Islamophobia and politics

One can expect the right wing of American politics to engage in distortion and race baiting.  It goes as far back as I can remember and that includes the administration of Richard Nixon.  So it is today, and the modern day target is the clean cut Arab/muslim guy or gal.  Mazen Asbahi is “it” today and I’m baffled in one sense but not totally surprised in another.  Baffled because monsieur Asbahi is as clean as they come, except for a really rather tangential connection to someone who had an equally tangentially inconsequential relationship with someone who…..well you know the rest.  This all boils down to party politics; Asbahi worked for Obama, and I guess it’s a little too much for the American palate to digest, so many strange sounding names working together.  But Asbahi has bonafides that not too many people who might even call themselves red blooded Americans possess, so I find his selection as a target unfortunate.  No matter how squeaky clean you try to get you can never get clean enough if you have one of those strange names or a swarthy complexion, but it’s just those characteristics that make him such an easy target. What inevitably the racists in American politics are trying to do is dilute the potency of Islamic charities by calling into question their raison d’etre and the full might of the US government to shut them down and take their assets.  For that reason I wish Asbahi had not resigned his position with the Obama campaign; there are bigger stakes here than helping someone who will gladly kick you to the curb in order to get elected. (That he decided to step down probably speaks more for his integrity than that of the Obama campain. )  Islamic charities have an important role to play in helping Muslims in developing countries maintain a subsistence level lifestyle; just as the cash strapped economies of central and south America depend on money from the American job force, so do those societies in the Middle East.  (Just ask Israel) Mazen was a political football kicked around to hurt a candidate who is running scared from the Muslim label and to damage the work of some honest hard working Muslims who wanted to establish a viable organization to help people at home and abroad.  I suspect there’ll be a lot more of this kind of election year posturing as the political season continues.