NEW YORK: American Muslims say they have been treated as dangerous outcasts in an election year when Barack Obama’s opponents are spreading false rumors that he is Muslim and linking him to terrorists.
So when Colin Powell, a Republican, condemned using Muslim as a smear - a tactic he said members of his own party allowed - there was an outpouring of gratitude and relief from American Muslims.
“That speech really came out of left field and really shocked us,” said Wajahat Ali, 27, an attorney and playwright from Fremont, California. “The sense is that it’s about time. He said something that needed to be said.”
The retired general, who was President George W. Bush’s first secretary of state, made the comments on NBC television’s “Meet the Press,” as he broke with his party to endorse the Democratic nominee for president. Powell noted in last Sunday’s broadcast that Republican John McCain did not spread rumors about Obama’s faith, but Powell said he was “troubled” that others did.
“The correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America,” Powell said. “Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, ‘He’s a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.’ This is not the way we should be doing it in America.”
Powell said he felt especially strongly about the rumors because of a photo he saw in The New Yorker magazine of the mother of a Muslim soldier in Arlington Cemetery embracing her son’s grave, which was marked with a Muslim crescent and star. The soldier, Kareem R. Khan of New Jersey, was 20 when he was killed in Iraq.
“We American Muslims have talked about our patriotism and the heroism of some American Muslims till we were blue in the face, and neither the media nor the people listen,” said Seeme Hasan, a Pueblo, Colorado, Republican whose family has given tens of thousands of dollars to the Republican Party.
“Gen. Powell made people listen and at a very humane level,” said Hasan, who is backing McCain. “More people in leadership positions need to say this and recognize this — that American Muslims have worked very hard to fight this war on terror.”
The inaccurate claims that Obama is secretly Muslim started as soon as he was mentioned as a potential presidential candidate. There were false rumors that he was educated at a radical Islamic school as a child in Indonesia and that he was sworn into the Senate on the Qur’an. His opponents emphasized his middle name — Hussein — and circulated a photo of him wearing traditional tribal garb on a 2006 visit to Kenya.
Kari Ansari, a mother of three from Villa Park, Illinois, said the allegations upset her 10-year-old son. “It sort of made him feel like, ‘If they won’t elect him president just for trying on Muslim clothes, they will never elect me because I’m a real Muslim,’” said Ansari, a founder of America’s Muslim Family, a quarterly magazine. “That’s heartbreaking for us as Muslim parents.”
Obama has combated the claims in speeches and on a campaign website dedicated to debunking inaccuracies about him. But the belief persists.
A poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found 12 percent of voters believed the Illinois senator is Muslim. That poll was released Tuesday — coincidentally, the same day the head of a New Mexico Republican women’s group called Obama a “Muslim socialist” and said “Muslims are our enemies.” County and Republican Party officials condemned the statements.
“Muslims feel jaded by the 2008 election precisely because they see the smearing of their identity,” Ali said.
