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NYT: Muslim Voters Detect a Snub From Obama


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I'd say the very vehment denials of not being Muslim have something to do with it

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/us/politics/24muslim.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Muslim Voters Detect a Snub From Obama

By ANDREA ELLIOTT

As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help.

Mr. Ellison believed that Mr. Obama’s message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Mr. Obama asked Mr. Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Mr. Ellison’s Washington office to explain.

“I will never forget the quote,” Mr. Ellison said, leaning forward in his chair as he recalled the aide’s words. “He said, ‘We have a very tightly wrapped message.’ ”

When Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign, Muslim Americans from California to Virginia responded with enthusiasm, seeing him as a long-awaited champion of civil liberties, religious tolerance and diplomacy in foreign affairs. But more than a year later, many say, he has not returned their embrace.

While the senator has visited churches and synagogues, he has yet to appear at a single mosque. Muslim and Arab-American organizations have tried repeatedly to arrange meetings with Mr. Obama, but officials with those groups say their invitations — unlike those of their Jewish and Christian counterparts — have been ignored. Last week, two Muslim women wearing head scarves were barred by campaign volunteers from appearing behind Mr. Obama at a rally in Detroit.

In interviews, Muslim political and civic leaders said they understood that their support for Mr. Obama could be a problem for him at a time when some Americans are deeply suspicious of Muslims. Yet those leaders nonetheless expressed disappointment and even anger at the distance that Mr. Obama has kept from them.

“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.”

Aides to Mr. Obama denied that he had kept his Muslim supporters at arm’s length. They cited statements in which he had spoken inclusively about American Islam and a radio advertisement he recorded for the recent campaign of Representative Andre Carson, Democrat of Indiana, who this spring became the second Muslim elected to Congress.

In May, Mr. Obama also had a brief, private meeting with the leader of a mosque in Dearborn, Mich., home to the country’s largest concentration of Arab-Americans. And this month, a senior campaign aide met with Arab-American leaders in Dearborn, most of whom are Muslim. (Mr. Obama did not campaign in Michigan before the primary in January because of a party dispute over the calendar.)

“Our campaign has made every attempt to bring together Americans of all races, religions and backgrounds to take on our common challenges,” Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman, said in an e-mail message.

Mr. LaBolt added that with religious groups, the campaign had largely taken “an interfaith approach, one that may not have reached every group that wishes to participate but has reached many Muslim Americans.”

The strained relationship between Muslims and Mr. Obama reflects one of the central challenges facing the senator: how to maintain a broad electoral appeal without alienating any of the numerous constituencies he needs to win in November.

After the episode in Detroit last week, Mr. Obama telephoned the two Muslim women to apologize. “I take deepest offense to and will continue to fight against discrimination against people of any religious group or background,” he said in a statement.

Such gestures have fallen short in the eyes of many Muslim leaders, who say the Detroit incident and others illustrate a disconnect between Mr. Obama’s message of unity and his campaign strategy.

“The community feels betrayed,” said Safiya Ghori, the government relations director in the Washington office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Even some of Mr. Obama’s strongest Muslim supporters say they are uncomfortable with the forceful denials he has made in response to rumors that he is secretly a Muslim. (Ten percent of registered voters believe the rumor, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.)

In an interview with “60 Minutes,” Mr. Obama said the rumors were offensive to American Muslims because they played into “fearmongering.” But on a new section of his Web site, he classifies the claim that he is Muslim as a “smear.”

“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.

Mr. Ellison, a first-term congressman, remains arguably the senator’s most important Muslim supporter. He has attended Obama rallies in Minnesota and appears on the campaign’s Web site. But Mr. Ellison said he was also forced to cancel plans to campaign for Mr. Obama in North Carolina after an emissary for the senator told him the state was “too conservative.” Mr. Ellison said he blamed Mr. Obama’s aides — not the candidate himself — for his campaign’s standoffishness.

Despite the complications of wooing Muslim voters, Mr. Obama and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, may find it risky to ignore this constituency. There are sizable Muslim populations in closely fought states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.

In those states and others, American Muslims have experienced a political awakening in the years since Sept. 11, 2001. Before the attacks, Muslim political leadership in the United States was dominated by well-heeled South Asian and Arab immigrants, whose communities account for a majority of the nation’s Muslims. (Another 20 percent are estimated to be African-American.) The number of American Muslims remains in dispute as the Census Bureau does not collect data on religious orientation; most estimates range from 2.35 million to 6 million.

A coalition of immigrant Muslim groups endorsed George W. Bush in his 2000 campaign, only to find themselves ignored by Bush administration officials as their communities were rocked by the carrying out of the USA Patriot Act, the detention and deportation of Muslim immigrants and other security measures after Sept. 11.

As a result, Muslim organizations began mobilizing supporters across the country to register to vote and run for local offices, and political action committees started tracking registered Muslim voters. The character of Muslim political organizations also began to change.

“We moved away from political leadership primarily by doctors, lawyers and elite professionals to real savvy grass-roots operatives,” said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, a political group in Washington. “We went back to the base.”

In 2006, the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee arranged for 53 Muslim cabdrivers to skip their shifts at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia to transport voters to the polls for the midterm election. Of an estimated 60,000 registered Muslim voters in the state, 86 percent turned out and voted overwhelmingly for Jim Webb, a Democrat running for the Senate who subsequently won the election, according to data collected by the committee.

The committee’s president, Mukit Hossain, said Muslims in Virginia were drawn to Mr. Obama because of his support for civil liberties and his more diplomatic approach to the Middle East. Mr. Hossain and others said his multicultural image also appealed to immigrant voters.

“This is the son of an immigrant; this is someone with a funny name,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, who is a Christian who has campaigned for Mr. Obama at mosques and Arab churches. “There is this excitement that if he can win, they can win, too.”

Yet some Muslim and Arab-American political organizers worry that the campaign’s reluctance to reach out to voters in those communities will eventually turn them off. “If they think that they are voting for a campaign that is trying to distance itself from them, my big fear is that Muslims will sit it out,” Mr. Hossain said.

Throughout the primaries, Muslim groups often failed to persuade Mr. Obama’s campaign to at least send a surrogate to speak to voters at their events, said Ms. Ghori, of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Before the Virginia primary in February, some of the nation’s leading Muslim organizations nearly canceled an event at a mosque in Sterling because they could not arrange for representatives from any of the major presidential campaigns to attend. At the last minute, they succeeded in wooing surrogates from the Clinton and Obama campaigns by telling each that the other was planning to attend, Mr. Bray said. (No one from the McCain campaign showed up.)

Frustrations with Mr. Obama deepened the day after he claimed the nomination when he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel. (Mr. Obama later clarified his statement, saying Jerusalem’s status would need to be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians.)

Osama Siblani, the editor and publisher of the weekly Arab American News in Dearborn, said Mr. Obama had “pandered” to the Israeli lobby, while neglecting to meet formally with Arab-American and Muslim leaders. “They’re trying to take the votes without the liabilities,” said Mr. Siblani, who is also president of the Arab American Political Action Committee.

Some Muslim supporters of Mr. Obama seem to ricochet between dejection and optimism. Minha Husaini, a public health consultant in her 30s who is working for the Obama campaign in Philadelphia, lights up like a swooning teenager when she talks about his promise for change.

“He gives me hope,” Ms. Husaini said in an interview last month, shortly before she joined the campaign on a fellowship. But she sighed when the conversation turned to his denials of being Muslim, “as if it’s something bad,” she said.

For Ms. Ghori and other Muslims, Mr. Obama’s hands-off approach is not surprising in a political climate they feel is marred by frequent attacks on their faith.

Among the incidents they cite are a statement by Mr. McCain, in a 2007 interview with Beliefnet.com, that he would prefer a Christian president to a Muslim one; a comment by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that Mr. Obama was not Muslim “as far as I know”; and a remark by Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, to The Associated Press in March that an Obama victory would be celebrated by terrorists, who would see him as a “savior.”

“All you have to say is Barack Hussein Obama,” said Arsalan Iftikhar, a human rights lawyer and contributing editor at Islamica Magazine. “You don’t even have to say ‘Muslim.’ ”

As a consequence, many Muslims have kept their support for Mr. Obama quiet. Any visible show of allegiance could be used by his opponents to incite fear, further the false rumors about his faith and “bin-Laden him,” Mr. Bray said.

“The joke within the national Muslim organizations,” Ms. Ghori said, “is that we should endorse the person we don’t want to win.”

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Obama is in a tough position, but he really needs to come out with stronger support for Muslim-Americans, I think he needs to say politics and potential smear attacks be damned I am going to stand up for a group of Americans that is rarely stood up for and often demonized. He may take a hit in some polling if he stands up for Muslim Americans but I think his message of unity needs to be more encompassing of Muslims even if it will hurt him in the polls.

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Obama is in a tough position, but he really needs to come out with stronger support for Muslim-Americans, I think he needs to say politics and potential smear attacks be damned I am going to stand up for a group of Americans that is rarely stood up for and often demonized. He may take a hit in some polling if he stands up for Muslim Americans but I think his message of unity needs to be more encompassing of Muslims even if it will hurt him in the polls.

I agree. Forget the bull****. Do what's right.

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So what!!! Do you really think any Muslims are going to be voting for McCain?

It's called politics boys and it's a blood sport. Obama's decision to put his best foot forward and not give his political rivals any fodder is the correct one. So what if it ruffled a few folks feathers when it probable saved him 1000 x that many votes.

It's not like Bush and the Republicans haven't done much much worse in the name of politics....

  • Who was that Cuban kid who the Bush's tried to kidnap in order to ensure he won Florida... Ilian?
  • Who was that brain dead chick who's distraught family had to fight in court to enforce the decision which was their right to make. Shivo?

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  • Who was that Cuban kid who the Bush's tried to kidnap in order to ensure he won Florida... Ilian?
  • Who was that brain dead chick who's distraught family had to fight in court to enforce the decision which was their right to make. Shivo?

ok, so we all know you are a wiki expert on everything and are willing to research to find some way to make your wrong points right. So I put this quest to you, explain how you can blame Bush for Ilian.

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  • Who was that Cuban kid who the Bush's tried to kidnap in order to ensure he won Florida... Ilian?
  • Who was that brain dead chick who's distraught family had to fight in court to enforce the decision which was their right to make. Shivo?

The Shivo case took pages and pages of thought amongst many members.

way to sume it up in a brief thoughtless way as you do most things.

Same thing I'd say about McCain: If your too scared to talk about and do things on the campaign: Stop running.

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So what!!! Do you really think any Muslims are going to be voting for McCain?

It's called politics boys and it's a blood sport. Obama's decision to put his best foot forward and not give his political rivals any fodder is the correct one. So what if it ruffled a few folks feathers when it probable saved him 1000 x that many votes.

So if its called politics and its a blood sport can we please cut out the "hope" and "change" crap?

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So if its called politics and its a blood sport can we please cut out the "hope" and "change" crap?

Why does it bother you so much? I'm assuming(and I could be wrong)that you have no intention of voting for Obama anyway.

It would be like me complaining how McCain isn't really a maverick and wishing he would shut up about the "straight talk express."

I'm not voting for McCain because of his policies just as I assume you won't vote for Obama for the same reasons.

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So if its called politics and its a blood sport can we please cut out the "hope" and "change" crap?

No you and JMS are both wrong, those are legitimate ideas. I think the Muslim community was hoping to have a candidate for them, and they feel snubbed when they don't get as much attention as much larger groups. Outside of the event at the speech Obama has been pretty decent to the Islamic community in the US (and definitely more so than any other candidate), and this has been highlighted in the article.

Interestingly enough, Muslims were pretty much straight Republicans before they started to be used as scape goats....

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Why does it bother you so much? I'm assuming(and I could be wrong)that you have no intention of voting for Obama anyway.

It would be like me complaining how McCain isn't really a maverick and wishing he would shut up about the "straight talk express."

I'm not voting for McCain because of his policies just as I assume you won't vote for Obama for the same reasons.

I am actually hoping for a "different" direction. And unlike my friends on the left, when Obama does get elected I hope he does very well and the country prospers. I'll be cheering for the guy at that point

The point is, with "hope" and "change" comes taking some risk. Obviously interacting with the Muslim community has its risks in today's America, yet Obama hasn't done it, and the worst part has been his vehement denial of being Muslim, and as the article states "as if there is something wrong with it"

It feeds into the ignorance and bigotry in this country when being called a Muslim gets labeled a "smear" And Obama has done nothing to address that particular point

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I am actually hoping for a "different" direction. And unlike my friends on the left, when Obama does get elected I hope he does very well and the country prospers. I'll be cheering for the guy at that point

The point is, with "hope" and "change" comes taking some risk. Obviously interacting with the Muslim community has its risks in today's America, yet Obama hasn't done it, and the worst part has been his vehement denial of being Muslim, and as the article states "as if there is something wrong with it"

It feeds into the ignorance and bigotry in this country when being called a Muslim gets labeled a "smear" And Obama has done nothing to address that particular point

SHF, you sound a little bit crazy here

for one, Obama is not a Muslim, when people vehemently call you a muslim, why wouldn't you deny it? Maybe Obama's religion is important to him?

As an aside...

How long have you felt snubbed, I know the Muslim Republican is one the GOP's favorite token, so you may personally have been treated well, but if you want to address bigotry against Muslims maybe you should start in your own back yard. I mean who do you think uses Muslim as a smear?

I mean seriously dude...

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I am actually hoping for a "different" direction. And unlike my friends on the left, when Obama does get elected I hope he does very well and the country prospers. I'll be cheering for the guy at that point

The point is, with "hope" and "change" comes taking some risk. Obviously interacting with the Muslim community has its risks in today's America, yet Obama hasn't done it, and the worst part has been his vehement denial of being Muslim, and as the article states "as if there is something wrong with it"

It feeds into the ignorance and bigotry in this country when being called a Muslim gets labeled a "smear" And Obama has done nothing to address that particular point

Fair enough... :cheers:

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SHF, you sound a little bit crazy here

for one, Obama is not a Muslim, when people vehemently call you a muslim, why wouldn't you deny it? Maybe Obama's religion is important to him? ...

The perception becomes that being of that religion is a bad thing

As an aside...

How long have you felt snubbed, I know the Muslim Republican is one the GOP's favorite token, so you may personally have been treated well, but if you want to address bigotry against Muslims maybe you should start in your own back yard. I mean who do you think uses Muslim as a smear?

I mean seriously dude...

For serious?

A while. And you have seen my posting history and threads on that for years and years and years (I mean we are going back to 2002 here dude)

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The perception becomes that being of that religion is a bad thing

So Islam is bad, because Barack Obama says he isn't a muslim...

For serious?

A while. And you have seen my posting history and threads on that for years and years and years (I mean we are going back to 2002 here dude)

yes for serious

why is your credibility not up for debate? You belong to one of the leading institutions responsible for anti-Muslim sentiment in the US, and you want to criticize Obama for doing less than ideal when no doubt dozens of candidates you have supported have done stuff worse by many orders of magnitude.

Let's get one thing straight the criticism arises because Obama denied he is a Muslims. Let me repeat... the GOP uses Muslim as a smear and Obama responded by denying being a Muslim. SO ****ING WHAT? He isn't a muslim why shouldn't he deny it?

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So Islam is bad, because Barack Obama says he isn't a muslim...?

From the article

“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.

“He gives me hope,” Ms. Husaini said in an interview last month, shortly before she joined the campaign on a fellowship. But she sighed when the conversation turned to his denials of being Muslim, “as if it’s something bad,” she said.

yes for serious

why is your credibility not up for debate? You belong to one of the leading institutions responsible for anti-Muslim sentiment in the US, and you want to criticize Obama for doing less than ideal when no doubt dozens of candidates you have supported have done stuff worse by many orders of magnitude.

?

On this site in particular I am supposing you haven't seen the probably 50 threads I have posted on that in the past 6 years

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153706

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=154770

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=169397&page=1

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=190979

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192891

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=202810

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=207008

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=214824

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=237539

And this is just on ES, threads that I have started since March of 2006. Not counting threads I have replied to.

So again, for serious? You think ES is the only place I talk about this?

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I don't understand why the Muslim community insists on reaffirmation of their faith. Just because he sets the record straight so that his beliefs are accurately represented doesn't mean he dislikes other faiths.

This is a case of a community being WAY too touchy.

...and I think I'm voting for McCain just to prove that I'm being objective.

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From the article

“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.

umm he has

“He gives me hope,” Ms. Husaini said in an interview last month, shortly before she joined the campaign on a fellowship. But she sighed when the conversation turned to his denials of being Muslim, “as if it’s something bad,” she said.

On this site in particular I am supposing you haven't seen the probably 50 threads I have posted on that in the past 6 years

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153706

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=154770

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=169397&page=1

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=190979

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192891

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=202810

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=207008

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=214824

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=237539

And this is just on ES, threads that I have started since March of 2006. Not counting threads I have replied to.

So again, for serious? You think ES is the only place I talk about this?

yes for serious

you are confused about my criticism... I know you are a muslim, I know you don't think muslims are bad. However, it is your political compatriots which advocate calling Obama a Muslim when he says he is not. Why? Because calling someone a muslim IS a smear to them, which is exactly why they use it on Obama.

Now what we have is you claiming that Obama is the one that thinks "Muslim" is a smear because he denies it. Obviously the people who call someone who isn't Muslim a Muslim are the ones that think it is a smear, and you are a member of their political party. And because of this you expect people to think that the Obama campaign is not about hope and change? Where is the link?

So instead of criticizing Obama for not denying his Muslimhood in a tone soft enough to your liking maybe you should turn your criticism to the people who are using Muslim as a smear. You probably know quiet a few of them.

Basically your criticism comes down to "Obama is not perfect, therefore hope and change is a facade"

Now if you want to tell me some bad things that Obama has done to the Muslim community go ahead, but this article is just fluff.

He is a Muslim... He is insensitive to Muslims!

:laugh:

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I am actually hoping for a "different" direction. And unlike my friends on the left, when Obama does get elected I hope he does very well and the country prospers. I'll be cheering for the guy at that point
What is that supposed to mean? I think most rational liberals know that John McCain is one of the best of the crop from the Republican side, and many will be cheering for him if he wins. There will be a real fight for the voters in the middle this election.
The point is, with "hope" and "change" comes taking some risk. Obviously interacting with the Muslim community has its risks in today's America, yet Obama hasn't done it, and the worst part has been his vehement denial of being Muslim, and as the article states "as if there is something wrong with it"

It feeds into the ignorance and bigotry in this country when being called a Muslim gets labeled a "smear" And Obama has done nothing to address that particular point

I think it is somewhat unfortunate that it has come to this, but for better or worse, we are at war with radical Muslims, and there is no political benefit for either side to reach out to the American Muslim community.

Would McCain ("I hated the Gooks") do the same thing if someone called him a Muslim? I don't think there's any doubt that he would be running away from it too. And actually, I have no doubt that both McCain and Obama will embrace the Muslim community when elected, but I can also see how it's really just not worth the effort right now.

It's politics. Sorry. There's hope and change for everyone, but Muslims may have to wait a little longer for it. :2cents:

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Would McCain ("I hated the Gooks") do the same thing if someone called him a Muslim? I don't think there's any doubt that he would be running away from it too. And actually, I have no doubt that both McCain and Obama will embrace the Muslim community when elected, but I can also see how it's really just not worth the effort right now.

It's politics. Sorry. There's hope and change for everyone, but Muslims may have to wait a little longer for it. :2cents:

The HUGE difference between the McCain comment and Obama's Muslim past is that Muslims see him as being a Muslim based on their religion. Therefore in their opinion they have a legitimate argument that he was "born" a Muslim, yet his website claims he was "never" a Muslim as if there is something wrong with it.

I don't want to start this argument again, I see where the Muslims are coming from. I.E. I was born into a Christian home therefore I was born a Christian.

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