Most of the country has probably heard bogus talk about Barack Obama’s religion, and his campaign has had to work aggressively to set the record straight — with varying degrees of success.
But the drive to explain that Obama is not a Muslim has left some actual Muslims feeling slighted. The WSJ reported today:
It is inaccurate to call Barack Obama a Muslim. Is it a slur?
The Obama campaign suggests it is. A new campaign Web site designed to air and rebut potentially damaging Internet rumors reads in one part: “Smear: Barack Obama is a Muslim… Truth: Sen. Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim and is a committed Christian.”
The characterization highlights a tricky balance the campaign is trying to strike: to tamp down false rumors — intended by some to link the Democratic presidential candidate to radical Islam — without offending Muslims and harming his image of inclusiveness.
The campaign’s “Fight the Smears” clearinghouse does, in fact, list the false accusation of Obama being a Muslim as a “smear.” I know what the campaign is trying to say, of course, but this is fighting back against misinformation with clumsy wording. Accusing someone, falsely, of being a member of faith tradition is not, in and of itself, a smear.
“If he were a Muslim, so what? That insinuates that if he were a Muslim, he’s automatically a jihadist. That’s incredibly insulting to people of the Muslim faith and Arabs who are Christian,” says Tony Kutayli, a spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and a Christian.
It’s worth considering the larger context, though.
The wording of the “Fight the Smears” campaign site is overly truncated, but we are talking about an actual smear campaign here. The attacks themselves are layered. By accusing Obama of being a Muslim, there’s a certain reflexively bigoted segment of the population that will respond negatively. For these people, Islam is necessarily bad, and if Obama is Muslim, he should be disqualified for national office.
But it goes well beyond this. If you’ve seen the emails — at this point, who hasn’t? — you know that this is a broader attack on Obama’s character. He’s not just a Muslim, the argument goes, he’s also hiding his faith to perpetrate a massive fraud. Obama may be literally dangerous, the ridiculous attack continues, by virtue of his training in a radical madrassa.
Is simply calling someone a Muslim a “smear”? No, of course not. But in this case, the false accusation is most definitely part of a broader smear campaign.
In this sense, Obama not only has to fight back against the irrational fears of reflexive bigots, but also convince those who may not care about Islam but do worry that he’s being deceptive — even though he’s clearly not.
Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, one of two Muslim members of Congress and an Obama backer, says he would like to see the campaign more directly address the Muslim community. “I know his campaign is a little worried about how that could be twisted,” Mr. Ellison says. “But I think you have to be careful not to start letting your detractors dictate who you talk to. Then you’re not the captain of your own ship anymore.”
Fair enough. It might to help once in a while borrow the classic Seinfeld phrase: “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”