Yes dammit

[prog]

The election cycle is nearly done, and Friday's On the Media was the first acknowledgment I'd heard in any broadcast venue of the inherent Islamophobia in countering "He's a Muslim!" with "No he isn't!" but then failing to take any steps into "That said, why would that even matter?"

I have some sympathy for the defense, here (it's best not to linger too long in the enemy's frame) but it still grates me a little every time I see it.

Comments

[jadelennox]

Yeah, I bitch about the same thing over firbolg way.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

That was one of my favorite moments in AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka's great speech to the steelworkers' union. He went there.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

It would matter for exactly the same reason Mike Huckabee's Christianity mattered.

It would also matter if he was lying about it, although I take it that you're assuming a hypotheticalverse where that isn't the case.

One day there will be a Muslim president of the US, and it is likely he'll face the same kind of suspicion that Huckabee would have faced, and in my view quite properly so given where the Muslim centre is these days. It's easy to find educated, mainstream Muslims who sincerely believe that "homosexuals are abominations who should be killed" (that's actually a direct quote from a Muslim guy I know slightly, who is relatively liberal in most other respects.) I'm sure you could find plenty of people who agree with that sentiment in Mike Huckabee's church, and so I'd like to think that both groups would get a certain amount of religion-specific vetting.

[kahuna-burger.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I don't quite follow. Every candidate in this election, and every election in my lifetime has been a Christian. I assume you are referring to some specific denomination Huckabee belongs to, I wasn't following the primary particularly. To lump "muslim" into the same sort of group as "Mike Huckabee's church" is exactly the sort of bias that is being criticized here.

When there is a Muslim candidate, he or she will face "the same kind of suspicion" as most of the candidates this season have - assessment of their particular church and how it's specific values have or haven't shaped the candidate's views. The Muslim candidate will also face a completely different kind of suspicion, based on bias and a willingness to lump every member of a large and diverse religion into the same group and judge it based on the most extreme thing any member has ever done.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

For instance, some of the rumors that went around about Obama deliberately confused him with Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the one Muslim in Congress. I can't imagine Ellison felt entirely good about the response just being "no, Obama's not a Muslim".

[radtea.livejournal.com]

I can appreciate intellectually what you're saying, but I think I'm just failing to get the prejudice you're fighting. For comparison, here in Canada we have Muslim and Sikh MPs, including fairly recently a Sikh as Minister of Health in the Federal Government, even though Sikh extremists were responsible for the worst domestic terrorist attack in Canada ever, killing over 300 people in the bombing of Air India fight 182, the vast majority of them Canadian citizens.