The GOP Has A Muslim Problem

Dean Obeidallah writes in "CNN",

A Catholic priest, a rabbi, an evangelical minister, a Sikh, a Greek Orthodox archbishop and two Mormon leaders walk into the Republican National Convention.

It sounds like the beginning of a joke. But the Republican Party's decision to invite representatives from all of these faiths to speak at this week's convention, but to exclude a Muslim-American imam, is anything but funny.

The Republican Party has a problem with Muslims. Of course, American Muslims can take some solace in the fact that we are not the only minority group that the Republican Party hardly welcomes.

Let's be honest, if you don't like Muslims, blacks, gays, immigrants or other minorities, which political party would make you feel most comfortable? Sure, some Republican officials are minorities, but a recent Galllup survey found that 89% of the Republican Party is white.

To be clear, I don't believe that most rank-and-file members of the Republican Party hate Muslims. The problem is that certain Republican leaders have stoked the flames of hate toward American Muslims, and other minorities, as a political tool to motivate people to support their cause.

For example, recently Rep. Michele Bachmann -- along with four other Republican House members -- asserted that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the U.S. government. Bachmann, who is in a tough re-election battle in her redrawn congressional district, even "named names" by claiming that Secretary Hillary Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin, and Rep. Keith Ellison were connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Although Republican Sen. John McCain publicly denounced Bachmann's baseless allegations, just a few weeks later, Republican Rep. Joe Walsh escalated the fear-mongering. Walsh, who is in a tight race with Democratic opponent Tammy Duckworth, told constituents at a town hall meeting in the Chicago suburbs that there are radical Muslims living among them who are plotting to kill them: "One thing I'm sure of is that there are people in this country -- there is a radical strain of Islam in this country -- it's not just over there -- trying to kill Americans every week." Walsh even claimed that this Muslim radical was in his district: "It's in Elk Grove. It's in Addison. It's in Elgin. It's here."

And let's not forget that during this year's Republican presidential primaries, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain told voters that American Muslims want to impose Islamic law in America. It's a truly astounding task when you consider that this would require the 2.6 million Muslims in the U.S. to overpower the other 300 million Americans and implement an Islamic legal system. Obviously, this assertion is not based on facts, but to politicians desperate for votes, facts don't matter.

This type of rhetoric has yielded two distinct consequences. First, it can be seen in the attitudes of Republicans who have been poisoned by the anti-Muslim voices in their party. A recent poll foundthat 62% of Obama voters view American Muslims favorably, but only 34% of Romney voters shared that positive outlook.

Even more alarming is that fear-mongering by politicians can create an environment that inspires violence against the people being demonized. It sends a message that these people are "others" and not truly Americans like the rest of us.

For example, within a few weeks of Bachmann's comments, a suspicious fire destroyed a mosque in Missouri. And days after Walsh's warnings that Muslim terrorists were living in the Chicago suburbs, a homemade acid bomb was thrown at an Islamic school, pellet gunshots were fired at a mosque, and Muslim headstones at a cemetery were defaced with anti-Muslim graffiti, all in the Chicago area. It's impossible to know whether these hateful acts were related to the remarks, but the climate created by fear-mongering does not encourage tolerance.

The Republican Party should be applauded for including so many faiths, especially the Sikhs, who number about 200,000 Americans and whose community was targeted by a hate-filled gunman who killed six people in a place of worship. But excluding Muslims sends a message that American Muslims are not part of the fabric of this country. That is wrong.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus still has time to correct this mistake. He could invite a Muslim-American imam to be a part of this week's convention. That would send a clear message that the Republican Party is truly welcoming of all major religions practiced in the U.S.

It also would send a message that there is no place for hate in the GOP against any American minority group. It's now up to Preibus to show whether the Republican Party stands for inclusiveness or division.

America’s Minority Threat

By Frank Scott
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Oct 2, 2009, 00:10
Courtesy Of The Online Journal

American minorities have long been defined as racial, ethnic or religious groups by comparison to white Anglo Saxon Protestants, the nation’s founding colonist majority.

The population has changed radically since our origins and those suffering discrimination have seen that minority definition outlive its usefulness. Groups demanding equality have led to conflicting policies that set a highly visible majority against itself, while a barely visible minority is hardly noticed. That most dangerous minority maintains power with the help of divisive social programs that keep Americans battling over small portions of the society’s massive wealth, while it luxuriates in the nation’s riches.

Old world social divisions were supposedly erased as we advanced to become a middle class nation of affluent equality. But our working class is artificially reduced to competing factions set against one another by a new world ruling power. Middle class unity only exists in unconscious crowds at the commodity consumption mall. When it comes to alleged democracy, citizens are categorized into isolated groups kept apart by those who profit from socializing individual identities. We need to oppose all forms of discrimination, but while most receive at least some attention those of class and wealth receive hardly any at all.

Our dominating minority holds power by cooperating with its members while it forces the majority into competitive war, whether in local markets or on foreign battlefields. It sustains power in a degeneration of democracy that enables it to purchase politicians and send the bill to that majority who pay and suffer for its political perversion.

Present social stress can be blamed on a president who looks black but is half-white, and the hateful reaction to him by a minority which looks white and is all racist, but its roots are even deeper. Racism is as great a national problem as it was before Obama was born, but the minority group that selected him to be elected by its subjects is the real issue. It is not a race, but an economic class which rules America. That class has long adjusted to the changing face of the nation and through affirmative action seen to it that so-called minorities and women -- really the majority -- occupy major positions in all corporate institutions, both private and public.

When groups that suffered discrimination see one of their own raised to power status there should be celebration, but with the understanding that only those individual members profit, while most of the group remain at a loss. This social pleasure at individual achievement is programmed into the consciousness of the culture and it helps the controlling minority to maintain its power. The group having one of its members join the upper class strengthens the fable of meritocracy that says anyone can achieve wealth and power in America, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority never do any such thing.

America’s majority taxpayers of all races, creeds and faiths have been made to bail out America’s minority tax collectors of banking and finance, and this unnatural fact of the political economy needs to be confronted before it creates further poverty and suffering for the entire population.

When the nation expends hundreds of billions of dollars to fight wars that benefit a munitions industry and a foreign policy owned and run by minorities, it should not glorify one of its fragmented groups being awarded a senate seat or a court appointment. When that nation spends trillions of dollars to bail out minority finance capital, it should not glorify one of its splinter groups winning a business contract or cabinet position. Those individuals who meet physical or cultural descriptions common to a narrowly identified group will be acting for the ruling monetary power and against the interest of their disassembled majority. And that majority will continue being distracted by individual success while it pays for wars, economic chaos, ecological destruction and ultimate social failure.

These divisions manipulate us to replace an old president waging supposedly stupid wars with a new president waging supposedly smart wars, without noticing that they are the same wars. Whichever private servant of capital occupies the publicly subsidized housing in Washington, he or she, of whatever imposed identity group label, will continue to slaughter foreigners and squander our wealth on degradation abroad that brings more poverty at home. The only minority that profits from these destructive policies is not the easily noticed scapegoat group at the bottom of the economic pyramid, but the least noticed at the top. That group is really only 1 percent of the population or less, and though it is mostly white it is integrated enough in its servant class so that the crumbs dropped from its table are falsely seen a full meal by those socialized to accept malnutrition as a healthy diet because the waiter or waitress is “one of us.”

If we are to achieve a truly democratic society our minority consciousness must change to one in which we become united members of a majority. That majority will not tolerate paying off minority investors by laying off majority workers, nor will it allow bankers in debt to be bailed out of their loans while workers in debt are being thrown out of their homes. Anti-democratic power must be taken from our most dangerous minority, and democratic control assumed by the real majority. If we go on battling among ourselves over which minority is the chosen one, we will continue paying the deadly price of subsidizing the destruction of everyone’s social, political and natural environment. Only a minority can be ignorant enough to sustain its demise, but only a majority can be smart enough to change its future.

Copyright © 2009 Frank Scott. All rights reserved.

Frank Scott writes political commentary which appears in the Coastal Post, The Independent Monitor and on his shared blog at legalienate.blogspot.com.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal