President elect Barack Hussein Obama. We all have to get used to that phrase. I predicted this over a year ago when most people felt Hillary would win the primaries.I look back to the time he started his campaign, how the right wing media tried to smear him. I still find it hard to believe when the question of his religion surfaced. People were out there questioning Obama’s ethnicity and religion, suggesting it’s somehow “un-American.”
Earlier in the primaries, we noted that one of Clinton’s advisers wanted to raise doubt that the fact that Obama was born in Hawaii to a Black African father and White Kansas mother, raised in Indonesia, he somehow automatically lacks American values.
Then all of a sudden, the right wing conservatives and ignorant people tried to stir religious division, claiming Obama is a Muslim. Truth is Obama is a Christian. But does it matter if He was a Muslim?
Does the United States constitution rule against Muslim or Arab Americans from seeking presidential office or any office for that matter? No. The first amendment separates religion from the State.
Following the campaign trail before the elections, I was watching CNN and I noticed a McCain supporter wore a shirt bearing change, an Obama campaign message, spelling it with Islamic and socialist symbols of the former Soviet Union.
When interviewed, he made it clear that he believes Obama is a Muslim with a socialist agenda. He was later confronted by McCain Supporters who were Muslims and he felt so stupid. I had to laugh.
One of McCain’s Muslim supporters said she can’t take it anymore, saying she would vote for Obama because most Mccain supporters have a wrong view of Islam.
On a serious note, what is wrong with being a Muslim or Arab American? The right wing media is succeeding in deceiving ignorant Americans that being a Muslim is an opposition to Christian values, a slur or terrorist of some sort.
There is a difference between radical Islamic jihadists, and those who practice Islam as a religion, just as there are Christian extremists. Islam is an Arabic word for peace. I have Muslim friends and they face the same situation everybody faces.
If being a Muslim or Arab somehow represents terror, why does the Unites States engage in business with Arab – Islamic countries?
There were better excuses out there not to vote for Barack, besides questioning his religious background or ethnicity. Muslims make up close to seven million of the population here in the United States. There are White, Black, Asian, and Hispanic Muslims.
Bottom line, the president elect is not a Muslim. But seriously it should not matter.