Bigots shield behind conservative facade

Another example concerns Barack Obama, the Democratic Party senator from Chicago who hopes to be the first African-American to occupy the White House. If his allegedly conservative opponents have their way, Obama's mother's matrimonial choices may be used against him. Obama regards himself as a Christian. He shares his Christian name with millions of Muslims.

His father was a Kenyan of Muslim heritage and nominally of the Muslim religion.

Obama's middle name is Hussein, but he rarely uses that name in public. This doesn't stop the journalistic imbeciles at Fox News from repeating the views of far-right magazines claiming that Obama is, in effect, a Muslim posing as a Christian.

The tabloid TV network cited a story from Insight Magazine claiming that for four years Obama was educated at a madrassah terrorist training school in Indonesia, funded by Saudi Arabia and preaching Islamic fundamentalist Wahabi doctrine.

Anyone familiar with Indonesian Islam knows that most Indonesian Muslim religious schools (known as pesantran, not madrassah) are managed by small communities under the auspices of large religious foundations such as Nahdhatul Ulama, who are very hostile to Wahabi doctrine. Few receive funds from the Indonesian Government, let alone the Saudis.

Later, CNN and Associated Press did some digging and discovered that Obama never attended a pesantran. He attended a state-run school in Jakarta, where most students were Muslim - as you would expect in the world's largest Muslim-majority state.

With Keith Ellison, it was a case of having the wrong religion. But with Barack Obama it was a case of having a mother who twice married men of Muslim heritage.

Yet, as the Washington Post says: "A President with an understanding of Islam and the developing world would be welcomed by those who too often feel misunderstood and slighted by the United States."

Thankfully, the xenophobia of Muslim-haters can only have so much influence in the Land of the Free. However, the fact that sectarian and racist rhetoric continue to be effective political tools is cause for continuing concern. Effective vigilance must remain eternal if liberty is to be protected.