Posted on 09/25/2008 7:13:19 PM PDT by markomalley
Here's a sad monument to the sleaziness of this presidential campaign: Almost one-third of voters "know" that Barack Obama is a Muslim or believe that he could be.
In short, the political campaign to transform Obama into a Muslim is succeeding. The real loser as that happens isn't just Obama, but our entire political process.
A Pew Research Center survey released a few days ago found that only half of Americans correctly know that Obama is a Christian. Meanwhile, 13 percent of registered voters say that he is a Muslim, compared with 12 percent in June and 10 percent in March.
It's more ominous that a rising share -- now 16 percent -- say they aren't sure about his religion because they've heard "different things" about it.
When I've traveled around the country, particularly to my childhood home in rural Oregon, I've been struck by the number of people who ask something like: That Obama -- is he really a Christian? Isn't he a Muslim or something? Didn't he take his oath of office on the Quran?
In conservative Christian circles and on Christian radio stations, there are even widespread theories that Obama just may be the Antichrist. Seriously.
John Green, of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, says that about 10 percent of Americans believe we may be in the Book of Revelation's "end times" and are on the lookout for the Antichrist. A constant barrage of e-mail and broadcasts suggest that Obama just may be it.
The online Red State Shop sells T-shirts, mugs and stickers exploiting the idea. Some shirts and stickers portray a large "O" with horns, above a caption: "The Anti-Christ."
To his credit, John McCain himself has never raised doubts about Obama's religion. But a McCain commercial last month mimicked the words and imagery of the best-selling Christian "Left Behind" book series in ways that would have set off alarm bells among evangelicals nervous about the Antichrist.
McCain himself is not popular with evangelicals. But they will vote for him if they think the other guy may be on Satan's side.
In fact, of course, Obama took his oath on the Bible, not -- as the rumors have it -- on the Quran. He is far more active in church than McCain is.
(Just imagine for a moment if it were the black candidate in this election, rather than the white candidate, who was born in Central America, was an indifferent churchgoer, had graduated near the bottom of his university class, had dumped his first wife, had regularly displayed an explosive and profane temper and had referred to the Pakistani-Iraqi border ... .)
What is happening, I think, is this: Religious prejudice is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice. In public at least, it's not acceptable to express reservations about a candidate's skin color, so discomfort about race is sublimated into concerns about whether Obama is sufficiently Christian.
The result is this campaign to "otherize" Obama. Nobody needs to point out that he is black, but there's a persistent effort to exaggerate other differences, to de-Americanize him.
Raising doubts about a candidate based on the religion of his grandfather is toxic and profoundly un-American, cracking the melting pot we emerged from. Someday people will look back at the innuendoes about Obama with the same disgust with which we regard the smears of Al Smith as a Catholic candidate in 1928.
I'm writing in part out of a sense of personal responsibility. Those who suggest that Obama is a Muslim -- as if that in itself were wrong -- regularly cite my own columns, especially an interview last year in which I asked him about Islam and his boyhood in Indonesia. In that interview, Obama praised the Arabic call to prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset," and he repeated the opening of it.
This should surprise no one: The call to prayer blasts from mosque loudspeakers five times a day, and Obama would have had to have been deaf not to learn the words as a child. But critics, such as Jerome Corsi, whose book denouncing Obama, "The Obama Nation," is No. 2 on the New York Times best-seller list, quote from that column to argue that Obama has mysterious ties to Islam. I feel a particular obligation not to let my own writing be twisted so as to inflame bigotry and xenophobia.
Journalists need to do more than call the play-by-play this election cycle. We also need to blow the whistle on such egregious fouls calculated to undermine the political process and magnify the ugliest prejudices that our nation has done so much to overcome.
You are, Nick...
We also need to blow the whistle on such egregious fouls calculated to undermine the political process and magnify the ugliest prejudices that our nation has done so much to overcome.
You must be tired...let me fix it for you:
There. Fixed it for you.
You can just donate my fee to Priests for Life. Thanks.
He may be a Christian, but given that his 20 year pastor was Rev. Wright, I’m not sure that helps him much.
Oh puleeeeezzeee ... spare me the tiny wailing violin
Where’s my violin when I need it?
Maybe the fact that we are at war with radical Islam has a little something to do with it.
I am so tired of reading Dem spin that McCain was born in South America which apparently makes him suspect as a citizen - sheesh.
The main reason the left hates Palin is because she’s Christian... and means it. Isn’t that bias too?
He’s up against the “Thrilla from Wasilla...”
An even more sinister variant of the “vote for O***** to prove that you’re not racist” cr@p.
“Obama up against religious prejudice”
In my case he is up against agnostic prejudice. I am objectively prejudiced against his 20+ year association with a Black Supremacist church. His thinly veiled ties to islam (and support among radical islamists) kinda puts me off as well. His constant emulation of the Alinsky Model as a bit worrying as well. Obama’s obvious and indisputable guiding philosophy of Marxism is a definite deal breaker!
"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Matthew 7:21 NASB
I do not believe Obama is a Christian OR a muslim...I believe he is a liberal (read that, secular humanist).
What about if the religion was that of his grandfather, father and stepfather, as with Obama?
If Obama is a Christian then I’m the Crown Prince of Denmark.
You are welcome to borrow one of mine.
Is this the wuss who interviewed Obama and quoted him as saying the Muslim morning call to prayer was one of the most bautiful sounds he ever heard?
“theories that Obama just may be the Antichrist”
No, he isn’t THE Antichrist, but he certainly is AN antichrist.
“referred to the Pakistani-Iraqi border ... “
hmm, kind of like osamabama’s “I’ve been to 57 states with one more to go?”
That’s about the same 1/3 that thin McCain is too old.
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