Obama and Anti-Muslim Hysteria

22 August 2010 |permalink | email article

The decision soon after President Obama went public to back plans for an Islamic center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan before the hotly contested midterm election might have been expected to trigger a huge Republican backlash but the opposite has happened. Many Democratic candidates have frantically distanced themselves from Obama’s “mosque moment,” as Politico described it.

In yet another West Wing screwup, aides to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg learned about it before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and New York senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. Pelosi strongly supported Obama, and Schumer and Gillibrand apparently were not bothered. But Reid, who probably would not have weighed in had Obama not spoken – and facing a bitter reelection fight in Nevada – quickly opposed the plan.

All this occurs against a growing campaign of disinformation about Obama’s religion and birthplace outside far-right circles, with a Pew poll taken before the mosque kerfluffle showing an astonishing 43 percent of Americans don’t know that he’s a Christian, with 18 percent irrationally believing he’s actually a Muslim. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s insulting statement on “Meet the Press” that “he takes Obama’s word that he’s a Christian” sets a new low in Republican civility.

But a more worrisome back story, reported Saturday by The New York Times, noted some counterterrorism experts say anti-Muslim sentiment saturating airwaves and blogs about the proposed site is playing into the hands of extremists to bolster their claims that the U.S. is hostile to Islam – and risks adding new fuel to Al Qaeda’s claim that Islam is under attack from the West.

Brian Fishman, who studies terrorism at the New American Foundation in Washington, cited Anwar al-Awlaki, an American- born cleric hiding in Yemen, who has been linked to several terrorist plots.

When the rhetoric is so inflammatory that it serves the interests of a jihadi recruiter like Awalaki, politicians need to be called on it, Fishman told The Times. His inference focused on the likes of Republicans Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. But rational political leaders like Mayor Bloomberg of New York and GOP Gov. Christopher Christie of New Jersey have defended the right of Muslims to build the center, or warned of anti-Muslim hysteria.

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