Mark this one for the “Huh?” Department of Dubious Editorial Statements: the Jewish Forward published an editorial about the Muslim smear campaign circulating in the inboxes of American Jews. In what is mostly a positive editorial decrying the fear and mistrust represented by the defamatory charges, it nevertheless takes some genuinely odd and blatantly false positions regarding the content of the e mails. First, the editorial claims there is truth in some of the charges:
…Certain elements of the story are almost certainly correct. That casts a shadow over all the denials.
Numerous sources including this blog have debunked virtually all the charges, but somehow the Forward finds some that are valid.
…An investigation by the Los Angeles Times showed that Obama had indeed attended a Muslim school in Indonesia, albeit not a fundamentalist academy.
Obama attended the equivalent of an Indonesian public school. This passage might lead you to believe that Obama attended a parochial school much like an American Catholic school. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
But this statement really takes the cake:
Is Barack Obama a Muslim? Almost certainly not. Was he ever a Muslim? Almost certainly yes.
Say what? Barack Obama’s father was a non-practicing agnostic Kenyan who happened to be born Muslim. His stepfather was also a Indonesian Muslim who drank alcohol and reportedly was a womanizer. Obama’s mother was his formative parental influence and she was born Christian, though she never imparted any religion to her children. So where in heaven’s name does the Forward get off calling him “almost certainly” Muslim??
Let me add that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a Muslim and that I hope that one day there will be an American Muslim senator and president. But the point here is that a presidential candidate is being religion-bated and that should not stand. Unfortunately, the Forward’s normally sure and steady journalistic hand has faltered badly in this editorial.
A later clarification does nothing to clear up the mistakes of the original editorial.
Compare this to the discussion of John Kerry’s Jewish ancestry.
It’s just yukky. I am sorry to see it. Let’s hope the Forward grows up a little…
It’s a shame Obama doesn’t have the cajones to stand up to these sleaze balls, name names, and tackle this racist, bigoted bullshit head on.
If someone were to round up Muslims, say for internment camps, according to Muslim law, wouldn’t Obama be among them, as religion is passed from the father?
He should stand up tall, tell them his dad and grandfather were proud Muslims, but that he himself has chosen to confess the Christian faith.
What a missed opportunity.
Mr. Silverstein,
I was directed to your blog through a class I am taking at BCC. I have read through some of your articles and have to commend you on your reasonableness and forward thinking. As a recent convert to Islam the thing I find most troubling is the vile hatred of ‘the others’ regardless of which side it comes from. Narrow mindedness and hatred will get us nowhere. I can only hope that more people will entertain your views.
As far as a Muslim senator, we don’t have one yet, but we do have a Muslim congressman. Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) will be visiting us in Redmond and giving a speech at our mosque on the 16th of February. I cordially invite you to attend.
Sincerely,
Allen
ender600rr@gmail.com
This stuff does harm. I know all too sadly well that here in NYC last Tuesday several Jews I know, reasonably sane people who might even classify themselves as liberal, voted against Obama and for Hillary. They, like me, and as many countless thousands are, were fence-sitters, but the Obama-is-Muslim canard flipped them over to the Hillary side – the proverbial what’s-good-for-Israel syndrome. I voted for Obama simply because I felt his baggage a bit less onerous than Hillary’s (her war votes, for instance). But returning to the Obama slur again, which, because it is used as a slur, is a double slime-whammy: (1) he’s a Christian by choice and thus it’s a lie and (2) that his being tagged as a Muslim is being used as an anti-Obama slur is in its very essence bigoted. But then, of course, Senator Obama has actually been somewhat spared the depth and breadth those anthropormorphic sphincters, the slime specialists, are truly capable of; should be become the Democratic nominee, he will learn soon enough what Hillary has long experienced, and of course I refer not to legitimate critiques of her record, but rather everything from an obsessive interest in the quality of her laugh to her alleged murder of Vince Foster. Another thing I fear as regards Obama is that the young and others he has invigorated and drawn into the process in remarkable numbers will not in disappointment and or anger pick up their marbles and go home should he eventually not be the nominee. Such an adolescent gesture could well guarantee the ascendancy of that fugitive from Dr. Strangelove’s, the war-loving, social conservative McCain. Given his war talk, we can easily imagine his riding down to glorious perdition that giant phallus of a bomb.
Wow. If well educated liberals in NYC didn’t vote for Obama because he father was nominally Muslim, and they actually voiced that out loud, I have to say that’s truly the scariest thing I’ve heard in a while.
I had better start preparing my nominally Muslim children for a more difficult future than I’d imagined for them.
Norman Weinstein: “Another thing I fear as regards Obama is that the young and others he has invigorated and drawn into the process in remarkable numbers will not in disappointment and or anger pick up their marbles and go home should he eventually not be the nominee. ”
But what?
Norman Weinstein: “Such an adolescent gesture could well guarantee the ascendancy of that fugitive from Dr. Strangelove’s, the war-loving, social conservative McCain. Given his war talk, we can easily imagine his riding down to glorious perdition that giant phallus of a bomb.”
Again what
Richard is the best example that not all voters of Obama are youngster or do you prefer “crrepy cultists?
http://mediamatters.org/items/200802080014
OK, I pushed the submit button a little too fast again.
Correction:
Below second Weinstein citation:
Again what gesture?
Last line: “…youngsters or do you prefer “creepy cultists”?
No idea why my first note was put on hold, while the second shows up. May I try again?
Norman Weinstein: “Another thing I fear as regards Obama is that the young and others he has invigorated and drawn into the process in remarkable numbers will not in disappointment and or anger pick up their marbles and go home should he eventually not be the nominee.”
What are you hinting at?. Or what do you fear they could be doing instead of picking up their marbles and go home to mom and dad?
Norman Weinstein: Such an adolescent gesture could well guarantee the ascendancy of that fugitive from Dr. Strangelove’s, the war-loving, social conservative McCain. Given his war talk, we can easily imagine his riding down to glorious perdition that giant phallus of a bomb.
An adolescent gesture? Is what exactly? A riot that helps McCain to win?
http://mediamatters.org/items/200802080014
Media figures call Obama supporters’ behavior “creepy,” compare them to Hare Krishna and Manson followers
Hello, i recently saw a report about obama, there was an interview with his mother, i first thought obama is an muslim because of his mothers last name and when i heard his father was a muslim. Currently he is my favourite in the elections.
LeaNder, damned if I fully understand your response to what I wrote earlier. Maybe it’s simply a matter of an octogenarian becoming dippy, but then again maybe not. In any case, I found your questions weird, even with the support I assume your link to mediamatters.org is supposed to provide, a kind of faux scholarship on your part in which you reference renowned experts on the subject at hand – at least, thank God, you didn’t use footnotes. Sending me to the vapid neocon, David Brooks, and to that keen philosopher-observer of the human condition, Joel Stein, et al, in order to demonstrate the validity of your questions, just doesn’t cut the mustard. To bloviate is not necessarily to say anything significant. What I wrote is quite simple, with no esoteric innuendos, just some thoughts of mine based on experience and thinking about such. My “adolescent gesture” meant no more than young Obama supporters, disappointed if he’s not the chosen candidate, might go home; that is, not bother to vote for Hillary, say, but simply go home to TV, computer, iPod, beer, you name it. Where you got “A riot that helps McCain win” eludes me. A young person not getting his way can be quite petulant, as can an older person, but I think less likely so. As to “What do you fear they could be doing instead of picking up their marbles and go home to mom and dad?”, I don’t fear anything, except their potential absence from the polls and their not voting for a Democrat. And that, LeaNder, is it.
There is indeed much to fear there, Norman.
I’d be hard-pressed to pull the lever for Hillary.
LeaNder, I owe you a most sincere and abject apology for my response earlier today to your response to my posting of February 9th. I quite honestly did not know where you were coming from, and then I reread that earlier commentary of mine, to discover an unwanted “not” that quite thoroughly turned my intended meaning topsy-turvy. The sentence in question is “Another thing I fear as regards Obama is that the young and others he has invigorated and drawn into the process in remarkable numbers will not in disappointment and or anger pick up their marbles and go home should he eventually not be the nominee.” That first NOT is the culprit. Enough to make one anti-semantic, or maybe I really am an “octogenarian becoming dippy”. Again, my apology.
I think it’s ridiculous that a democratic country like America makes such a big deal about race. I come from South Africa – a formerly racist country that discriminated against blacks through a law called apartheid. Even though apartheid was upheld by the government, the majority of the society was far less racist than the kind of bickering I see going on in America. Who cares if Barack was muslim? Will he do the job? Yes, or no? The American elections seem to be all about racism and sexism – but nothing about real character or policies.
Maybe this should not be overrated. Such an attack is certainly low level and not acceptable. Religions are still very important in USA, which is not the case anymore luckily in many countries in Europe.