Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (53 page)

Prager further speculated that Ellison’s election would somehow “embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones, as Islamists, rightly
or wrongly, see the first sign of the realization of their greatest goal—the Islamicization of America.”
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He did not elaborate upon how this implicitly democratic end would be achieved. Would Islamic extremists from abroad arrive in the United States covertly, wait years to gain citizenship, and then
all
run for elected office—
and win
? Who, after all, would vote for Muslim candidates if their allegedly subversive political goals were unmasked by people like Prager? But if Americans did endorse a slate of American Muslim candidates, would that not simply be an affirmation of the Republic’s democratic health? The suggestion in Prager’s speech of Muslim conspiratorial intentions would not be successfully countered in any media venue, but would fester among select Muslim hate groups, seeping unremarked into mainstream national media and politics.

Immediately after Ellison’s election,
Glenn Beck, then with CNN’s Headline News (HLN), congratulated the new congressman but refused to define him as fully American, suggesting rather that he must be in league with the nation’s foreign adversaries. Beck asked, “Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.”
¹⁰⁴
Congressman-elect Ellison had been indicted as un-American and possibly anti-American, based solely on the commentator’s prejudices about Islam. Beck qualified his insistence that the congressman prove his loyalty to the country by adding, “I’m not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans feel that way.”
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There was no public outcry in response to Beck’s remarks. Ellison’s brief answer was to affirm his “deep love and affection for my country.” He concluded, “There’s no one who is more patriotic than I am. And so, you know, I don’t need to—need to prove my patriotic stripes.”
¹⁰⁶
He also wrote an editorial in which he declared, “I was elected to articulate a new politics in which no one is cut out of the American dream, not immigrants, not gays, not poor people, not even a Muslim committed to serve his nation.”
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In spite of opposition, many Americans, Muslims in particular, took heart. The editor of the
Arab American News
in Dearborn, Michigan, observed, “It’s a step forward: it gives Muslims a little bit of a sense of belonging. It is also a signal to the rest of the world that America has nothing against Muslims.”
¹⁰⁸
Indicating this might be the case, a second Muslim, Democrat
André Carson of Indiana, was elected to Congress in 2008, winning reelection in 2010. Carson’s religion would not attract the sort of notice that Ellison’s had. And Ellison would be reelected
repeatedly by his predominantly non-Muslim constituents in Minneapolis. Still, the tactics used to undermine him, far from being retired, would be brought to bear, as early as 2004, against a bigger target, a potential candidate in the 2008 presidential election.

False reports that Senator
Barack Obama was a “secret” Muslim began to circulate just after his impressive keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, long before a real Muslim, Keith Ellison, became a candidate for Congress.
¹⁰⁹
The initial anonymous e-mail, created by a fringe Republican political operative describing himself as “independent,” promoted a range of lies: that Obama concealed “the fact that he is a Muslim”; that his stepfather “introduced his stepson to Islam”; that he was enrolled in a Muslim school in Indonesia where he learned “radical teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists”; and that his Christianity was only “politically expedient,” a cover for his true faith. The e-mail’s author also deliberately referred to Obama as “Osama.”
¹¹⁰
The allegations would circulate more widely on the Web in 2006, as Obama actively considered a presidential bid. By 2007, “CNN and others” had “thoroughly debunked the smear,” but as
Chris Hayes reported, “the original false accusation has clearly sunk into people’s consciousness.”
¹¹¹
The idea would not die during the presidential campaign. Indeed, the confusion over Obama’s religion remains for some.

As when Jefferson was branded an “infidel,” attacks on Obama’s Christian self-identification were intended to undermine his appeal among the Christian majority. In both cases, the association with Islam was intended to depict the candidate as decidedly un-American. That Jefferson and Obama would both be elected nevertheless did not prevent enemies from continuing the attack well into the first term of each.

Still, there are key differences in the two smear campaigns. First, unlike Jefferson, Barack Hussein Obama does have an actual Islamic heritage: his father, a Kenyan, and his stepfather, an Indonesian, were both Muslim. Even the name Barack Hussein is Muslim in origin: Barack,
baraka
in Arabic, means “blessing,” and Hussein is the name of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. Obama’s stepfather would list the boy’s religion as “Islam” on a school form in Indonesia, but as Obama explained, he practiced no religion until he joined the United Church of Christ in Chicago,
¹¹²
his family being, by his own account, not “folks
who went to church every week.” Obama relates that he chose Christianity in part because of the centrality of the Golden Rule:

Apart from but not unconnected to claims about Obama’s faith were those made about his place of birth. The evolution of what has come to be called “birtherism,” or the conspiracy theory denying that Obama was a Hawaii-born American citizen, fed the same fears of foreign infiltration as claims he was Muslim.
¹¹⁴
Indeed, books propagating these myths would proliferate during and after the presidential campaign of 2008 and even into the following election cycle, despite the failure of any proof to materialize after nearly four years of the Obama presidency.
¹¹⁵

Another difference between the smearing of Jefferson and that of Obama was that in the former case there were no ramifications for actual American Muslims, whereas the treatment of Obama insulted and alienated millions of American Muslim citizens. (It was also designed to instill fear in American Jews, because for some the specter of a Muslim president cast doubt on their country’s future support for the state of Israel.) Among a substantial group of voters, the falsehood that Obama was a Muslim had assumed a frightening truth in the campaign. A month before the 2008 election, a Pew Forum poll recorded that 12 percent of Americans believed it, despite repeated media corrections to the contrary.
¹¹⁶
It is not particularly surprising that this number correlated to those who overwhelmingly disapproved of him.

“I can’t trust Obama,” said one woman at the Minnesota rally for Obama’s Republican opponent
John McCain, on October 10, 2008. Holding the microphone the candidate had given her to ask a question, she continued, “I have read about him and he’s not, he’s not uh—he’s an Arab. He’s not—” At which point McCain reclaimed the microphone, contradicting her: “No ma’am. He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is about. He’s not [an Arab].” In response, McCain’s own supporters booed him as a “liar” and “terrorist.”
¹¹⁷
It was a confusing moment, one in which McCain, attempting
to defend his opponent, inadvertently seemed to say that being an Arab (or Muslim) was somehow at odds with being “a decent family man” or a “citizen.”
¹¹⁸

The inflammatory accusation that Obama was a Muslim (and that all Muslims were terrorists) also changed the Democratic candidate’s campaign strategy and self-representation. Muslims across the nation had hoped that Obama would be “a long-awaited champion of civil liberties, religious tolerance and diplomacy in foreign affairs.” But while he accepted offers to speak to Christian and Jewish organizations, Obama “ignored” invitations from American Muslim voters to address them. He even asked Congressman Ellison not to speak on his behalf at one of the nation’s oldest mosques in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, “because it might stir controversy.” In June 2008, volunteers for Obama told two American Muslim women in headscarves to move off camera, away from where they were standing behind the candidate as he spoke in Detroit. Obama later telephoned the two to apologize: “I take deepest offense and will continue to fight against discrimination against people of any religious group or background.” While some Muslims understood Obama’s avoidance of their community, others felt “betrayed.” That the candidate’s Web site referred to claims about his religion as a “smear,” seemed implicitly to affirm the idea that American Muslims were un- or anti-American, even while noting that such “rumors were offensive to American Muslims because they played into ‘fearmongering.’ ”
¹¹⁹
Nowhere had Obama defended the idea that to be a Muslim presented no impediment to being an American citizen.

Even after the election, anti-Islamic tactics would continue to affect how President Obama spoke to his Muslim constituents in public. His earliest official speeches in recognition of the American Muslim community were presented to Islamic audiences abroad, in Egypt, not directly to his own constituency in the United States. Not until 2009, after a year as president, would Obama declare in Cairo, “I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story.” Only while speaking to his Egyptian university audience would he allow that “since our founding American Muslims have enriched the United States.”
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Three days after the incident at the McCain rally, the reporter
Campbell Brown, then of CNN, proposed a response that finally reflected American ideals of religious pluralism and political equality. In her commentary, she answered the key question: “So What If Obama Were a Muslim or an Arab?” Brown succinctly described Obama as
“an American” and “a Christian,” but then asked reproachfully, “So what if John McCain was Arab or Muslim? Would it matter? When did this become a disqualifier for higher office in our country? When did Arab or Muslim become dirty words? The equivalent of dishonorable or radical?”
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Brown admitted that “the media is complicit here, too,” pointedly identifying the problem: “We’ve all been too quick to accept the idea that calling someone Muslim is a slur.”
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(This was the response Congressman Ellison had hoped Obama himself might offer in the face of these accusations.)
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She recognized that millions of American Arab and Muslim citizens were “being maligned here,” and then insisted, “We can’t tolerate this ignorance—not in the media, not on the campaign trail.” Brown concluded, “Of course, he’s not an Arab. Of course, he’s not a Muslim. But honestly, it shouldn’t matter.”
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Almost a week later in October 2008, General
Colin Powell, former secretary of state under President George W. Bush, endorsed Barack Obama for president. Troubled by the accusation that Obama was a Muslim, Powell focused on the death of Kareem R. Khan, an American Muslim soldier killed in Iraq and buried in Arlington National Cemetery, to rebuke those in his party who defamed citizens because of their Islamic faith. Civic virtue in rendering the ultimate sacrifice of one’s life for one’s country, Powell reminded Americans, should be considered a testament to loyalty and citizenship, regardless of religion. On the television show
Meet the Press
, Powell echoed Brown’s withering question about then presidential candidate Obama: “The really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being Muslim in this country? No, that’s not America.”
¹²⁵

Since the eighteenth century, many Americans have feared the possibility of a Muslim or Catholic or Jewish president, echoing the dread expressed by the Federalist William Lancaster in 1788 at what the Constitution had made possible: “But let us remember that we form a government for millions not yet in existence. I have not the art of divination. In the course of four or five hundred years, I do not know how it will work. This is most certain, that Papists may occupy that chair, and Mahometans may take it.”
¹²⁶

Lancaster’s fears of a Catholic president were realized in less than his predicted four or five hundred years, when John F. Kennedy won the office in 1960. That the nation did not then succumb to some “Papist plot” should perhaps have given those errant patriots terrified
by Obama’s election some cause for comfort, but there is no indication that these anxieties have abated.

Why not? Why did polls four years into Obama’s presidency indicate that 31 to 46 percent of Republicans still thought he was a Muslim?
¹²⁷
Scholars of conspiracy theory in American politics point out false claims are spread rather than debunked by repetition.
¹²⁸
Another view suggests that those polled did not actually believe Obama to be a Muslim, but told the pollsters they did in order to register ideological opposition.
¹²⁹
In this way, the reality of whether or not Obama is a Muslim has become equivalent to what the idea of a Muslim president has come to signify. Could a Muslim become president? Not a few of Obama’s detractors may still be convinced that one already has. As to whether an actual, self-described Muslim could ascend to the office, that seems far more problematic until a much larger proportion of the electorate becomes Muslim and/or more non-Muslim Americans take to heart what Jefferson proclaimed in his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom: