Obama Apologises To Muslim Woman Over Photo Row.
The two Detroit-area women were not allowed to sit behind Obama.
Muslim Voters Detect a Snub From Obama
- Thread starter MASTERBAKER
- Start date
Re: Obama Apologises To Muslim Woman Over Photo Row.
His aides did the wrong thing (though I think I understand why: all of the republican and Hillary people painting him as a Muslim) and he did the right thing to quickly apologize and set the matter straight and most commentators that I've heard agree.
QueEx
His aides did the wrong thing (though I think I understand why: all of the republican and Hillary people painting him as a Muslim) and he did the right thing to quickly apologize and set the matter straight and most commentators that I've heard agree.
QueEx
Re: Obama Apologises To Muslim Woman Over Photo Row.
^^ yea, I think it was good to apologize quickly & get it out of the way. You don't want that kind of ill will lingering around the media to scoop up and put on the news for the next 2 weeks or so.
^^ yea, I think it was good to apologize quickly & get it out of the way. You don't want that kind of ill will lingering around the media to scoop up and put on the news for the next 2 weeks or so.
Re: Obama Apologises To Muslim Woman Over Photo Row.
That is why I dont really blame his aides for doing that.
That is why I dont really blame his aides for doing that.
Re: Obama Apologises To Muslim Woman Over Photo Row.
F*** that. when is enough...enough?!?!?! It really does not matter what Obama says or does in regards to his religion. The dumb F***'s that believed that garbage in January are still going to believe it in November.
"If" Obama really is the change candidate then fear based on religious affiliation, race and socioecocmanic status should all exposed and defeated EQUALLY. I was very disappointed in Obama - not his aids. By ALL accounts Obama runs a tight ship and his helpers are well organized and prepared. This move came from the top down.
Instead of embracing the wide cross section of people who have aligned their hoes and aspirations in him he caved...again. He could have turned this issue on its head and made himself the champion of "everyone". Instead, to me, he looks like he is covering his @$$ in a no win battle. This could have been a watershed moment for him in regards to mending and opening the channels for positive discussion about healing American and understanding your neighbors. Big waste.
It defies logic that he can flat out aligned himself with Israel and talk tough about Iran and what we will do to protect "our friend", but he can't protect or defend the people living here that actually look to him for real change. If you are damned if you do and damned if you don't, be damned for the right damn thing. I was very disturbed and disappointed in this move.
F*** that. when is enough...enough?!?!?! It really does not matter what Obama says or does in regards to his religion. The dumb F***'s that believed that garbage in January are still going to believe it in November.
"If" Obama really is the change candidate then fear based on religious affiliation, race and socioecocmanic status should all exposed and defeated EQUALLY. I was very disappointed in Obama - not his aids. By ALL accounts Obama runs a tight ship and his helpers are well organized and prepared. This move came from the top down.
Instead of embracing the wide cross section of people who have aligned their hoes and aspirations in him he caved...again. He could have turned this issue on its head and made himself the champion of "everyone". Instead, to me, he looks like he is covering his @$$ in a no win battle. This could have been a watershed moment for him in regards to mending and opening the channels for positive discussion about healing American and understanding your neighbors. Big waste.
It defies logic that he can flat out aligned himself with Israel and talk tough about Iran and what we will do to protect "our friend", but he can't protect or defend the people living here that actually look to him for real change. If you are damned if you do and damned if you don't, be damned for the right damn thing. I was very disturbed and disappointed in this move.
Re: Obama Apologises To Muslim Woman Over Photo Row.
You probably won't like this, either:
<font size="5"><center>
Barack Obama defends Israel’s concern
about Iran's "extraordinary threat" </font size></center>
DEBKAFile
June 21, 2008
The US Democratic presidential contender made this comment about the reported Israeli air rehearsal for a possible attack on Iran: “Without access to the actual detailed intelligence, I want to be careful about characterizing what was done and whether it was appropriate or not." But, said Senator Barack Obama, the Jewish state was right to be concerned about the anti-Israel comments of the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and about Tehran’s support for Hizballah and Hamas. “And so there is no doubt that Iran poses an extraordinary threat to Israel and Israel is always justified in making decisions that will provide for its security.”
http://www.debka.com/index1.php
You probably won't like this, either:
<font size="5"><center>
Barack Obama defends Israel’s concern
about Iran's "extraordinary threat" </font size></center>
DEBKAFile
June 21, 2008
The US Democratic presidential contender made this comment about the reported Israeli air rehearsal for a possible attack on Iran: “Without access to the actual detailed intelligence, I want to be careful about characterizing what was done and whether it was appropriate or not." But, said Senator Barack Obama, the Jewish state was right to be concerned about the anti-Israel comments of the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and about Tehran’s support for Hizballah and Hamas. “And so there is no doubt that Iran poses an extraordinary threat to Israel and Israel is always justified in making decisions that will provide for its security.”
http://www.debka.com/index1.php
Re: Obama Apologises To Muslim Woman Over Photo Row.
no one voting for him should. no one who knew about the NIE on Iran should. no one who knows that he just so happened to miss the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment vote should. i joke and play instigator sometimes when it comes to Obama's passiveness, but this response from him is too eerie and goes against the "judgment" card he has rightfully used since Iraq.
you are right.
no one voting for him should. no one who knew about the NIE on Iran should. no one who knows that he just so happened to miss the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment vote should. i joke and play instigator sometimes when it comes to Obama's passiveness, but this response from him is too eerie and goes against the "judgment" card he has rightfully used since Iraq.
Re: Obama Apologises To Muslim Woman Over Photo Row.
2. On this issue, however, it was actually necessary and should have been avoided from the get go. The other -ish ("troops loosing their lives a waste", bittergate etc. was all BS).
1. you are right
2. On this issue, however, it was actually necessary and should have been avoided from the get go. The other -ish ("troops loosing their lives a waste", bittergate etc. was all BS).
<font size="5"><center>
Muslim Voters Detect a Snub From Obama</font size></center>
Mr. Obama with Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota and the first Muslim elected to
Congress, in 2007.
New York Times
BY: ANDREA ELLIOTT
Published: June 24, 2008
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.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/u...gin&adxnnlx=1214330470-3PkATIBARa2j/BRfIVEbMA
Muslim Voters Detect a Snub From Obama</font size></center>
Mr. Obama with Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota and the first Muslim elected to
Congress, in 2007.
New York Times
BY: ANDREA ELLIOTT
Published: June 24, 2008
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.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/u...gin&adxnnlx=1214330470-3PkATIBARa2j/BRfIVEbMA
yea, I read that in the Times yesterday - was going to post it.
I really don't understand why Obama would 'snub' respected Muslim politicians like Ellison. Ellison is in the same mold of the 'change' politics that Obama speaks highly about.
I mean Ellison is not Farrakhan, and probably more moderate politically than Obama himself.
Btw Que, did you catch David Brooks 'Two Obamas' Op-Ed piece; pretty interesting piece arguing that Republicans would be foolish to dismiss him as an 'idealistic second coming of Adlai Stevenson' when hes clearly has the political intelligence to realize that he can make up to a quarter billion to half billion in fund raising if he chooses to opt of the public finance system & recently it was revealed that one of the reasons he did so well in the Iowa caucuses was due to his support from the Ethanol lobby.
I really don't understand why Obama would 'snub' respected Muslim politicians like Ellison. Ellison is in the same mold of the 'change' politics that Obama speaks highly about.
I mean Ellison is not Farrakhan, and probably more moderate politically than Obama himself.
Btw Que, did you catch David Brooks 'Two Obamas' Op-Ed piece; pretty interesting piece arguing that Republicans would be foolish to dismiss him as an 'idealistic second coming of Adlai Stevenson' when hes clearly has the political intelligence to realize that he can make up to a quarter billion to half billion in fund raising if he chooses to opt of the public finance system & recently it was revealed that one of the reasons he did so well in the Iowa caucuses was due to his support from the Ethanol lobby.
[1] I'm thinking that Barack has one hellava tight rope to walk. If he somehow comes off appearing pro-Muslim in the slightest, McCain will ring his bell; if someone close enough but on the fringes of some group that Obama extends his hand says something that can be taken as suspect or that somehow can/might be taken by those who are inclined to twist shit as Obama being favored by radical/extremist Muslims, McCain will easily ring his bell (we've already seen that one from McCain regarding Hamas http://www.bgol.us/board/showthread.php?t=260821&highlight=mccain+hamas).[1] yea, I read that in the Times yesterday - was going to post it.
I really don't understand why Obama would 'snub' respected Muslim politicians like Ellison. Ellison is in the same mold of the 'change' politics that Obama speaks highly about.
I mean Ellison is not Farrakhan, and probably more moderate politically than Obama himself.
[2] Btw Que, did you catch David Brooks 'Two Obamas' Op-Ed piece; pretty interesting piece arguing that Republicans would be foolish to dismiss him as an 'idealistic second coming of Adlai Stevenson' when hes clearly has the political intelligence to realize that he can make up to a quarter billion to half billion in fund raising if he chooses to opt of the public finance system & recently it was revealed that one of the reasons he did so well in the Iowa caucuses was due to his support from the Ethanol lobby.
On the other hand, the more people/groups that McCain, et al., can paint as bad and then nudge Obama away from them, the more Obama is likely to lose what might be valuable support. And, when he becomes afraid to have some people appear too close to him for fear that McCain might use it, he's right, McCain will ring his bell http://www.bgol.us/board/showthread.php?t=277035 and make Obama apologize.
But hey, LOL, he chose to run. Its hard having to try to be everything to everybody.
[2] No. I missed that piece. Will check it out. Thanks.
QueEx
<font size="5"><center>Obama website riles Muslims</font size><font size="4">
Some American-Muslim leaders say Barack Obama's
website aimed at countering rumors that he is a Muslim,
fightthesmears.com, sends a negative message about their religion</font size></center>
Miami Herald
BY BETH REINHARD
breinhard@MiamiHerald.com
Sun, Jul. 06, 2008
Vanessa Alikhan was at a Democratic ''unity party'' when she overheard another guest indignantly refute the rumor that Barack Obama is Muslim, as if it were a racial slur. She later recounted the conversation to a friend.
''She told me that this is politics and that I should just deal with it,'' said Alikhan, a Fort Lauderdale graphic artist who converted to Islam about five years ago. ``To me this is the same as telling an African American or a Jewish person they should deal with discrimination because people aren't ready to embrace them as a group.''
She and other American Muslims are speaking out, as the Obama campaign pushes back on widely e-mailed and patently false claims that he is tied to Islamic terrorists. The rumor could be particularly damaging in a must-win state like Florida, which has a large Jewish population.
Determined not to be ''swift-boated'' the way 2004 nominee John Kerry was buried by attacks on his military record, the Obama campaign has set up the website www.fightthesmears.com. While Muslim leaders understand the campaign's responsibility to counter misinformation, they say the classification of being Muslim as a ''smear'' goes too far.
Their outrage peaked when the Obama campaign asked two women wearing head scarves to move away from the candidate -- and the television cameras -- at a rally last month in Detroit. Obama personally apologized to the women, but the incident reflected the difficulties of balancing hard-nosed political calculations with the campaign's overall message of change and unity.
''The truth is Obama has both set the record straight about his religious upbringing, background and faith -- and spoken out against efforts to marginalize Muslims,'' said Obama campaign spokesman Josh Earnest.
`I'M NOT A MUSLIM'
He pointed to Obama's interview with CBS' 60 Minutes, in which he said, ``I have never been a Muslim. I'm not a Muslim. These e-mails are obviously not just offensive to me, somebody who is a devout Christian, who's been going to the same church for the last 20 years, but it's also offensive to Muslims, because it plays into, obviously, a certain fear-mongering there.''
But some Muslim leaders said Obama needs to do more to make it clear that he welcomes their support in his campaign. Though he's spoken at many churches and synagogues -- including a conservative congregation in Boca Raton -- he has never visited a mosque, said Altaf Ali, executive director of the South Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. There are between 200,000 and 400,000 Muslims in Florida and about seven million nationwide.
The Muslim community saw little outreach from presidential candidates until 2000, when Republican George Bush successfully enlisted Muslim donors and included mosques in his proposal for government partnering with religious institutions. But since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many American Muslims say they are treated with suspicion.
''Since 9/11, our community has been portrayed as inherently evil, and what Obama is doing is adding to the negative stereotype,'' Ali said. ``His message is about change, and he has to appeal to every minority group.''
That's a tall order for the first African-American presidential nominee as he tries to broaden his appeal for the general election. Ali said that Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, is uniquely suited ``to be a bridge between America and the Muslim world.''
Saif Ishoof, president of the Center for Voter Advocacy, a nonpartisan group that educates Muslims about the political process, said Republican John McCain also needs to show more sensitivity.
Ishoof, a lifelong Republican, said he bristles when McCain consistently refers to ``Islamic terrorists.''
''By using that phraseology, he is giving credence to a world view that 99 percent of Muslims do not consider their own,'' said Ishoof, an attorney who runs a Miami engineering firm.
Though the Muslim community pales in comparison to other religious voting blocs in Florida, Ishoof noted that it is concentrated in central Florida, the battleground region of the state.
CRITICAL VOTE
Muslim voters could make the difference in several states crucial to winning the White House, including Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.
''Every vote is going to be critical,'' Ishoof said.
Alikhan said she will continue to volunteer for the Obama campaign but vowed that she will also try to educate voters about Islam. She described her recent experience with anti-Muslim bias in an e-mail to about 1,500 friends and Democratic activists.
The e-mail began ''Hello and Salaams'' and ended with, ``The photos are of me and my husband so that you can see what a Muslim American looks like.''
They are an attractive, well-dressed couple in their 30s who look like they belong in a South Beach club -- except that they heed their religion's prohibition on drinking.
''I am an American, and I felt all of the pain that Americans felt for the 9/11 victims,'' Alikhan said. ``Yet I've had fingers pointed at me and been asked the most ridiculous questions you can imagine. . . . I'm not asking Obama to go to a mosque or call me on the phone, but I'd like to see him show some more sensitivity.''
http://www.miamiherald.com/campaign08/story/595064.html
Some American-Muslim leaders say Barack Obama's
website aimed at countering rumors that he is a Muslim,
fightthesmears.com, sends a negative message about their religion</font size></center>
Miami Herald
BY BETH REINHARD
breinhard@MiamiHerald.com
Sun, Jul. 06, 2008
Vanessa Alikhan was at a Democratic ''unity party'' when she overheard another guest indignantly refute the rumor that Barack Obama is Muslim, as if it were a racial slur. She later recounted the conversation to a friend.
''She told me that this is politics and that I should just deal with it,'' said Alikhan, a Fort Lauderdale graphic artist who converted to Islam about five years ago. ``To me this is the same as telling an African American or a Jewish person they should deal with discrimination because people aren't ready to embrace them as a group.''
She and other American Muslims are speaking out, as the Obama campaign pushes back on widely e-mailed and patently false claims that he is tied to Islamic terrorists. The rumor could be particularly damaging in a must-win state like Florida, which has a large Jewish population.
Determined not to be ''swift-boated'' the way 2004 nominee John Kerry was buried by attacks on his military record, the Obama campaign has set up the website www.fightthesmears.com. While Muslim leaders understand the campaign's responsibility to counter misinformation, they say the classification of being Muslim as a ''smear'' goes too far.
Their outrage peaked when the Obama campaign asked two women wearing head scarves to move away from the candidate -- and the television cameras -- at a rally last month in Detroit. Obama personally apologized to the women, but the incident reflected the difficulties of balancing hard-nosed political calculations with the campaign's overall message of change and unity.
''The truth is Obama has both set the record straight about his religious upbringing, background and faith -- and spoken out against efforts to marginalize Muslims,'' said Obama campaign spokesman Josh Earnest.
`I'M NOT A MUSLIM'
He pointed to Obama's interview with CBS' 60 Minutes, in which he said, ``I have never been a Muslim. I'm not a Muslim. These e-mails are obviously not just offensive to me, somebody who is a devout Christian, who's been going to the same church for the last 20 years, but it's also offensive to Muslims, because it plays into, obviously, a certain fear-mongering there.''
But some Muslim leaders said Obama needs to do more to make it clear that he welcomes their support in his campaign. Though he's spoken at many churches and synagogues -- including a conservative congregation in Boca Raton -- he has never visited a mosque, said Altaf Ali, executive director of the South Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. There are between 200,000 and 400,000 Muslims in Florida and about seven million nationwide.
The Muslim community saw little outreach from presidential candidates until 2000, when Republican George Bush successfully enlisted Muslim donors and included mosques in his proposal for government partnering with religious institutions. But since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many American Muslims say they are treated with suspicion.
''Since 9/11, our community has been portrayed as inherently evil, and what Obama is doing is adding to the negative stereotype,'' Ali said. ``His message is about change, and he has to appeal to every minority group.''
That's a tall order for the first African-American presidential nominee as he tries to broaden his appeal for the general election. Ali said that Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, is uniquely suited ``to be a bridge between America and the Muslim world.''
Saif Ishoof, president of the Center for Voter Advocacy, a nonpartisan group that educates Muslims about the political process, said Republican John McCain also needs to show more sensitivity.
Ishoof, a lifelong Republican, said he bristles when McCain consistently refers to ``Islamic terrorists.''
''By using that phraseology, he is giving credence to a world view that 99 percent of Muslims do not consider their own,'' said Ishoof, an attorney who runs a Miami engineering firm.
Though the Muslim community pales in comparison to other religious voting blocs in Florida, Ishoof noted that it is concentrated in central Florida, the battleground region of the state.
CRITICAL VOTE
Muslim voters could make the difference in several states crucial to winning the White House, including Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.
''Every vote is going to be critical,'' Ishoof said.
Alikhan said she will continue to volunteer for the Obama campaign but vowed that she will also try to educate voters about Islam. She described her recent experience with anti-Muslim bias in an e-mail to about 1,500 friends and Democratic activists.
The e-mail began ''Hello and Salaams'' and ended with, ``The photos are of me and my husband so that you can see what a Muslim American looks like.''
They are an attractive, well-dressed couple in their 30s who look like they belong in a South Beach club -- except that they heed their religion's prohibition on drinking.
''I am an American, and I felt all of the pain that Americans felt for the 9/11 victims,'' Alikhan said. ``Yet I've had fingers pointed at me and been asked the most ridiculous questions you can imagine. . . . I'm not asking Obama to go to a mosque or call me on the phone, but I'd like to see him show some more sensitivity.''
http://www.miamiherald.com/campaign08/story/595064.html