Muslim Gauze

If religious politics is a slippery slope during election season, then the left seems to be flying down it as if they were on a slip-n-slide right now. This recent string of comments on left-leaning political blog Talking Points Memo reveals some of the main points of the argument on the left of whether of not Obama is, as a Clinton aid suggested in an email a couple of months ago, secretly (gasp) a muslim.  This seems to keep popping up, and what is most disturbing about it is the defense which it seems to prompt.  It is, of course, ridiculous to claim that Obama is secretly a Muslim, since there is so much evidence to the contrary, including his own public testimony to the role of Christianity in his life.  The defense is often simply outrage that the (internet trolling) people who make this sort of accusation could be so wrong, and not about the real pathological fixation it presents.  We should be asking why accusations of being Muslim are so effective, and why such a threat should be perceived as effective on the part of the Clinton campaign, albeit unofficially.  The surplus of "fodder" spilling out of the Clinton campaign, that Obama is secretly Muslim, may have been a drug-dealer, etc, may be just a warm up for the real racism that will be coming to light if Obama makes it past the primaries.  If Clinton's supporters see the light in these kind of baseless, prejudice-building insinuations, how will Huckabee or Romney's staff act?  It is difficult for me to imagine the GOP passing up the opportunity to racially slur Obama as much as possible without crossing the line--but the very act of approaching this line will be very telling as to what those lines really are.  Too often in debate, we pretend our political spectrum is mutli-cultural, enlightened, that these bounds don't even exist.

Given our country's position in regards to Iraq, it seems that such a campaign may actually be the best thing for this country.  The gauzy implication that being a Muslim is anti-American has been haunting the political dialogue for too long, and I think it is about time it is aired out and shown to be the ideological scapegoat it is.  While there are many reasons to be pushing for Obama or Hillary, this seems to me to be an increasingly  legitimate reason to favor Obama--it is only through his candidacy that America might have the opportunity to air these prejudices in public, and I think Obama is smart enough to be the beacon of multi-cultural tolerance his candidacy will position him as.  It will be important not only to assert the viablity of blacks, muslims, etc, in a cultural dialogue, but to point out that he has no choice--that these cultural constructions have been defining his candidacy form the very beginning.