pkpatriotic
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US election road trip: America's outcast Muslims
Once Bush backers, Muslims today are staunch Democrats. But both Obama and McCain shun them
James Ridgeway Monday November 3 2008
American Muslims have been called the "outcasts" of this presidential election. Muslims themselves have told the media that Islam is being treated as "political leprosy", a "scarlet letter", or the "kiss of death". In Pittsburgh, a city with a large Muslim population, the Guardian team heard sentiments like these when we attended a lecture by the writer and political analyst Raeed Tayeh titled Are Americans Obsessed with Islam?, followed by a panel discussion involving local community leaders and advocates.
One of the few comprehensive surveys (pdf) of Muslim voters in the United States was produced two years ago by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). While they are a diverse community, American Muslims overall tend to be young, well educated, professional, middle-class, and family-oriented, and differ in their degree of religious observance. Muslims are also somewhat more likely than Americans in general to vote regularly, fly the US flag and do volunteer work.
Most importantly for this election, CAIR's demographic research found that American Muslims were concentrated in 12 states, including the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Michigan, where they ran from about 3 to 7% of the population. In the survey, 42% of respondents said they were Democrats and just 17% identified themselves as Republicans, while 28% said they did not belong to a political party. This reflects a dramatic turnaround in the past decade: in 2000, George Bush won an astonishing 72% of the Muslim vote, based on some combination of his social and fiscal conservatism, perceived openness on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and deliberate outreach to the Muslim community. By 2004, with the "war on terror" and the war in Iraq under way and civil liberties in a shambles, the numbers were more than reversed, with some 90% of Muslim voters choosing Kerry.
This year, it appears that Barack Obama can count on a substantial majority of Muslim votes. To begin with, many Muslims in the United States are African American. Those who trace their roots to the Middle East, Asia, and elsewhere like Obama's record of opposition to the Iraq war and believe he can be better trusted on civil liberties and immigration issues. While some will vote for him enthusiastically, others will do so despite feeling alienated and betrayed by what they see as Obama's eagerness to escape being "branded" a Muslim (which 12% of Americans apparently still believe he is).
The accusations have been both vicious and absurd: emails and robocalls have declared that Obama attended a fundamentalist madrassah, that he will take the oath of office on the Qur'an, that he is a Manchurian candidate for a worldwide terrorist jihad. In his responses, Obama has often failed to denounce the underlying racism inherent in these attacks, and has done little to dispel the overarching sense that Islam itself is a stigma from which he must distance himself. "I'm not and never have been of the Muslim faith," he said in one interview, as if he were answering to some sort of unChristian activities committee.
Imam Mahdi Bray expressed this feeling of betrayal at the Pittsburgh forum. "No Muslim wants to be sacrificed at the alter of political expediency. I think Barack Obama has practiced that. I think that for his own candidacy that Obama has kind of thrown us under the bus."
On the other side, however, is John McCain, whose campaign, as one
Muslim writer put it, has from the start "conflated the terms 'Islamic' with 'terrorism' and 'radical extremism'." He points to the DVD distributed to tens of thousands of voters in swing states, called "Obsession: Radical Islam's War on the West," with scenes of Muslims "flying planes into buildings, bombing people, burning American flags and screaming with homicidal rage. Although the video dutifully offered a disclaimer that most Muslims are not fanatics, its horrific images and sinister music conveyed an emotional message about Muslims that was unmistakable."
Video: Alienating American Muslims | World news | guardian.co.uk
Once Bush backers, Muslims today are staunch Democrats. But both Obama and McCain shun them
James Ridgeway Monday November 3 2008
American Muslims have been called the "outcasts" of this presidential election. Muslims themselves have told the media that Islam is being treated as "political leprosy", a "scarlet letter", or the "kiss of death". In Pittsburgh, a city with a large Muslim population, the Guardian team heard sentiments like these when we attended a lecture by the writer and political analyst Raeed Tayeh titled Are Americans Obsessed with Islam?, followed by a panel discussion involving local community leaders and advocates.
One of the few comprehensive surveys (pdf) of Muslim voters in the United States was produced two years ago by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). While they are a diverse community, American Muslims overall tend to be young, well educated, professional, middle-class, and family-oriented, and differ in their degree of religious observance. Muslims are also somewhat more likely than Americans in general to vote regularly, fly the US flag and do volunteer work.
Most importantly for this election, CAIR's demographic research found that American Muslims were concentrated in 12 states, including the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Michigan, where they ran from about 3 to 7% of the population. In the survey, 42% of respondents said they were Democrats and just 17% identified themselves as Republicans, while 28% said they did not belong to a political party. This reflects a dramatic turnaround in the past decade: in 2000, George Bush won an astonishing 72% of the Muslim vote, based on some combination of his social and fiscal conservatism, perceived openness on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and deliberate outreach to the Muslim community. By 2004, with the "war on terror" and the war in Iraq under way and civil liberties in a shambles, the numbers were more than reversed, with some 90% of Muslim voters choosing Kerry.
This year, it appears that Barack Obama can count on a substantial majority of Muslim votes. To begin with, many Muslims in the United States are African American. Those who trace their roots to the Middle East, Asia, and elsewhere like Obama's record of opposition to the Iraq war and believe he can be better trusted on civil liberties and immigration issues. While some will vote for him enthusiastically, others will do so despite feeling alienated and betrayed by what they see as Obama's eagerness to escape being "branded" a Muslim (which 12% of Americans apparently still believe he is).
The accusations have been both vicious and absurd: emails and robocalls have declared that Obama attended a fundamentalist madrassah, that he will take the oath of office on the Qur'an, that he is a Manchurian candidate for a worldwide terrorist jihad. In his responses, Obama has often failed to denounce the underlying racism inherent in these attacks, and has done little to dispel the overarching sense that Islam itself is a stigma from which he must distance himself. "I'm not and never have been of the Muslim faith," he said in one interview, as if he were answering to some sort of unChristian activities committee.
Imam Mahdi Bray expressed this feeling of betrayal at the Pittsburgh forum. "No Muslim wants to be sacrificed at the alter of political expediency. I think Barack Obama has practiced that. I think that for his own candidacy that Obama has kind of thrown us under the bus."
On the other side, however, is John McCain, whose campaign, as one
Muslim writer put it, has from the start "conflated the terms 'Islamic' with 'terrorism' and 'radical extremism'." He points to the DVD distributed to tens of thousands of voters in swing states, called "Obsession: Radical Islam's War on the West," with scenes of Muslims "flying planes into buildings, bombing people, burning American flags and screaming with homicidal rage. Although the video dutifully offered a disclaimer that most Muslims are not fanatics, its horrific images and sinister music conveyed an emotional message about Muslims that was unmistakable."
Video: Alienating American Muslims | World news | guardian.co.uk
but thanks for the belly laugh btw.
