A Muslim like Obama

US politics
A Muslim like Obama

The rumors about Obama's faith are based on America's long history of
mistrust and misapprehension of Islam, a faith that we associate with
our own 'Others'.

By Manan Ahmed, December 4, 2007

"Sir, you make a mistake listening to people who tell you how much our
stand alienates black men in this country. I'd guess actually we have
the sympathy of 90 percent of the black people. There are 20,000,000
dormant Muslims in America. A Muslim to us is somebody who is for the
black man; I don't care if he goes to the Baptist Church seven days a
week. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that a black man is born a
Muslim by nature. There are millions of Muslims not aware of it now. All
of them will be Muslims when they wake up; that's what's meant by the
Resurrection." - Malcolm X in a conversation with Alex Haley, Playboy
Magazine, May, 1963.

The recent week has seen two major stories about the political baggage
of "being Muslim" in United States. The first was Mitt Romney's refusal
to consider a Muslim as a Presidential advisor in his Cabinet -
specifically to advise him on "jihadism" (apparently the only field in
which a Muslim can claim expertise). On Nov 27th, Mansoor Ijaz, "an
American-born citizen of the Islamic faith", reported this exchange in
the Christian Science Monitor:
I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified
Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national
security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal
foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, "...based on
the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I
cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I
would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my
administration.
Mitt Romney denied that he expressed this as reported, but multiple
sources have since emerged confirming Ijaz's account. The story, as it
was covered on right wing blogs received lots of comments that generally
tended to agree with Romney. "Having a muslim in the cabinet would be
like having a Japanese guy in the cabinet in WWII" said one. Another
asked "Wait... how does this hurt Romney?!? From what I can see, he will
get a bounce out of this! Much of middle America would strongly support
his perspective and likely hold it themselves."

The other story was one in the Washington Post:
Since declaring his candidacy for president in February, Obama, a member
of a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, has had to
address assertions that he is a Muslim or that he had received training
in Islam in Indonesia, where he lived from ages 6 to 10. While his
father was an atheist and his mother did not practice religion, Obama's
stepfather did occasionally attend services at a mosque there.

Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet
continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a "Muslim plant" in
a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would
take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep.
Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn
in earlier this year.
We live in a rumor-based society where spurious flyers can derail
campaigns and invented words like "swift-boating" scarcely raise a
Colbert eyebrow. So it is no surprise that such internet rumors are
given equal credence by the Post. The entire story is written with the
"he said/they say/people claim" and the denials are restricted solely
for the campaign - which "keeps a letter at its offices, signed by five
members of the local clergy, vouching for the candidate's Christian
faith" - and for Obama - "If I were a Muslim, I would let you know". At
no point, does the Post sully itself by actually reporting that Obama is
not a Muslim. Understandably, some are upset.

Still, it is perhaps no great shock to anyone that a healthy amount of
Islamophobia exists in the current political and cultural climate. The
absurdities of teddy bears named Muhammad are constantly played in our
media as de facto expressions of an irrational and medieval faith - with
nary a word on the political machinations behind the street protests.

These stories about Obama's faith and Romney's Islamophobia, however,
cannot be lumped in with the more generic fear of a Muslim planet. They
illustrate, much more starkly, the fear of hidden loyalties within a
population that cannot ever be assimilated (birth in America being no
benefit) and draw on a more a complicated history in America - a history
of Islam's arrival and subsequent life on American soil - which is
intertwined with the history of slavery and an oppressed minority.
Islamdom's medieval encounter with Christendom has received ample
historical and scholarly attention but the American continent has
largely remained unexamined. Or if examined, it is noted for its
obscurity.

Islam came to America with the Africans who were kidnapped, enslaved and
shipped to the New World for labor. Here is an early Virginia Law from
James City, 1682 covering Muslims (negroes, moores, mollatoes),
mandatory conversions, and the continuance of the state of slavery:
An act to repeale a former law makeing Indians and others ffree.

WHEREAS by the 12 act of assembly held att James Citty the 3d day of
October, Anno Domini 1670, entituled an act declareing who shall be
slaves, it is enacted that all servants not being christians, being
imported into this country by shipping shall be slaves, but what shall
come by land shall serve if boyes and girles untill thirty yeares of
age, if men or women, twelve yeares and noe longer; and for as much as
many negroes, moores, mollatoes and others borne of and in heathenish,
idollatrous, pagan and mahometan parentage and country have heretofore,
and hereafter may be purchased, procured, or otherwise obteigned as
slaves of, from or out of such their heathenish country by some well
disposed christian, who after such their obteining and purchaseing such
negroe, moor, or molatto as their slave out of a pious zeale, have
wrought the conversion of such slave to the christian faith, which by
the laws of this country doth not manumitt them or make them free...

And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid that all servants
except Turkes and Moores, whilest in amity with his majesty which from
and after publication of this act shall be brought or imported into this
country, either by sea or land, whether Negroes, Moors, Mollattoes or
Indians, who and whose parentage and native country are not christian at
the time of their first purchase of such servant by some christian,
although afterwards, and before such their importation and bringing into
this country, they shall be converted to the christian faith; and all
Indians which shall hereafter be sold by our neighbouring Indians, or
any other trafiqueing with us as for slaves are hereby adjudged, deemed
and taken, and shall be adjudged, deemed and taken to be slaves to all
intents.
These Muslim "slaves, Africans, mulatto's, moors and all" - unable to
change their beings, whether converted or not - largely disappear from
the main streams of American historiography, even as fears of
rebellions, miscegenation and foreign loyalties plague the white
American imagination.

The Ahmadiyya movement, the Babist movement and a world wide 'resurgence
of Islam' were key anxieties for the American public at the turn of the
century. Babist Propaganda Making Headway Here declared an alarmed New
York Times in December 1904. Islam Gaining on Christianity; Missionaries
Admit They Are Losing Ground Against the Teachers of the Koran was heard
a decade later. The emergence of the Moorish Science Temple and the
Nation of Islam in the 1920s and 1930s - led by Nobel Drew Ali and
Elijah Mohammad - certainly crystallized these fears: Calls Negroes to
Islam; Detroit Man Would Lead Exodus to Anatolia, Fleeing Color
Prejudice. FBI surveillance, community policing and militia-formation
ensued.

The rumors about Obama's faith, then, are not just manifestations of a
post 9/11 Islamophobia or a peculiar xenophobia about his African
father. They are, in fact, uniquely American - based on our long history
of mistrust and misapprehension of a faith that we associate with our
own 'Others'.

Last week, I signed my name to a public statement issued by Historians
for Obama. I wasn't too enamored by the statement itself, though I
thought that historians could certainly demonstrate the historical
import behind Barack Obama's candidacy much more forcefully. I hope that
historians who signed that statement will carry forward their impulse. I
hope they write about the burdens of history hoisted upon Barack Obama
as he moves towards the nomination.

Obama is certainly a unique individual - and uniquely placed - to force
this nation to remember again and again what it constantly chooses to
forget - its histories of oppression, fear and hatred. Barack Obama's
own personal history is a testament to a brighter future for our nation.
We can certainly make that case to the American public on his behalf,
and perhaps even counter some rumors.

Manan Ahmed, who is writing his dissertation in the history of South
Asia and Islam at the University of Chicago, blogs under the sobriquet
Sepoy at the group blog Chapati Mystery.