Obama. He is a staunch progressive whom I've had on the show several times. Perhaps breaking the mold of what some might think of a devout Muslim, he favors full equality for LGBT people, including marriage rights. He is also the guy who did his ceremonial swearing-in on the Koran, and there is a definite attempt by the right-wing propagandists to confuse Ellison, also African American, with Obama: A lot of the "Obama is a Muslim" emails claim Obama swore on a Koran, which of course is completely false.
Ellison and other Muslim leaders believe Obama should stand up to all of this and publicly court them like any other constituency rather than carefully tread and keep a distance, which definitely seems to be the strategy:
“This is the ‘hope campaign,’ this is the ‘change campaign,’ ” said Mr. Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota. Muslims are frustrated, he added, that “they have not been fully engaged in it.”...
...“A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way,” Mr. Ellison said.
It might be easy to say, well, in this political climate -- and with the lies spread about Obama, and of course the reality of his middle name -- that the campaign's strategy is wise. But it wasn't long ago that LGBT voters were treated exactly this way by Democratic presidential candidates, and really, we haven't come that much further.
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