Muslim and Arab Americans could tip the balance in the close presidential race. But both candidates have avoided speaking to these groups directly during a time when the labels Arab and Muslims have become slurs.
Backers of Republican presidential candidate John McCain have called Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama a Muslim or Arab in attacks against him. At a recent campaign rally McCain handed a microphone to a woman who called Obama an Arab, and McCain responded that Obama is not an Arab but “a decent family man.”
Dr. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute says, “we feel the need to point out that Arab Americans are also decent men and women with full rights of citizenship as enumerated under the Constitution.”
Republican and former Secretary of State Colin Powell recently became the most prominent public figure to defend Muslim Americans. Responding to the accusation many in his party made of Obama being a Muslim, Powell said: “What if he is? Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim kid believing that he or she can be president?”
Neither candidate has made any real efforts to reach out to Muslim and Arab Americans. “The Obama campaign has kept Muslim Americans at arms-length for obvious reasons,” says Dr. Moustafa Bayoumi, an associate professor of English at City University of New York-Brooklyn College and author of the recently released book How Does It Feel to Be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America.
The reasons include the distrust and prejudice some Americans feel toward Muslims and Arabs. But while the Obama campaign might try to side-step the Muslim community, the McCain camp is using Islam “as a very destructive and hate-filled way to promote their campaign,” says Bayoumi.
McCain has said the Constitution established the United States as a Christian nation. Bayoumi says this type of rhetoric alienates anyone belonging to a nonChristian faith: “It’s meant to say that there’s an ‘us’ and there’s a ‘them.’ At the core of the ‘us’ is the Christian Evangelical movement. At the core of the ‘them’ are the Muslims.”
