Category Archives: Obama Administration

Muslim Women Rejected at Obama Rally

Election 2008, Islam in America, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media

By JEFF KAROUB,AP
Posted: 2008-06-18 19:03:06
DETROIT (June 18) – A young Muslim woman said she and another woman were refused seats directly behind Barack Obama — and in front of TV cameras — at a Detroit rally because they wear head scarfs. For the full story, go here.
The full story speaks of the irony of Obama’s inclusive campaign excluded these women. Other Muslims, including one of the women’s brothers would have been welcome to these seats but they refused them as a token of solidarity (as did non-Muslims).

The fact that this is even a issue speaks to the ways in which hijab is iconic not only of Islam but of what Americans fear about Islam. I myself have been guilty of this. Once at a Thai (Buddhist) festival, I observed that it was interesting that there were Muslims present. However the only way of identifying Muslims was by the head coverings worn by the women. The men, as is sometimes (often?) the case did not wear anything distinctive. I assume that since some Muslim men could have sat behind Obama means that they were not wearing distinctive clothing.
Continue reading Muslim Women Rejected at Obama Rally →

What Krauthammer is Missing

Election 2008, Iraq War, Journalism and Media

In yesterday’s Real Clear Politics, the Washington Post and anti-Obama pundit Charles Krauthammer showed off his rhetorical disdain for anything resembling accuracy in reporting on the war in Iraq. According to this armchair theory spinner, the war in Iraq has already been won — shades of Henry Kissenger’s disengenuous claim about Vietnam before a previous election. Here is what Krauthammer said:

We know Obama hasn’t been to Iraq in more than two years, but does he not read the papers? Does he not know anything about developments on the ground? Here is the “nothing” that Iraqis have been doing in the last few months: Continue reading What Krauthammer is Missing →

The Overstatement that becomes an Understatement

Election 2008, Iraq War

Bush Overstated Iraq Evidence, Senators Report

By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE, The New York Times, June 6, 2008
WASHINGTON — A long-delayed Senate committee report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq’s weapons programs and Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda.

The report was released Thursday after years of partisan squabbling, and it represented the close of five years of investigations by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence into the use, abuse and faulty assessments of intelligence leading to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

That some Bush administration claims about the Iraqi threat turned out to be false is hardly new. But the report, based on a detailed review of public statements by Mr. Bush and other officials, was the most comprehensive effort to date to assess whether policy makers systematically painted a more dire picture about Iraq than was justified by the available intelligence.

The 170-page report accuses Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials of repeatedly overstating the Iraqi threat in the emotional aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Its findings were endorsed by all eight committee Democrats and two Republicans, Senators Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. Continue reading The Overstatement that becomes an Understatement →

Mahdi Madness and the 2008 Election

Apocalypse Watch, Election 2008, Iran, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Shi'a

For some partisans, no matter who is elected President to succeed George W. Bush, it will seem like the end of the world. We are in the apocalypse silly season once again. Take Tim LeHaye, the doctrinal inspiration of the WASP-friendly Left Behind book series (Jerry B. Jenkins provides the verbal inspiration in sci-fi style); he has been preaching the politics of biblical apocalypse for years. Indeed, since the apostle John allegedly first had his vision on the island of Patmos, the world has been teetering in the end times. This world is always going to hell; Jesus must be coming soon. Bible-belting believers and bible-belching evangelists constantly look to the heavens with rapturous delight for the mother of all shock-and-awe shows to begin. Up go the faithful in the twinkling of an eye and then it is open tribulation season on the Jews that will make the 20th century Nazi holocaust look like a sabbath picnic. Fortunately, most of the world’s Christians look at such a naive-ity scene with alarm. “Even so,” it might be said, “do not come Lord Jesus.”

Reverends Tim LeHaye, Pat Robertson and John Hagee are not the only mega-mouths who know deep down in their saved souls that they will not be left behind. Ironically, they share theologically-maddened space with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the shi’a-evangelical President of Iran. As noted in a New York Times article today by Nazila Fathi, the Iranian President’s “high father” is Imam Mahdi, the hidden 12th “twelver” Imam who occulted well over a millennium ago, but whose reappearance has been looked for year after year in popular imagination. Ahmadinejad, who loves to wear his religion on his sleeves, says that Imam Mahdi guides his day-to-day decisions as a president. In gratitude, Ahmadinejad has sponsored an institute to prepare Iran for the Imam’s immanent return. This would be like Bush asking his faith-based supporters to create a special office in Homeland Security on Eternal Security Risks to those Left Behind. Continue reading Mahdi Madness and the 2008 Election →

McCain’s Pastor Problem: The Video

Bible and Holy Land, Election 2008, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia

Washington Dispatch: In a taped sermon, the preacher McCain calls a “spiritual guide” calls on America to see the “false religion” of Islam “destroyed.” Still, the candidate won’t reject Rod Parsley’s endorsement.

By David Corn, Mother Jones, May 8, 2008

During a 2005 sermon, a fundamentalist pastor whom Senator John McCain has praised and campaigned with called Islam “the greatest religious enemy of our civilization and the world,” claiming that the historic mission of America is to see “this false religion destroyed.” In this taped sermon, currently sold by his megachurch, the Reverend Rod Parsley reiterates and amplifies harsh and derogatory comments about Islam he made in his book, Silent No More, published the same year he delivered these remarks. Meanwhile, McCain has stuck to his stance of not criticizing Parsley, an important political ally in a crucial swing state.

In March 2008—two weeks after McCain appeared with Parsley at a Cincinnati campaign rally, hailing him as “one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide”—Mother Jones reported that Parsley had urged Christians to wage a “war” to eradicate Islam in his 2005 book. McCain’s campaign refused to respond to questions about Parsley, and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee declined to denounce Parsley’s anti-Islam remarks or renounce his endorsement. At a time when Barack Obama was mired in a searing controversy involving Reverend Jeremiah Wright, McCain escaped any trouble for his political alliance with Parsley, who leads the World Harvest Church, a supersized Pentecostal institution in Columbus, Ohio. Parsley, whose sermons are broadcast around the world, has been credited with helping George W. Bush win Ohio in 2004 by registering social conservatives and encouraging them to vote. McCain certainly would like to see Parsley do the same for him—which could explain his reluctance to do any harm to his relationship with this anti-Islam extremist.

Here’s a video—produced by Mother Jones and Brave New films—highlighting Parsley’s remarks and McCain’s praise of the pastor: Continue reading McCain’s Pastor Problem: The Video →

Not So Swift Boat Apostasy

Apocalypse Watch, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Election 2008, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia

In this American presidential campaign just about every possible prejudice has been let out of the soap box and it’s not even June. There was a Mormon, but Mighty Mitt dropped the ball when he was kicked in the polls by a Baptist preacher who plays the guitar. There is, though many wish we could see “was”, a woman who had already decorated the White House and whose husband would in turn (pun fully intended) be the first former president-spouse, not to mention the first admitted philanderer to get a second chance to serve tea on Pennsylvania Avenue. And there is a Black man, whose Kenyan father’s skin color seems to trump his white Kansan mother’s nurturing. And, by the way, he has a name that rhymes with Osama. And don’t forget that his father was born a Muslim. If this were American Gladiators, the battle would be simple indeed: White Naval hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton and answers to the call of Maverick vs. the young Chicago machine Black Muslim who, in the words of George Bush the Elder, kicked some — (rhymes with crass, which it is) in the primary (no matter how the folks in the backwoods down in the WV hills vote today).

So it’s full steam ahead for the mean-spitted Swift (and I don’t mean Jonathan) Boaters. Yesterday’s New York Times allowed one of the piratical advisors of John McCain a forum to broadside Obama. This was Edward N. Luttwak, whose overtly rhetorical and inadvertently satirical “President Apostate?” landed like an unexploded shell on the crowded stacked deck of media-hardened pundits. Luttwak takes his sly secular cue from the Left Behind armageddonites, viewing Arabs and Iranians as part of the Gog and Magog crowd out to destroy Israel. For those who love the plot of a clash of civilizations leading to a real-time nuclear armageddon, Luttwak obliges with a medievally-minded attack on Obama’s personal faith. Continue reading Not So Swift Boat Apostasy →

Obama’s Indonesian Lessons

Election 2008, Indonesia

By Roger Cohen, The New York Times, April 14, 2008

When Barack Obama’s Indonesian classmates are asked to recall the boy they all called “Barry” (pronounced “Berry”), their description is unanimous: “chubby.”

He was the tall, chubby kid in Bermudas who joined their 4th grade class at the Besuki elementary school in 1970, the boy with the white mother and Indonesian stepfather who brought his own sandwiches to school (odd to a noodle-eating crowd) and, strangest of all, wrote with his left hand.

“It was so weird that he was left-handed,” recalled Ati Kisjanto, now a marketing consultant. “That was considered impolite here, and you were forced to write with your right hand.”

A dozen of Obama’s classmates were gathered at the house of Sandra Sambuaga, exchanging stories over Indonesian delicacies. Continue reading Obama’s Indonesian Lessons →