Some Voters Think Obama is Muslim and Won’t Vote for Him as a Result. Racism?
Posted in Politics, Religion by George
Apparently, one of Barack Obama’s largest political liabilities is that 15% of voters think he is a Muslim, and do not feel comfortable voting for a Muslim (AP-Yahoo Poll Conducted April 2-14) (some polls say 10%). Notwithstanding that it is a bit crazy to think someone who just publicly dealt with his connections to a crazy Christian pastor is Muslim, it disturbs me that 15% of the country would not vote for a candidate because he is a Muslim. Isn’t it racist to not vote for someone because he practices a particular religion? I do not see any other way to describe these attitudes. Isn’t the Jim Crow era over? Haven’t we moved on? Apparently not, for 15% of the country.
June 24th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
[...] Voters Think Obama is Muslim and Won’t Vote for Him as a … Ezra wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptApparently, one of Barack Obama’s [...]
July 1st, 2008 at 2:02 pm
I don’t know if “racist” is the right word (many different races of people are Muslim), but it’s certainly discriminatory. I think the real question is whether or not the discrimination is warranted, considering all the world-wide chaos currently surrounding that particular faith. That’s where the real issue lies.
While I believe that race is definitely playing into voting attitudes, I also believe that if 15% of the country thought John McCain was Muslim, we would see similar voting attitudes towards McCain.
Also, it’s pretty sad to know that 15% of the country believes Obama is Muslim.
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:35 am
I know this isn’t what you mean to imply, JJ, but this comment makes it sound as if Muslims are largely terrorists. Our conflict in the Middle East is not Islam. There are extremists in every religion, including Christianity. The vast majority of Muslims don’t adhere to these terrorist beliefs. Islam is not the problem. If Obama were Muslim, would this somehow change his policies? I don’t think so.
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Steve, I’m not sure I understand how you get “Muslims are largely terrorists” from my comment. Would you mind clarifying that a little more?
July 5th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I’m really not trying to accuse you of thinking that Muslims are largely terrorists, and the implication that I saw in your comment probably is just a misinterpretation on my part, but I’ll explain where I had a question about your first comment.
“I think the real question is whether or not the discrimination is warranted, considering all the world-wide chaos currently surrounding that particular faith. That’s where the real issue lies.”
Maybe my statement went too far, but my question is why would we have to even question whether discrimination is warranted or not? Discrimination based on religion should never be warranted. Saying that there is a lot of chaos surrounding that particular faith and that we should consider whether that makes people in that religion worthy of discrimination implies in my mind that people of that religion are inherently violent. Please explain what you actually meant by that statement.
July 6th, 2008 at 10:13 am
In a related issue, it seems as though the pressure of the ignorant electorate may have affected Obama’s campaign regarding Muslims, unfortunately. From US News:
I’m pretty sure his campaign offered an official apology, and it was probably just his number crunchers that removed the women, but it’s unfortunate that the pressures of a significant portion of the population that is “anti-Muslim” might influence this type of action.
July 6th, 2008 at 10:14 am
In other news, John McCain is spending a ton of money on google advertising. Holy cow, he’s been owning gimme-five’s ad space for quite some time…
July 6th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Let me start by saying that there is a lot of conflict and violence occuring all over the planet that is 100% motivated by and is the direct result of the Islamic faith. That’s not a discriminatory comment, it’s just fact. And I’m not just talking about terrorist groups either. On a much larger, much more dangerous scale, we’ve got guys like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian President and Holocaust denier, who has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”, and is currently trying to develop a nuclear weapon with which to do it. These people have no problem killing in the name of their god.
Now, does that mean that all Muslims are violent and radical? Absolutely not. Does it mean that it’s fair to discriminate against any religion? Absolutely not.
What I meant by that statement is that I’m not surprised at all that 15% of US voters would discriminate against a candidate for being Muslim. To be clear, I was not trying to say that religious discrimination against anyone is warranted or justified, only that in today’s environment, it’s not surprising that such attitudes towards the Islamic faith exist.
Let me ask you a question, Steve: Does it surprise you that 15% of the country would discriminate against a candidate for being Muslim? Why or why not?
July 6th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Okay, that helps. No, it doesn’t surprise me that 15% of the country would discriminate against a candidate for being Muslim. I actually think that a bigger percentage of the population would be dissuaded from voting for a Muslim than is showed in the poll. The really disturbing thing is that 15% of the people polled actually think that Barack Obama is Muslim, despite his constant effort to make his Christian faith known. But as you pointed out, this doesn’t mean that we support that discriminating viewpoint. It just means that I think that the general public is often not very well informed. People are much more influenced by emotion-provoking TV spots than by legitimate sources of information (thanks Al Gore for your book, The Assault on Reason). We rely more on ads and rumors for information than other more legitimate written sources. I think that this statistic also means that people hold some unfounded prejudices against Muslims. I’m not accusing you of this. How can we hold prejudice against Muslims when our country falsified evidence of WMDs in Iraq and then overthrew their government? All under the facade of fighting terrorism and liberating the Iraqi people, even though Sadam Hussein had nothing to do with September 11th. There are tons of people in the world who could use freedom more than the Iraqis could have, and the best way to provide this freedom is not by overthrowing governments and occupying nations. How can we view ourselves as being on the moral high ground here? All of this is led by a Christian president. I realize that we have separation of church and state, but that’s hard to believe when I read some of President Bush’s rhetoric, describing our situation as being one between good and evil and that God is on our side, to move the country into war.
But thank you for clarifying your comment, I knew it was just a misunderstanding on my part.
July 7th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Hey people, discrimination is what voting is all about. American voters can and should make their choices based on what is important to them. To suggest that it is wrong for someone else to cast their vote based on their level of comfort with a candidate’s religion is disingenuous to the max. To refuse service to a Muslim at a lunch counter is bad. To not vote for him because you are afraid his religion will affect his decisions in office is good. The same applies to a Baptist.
Would you vote for Warren Jeffs or Willie Jessop if they were running for office? Probably not Jeffs because he has been charged with a crime. But Jessop’s only crime so far is that he heads the Texas branch of the FLDS. I can assure you that his opponents would have to be awful bad for me to even think about voting for Jessop. Why not — when he seems like a nice enough fellow when I’ve seen him interviewed on TV? Because I simply couldn’t trust him not to try to put all the women in prairie dresses. Likewise, I will never vote for Muslims because I simply don’t trust them to protect our culture of individual freedom.