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MUM ON BEING MUSLIM: Is Obama's Silence a Slam on Islam?

The facts are that Barack Obama was at one time a Muslim and practiced Islam. Today, he is attempting to distance himself from that reality. Are his motives born of shame or deception?Conservative watchdog, Floyd Brown, identified in Newsweek recently as someone who is levying unfair attacks on Barack Obama's integrity, has a new ad that focuses on his Islamic roots. "How am I the bad guy here?" asks Brown rhetorically. "If the Muslim community should be angry with anyone, shouldn't it be with Barack Obama for being ashamed of Islam and for denying his roots?"Brown's ad can be viewed by clicking here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXSlBjiKioY&eurl=http://exposeobama.com/The argument that Barack Obama's past includes more Islamic ties than he is leading people to believe is built on a solid foundation of historical facts. The question then becomes, why is Obama either denying or avoiding much of it? "At the core of that denial is either shame or deception," says Brown "and we should not be labeled as 'Islamophobes' or 'racists' for demanding to know the truth about a man who wants to become president of the United States."In a recent Newsweek article by Ellis Cose (see below), people who demand to know about Obama's Islamic ties are the ones painted as people who are either racist or simply haven't evolved beyond racist tendencies. The title of the article even implies that Cose is willing to concede that Obama is Muslim. That concession is implied in the title, which addresses the notion Obama is a Muslim with a rhetorical, "so what".Brown says that's not the argument. "We're not saying there's a problem with his Islamic background," he said. "In a strange twist of irony, that seems to be what Mr. Obama is doing all by himself and Muslims all around the world should be outraged that he is denying his past. Instead, much of the Islamic world seems to love him. Does that make any sense?"ABOUT 'OBAMA UNMASKED'..Obama Unmasked: Did Slick Hollywood Handlers Create the Perfect Candidate? is slated to appear on shelves August 22, and more than any other Brown creation, it drills deep into the presidential candidate's background. But of his plans for our nation, we know little. He has been completely masked by his handlers in Hollywood, New York, and Washington. His very survival as a candidate now depends on his keeping that mask snugly fit.That's why Obama Unmasked is so important. And that's why your help is desperately needed to rip away the mask and let the voting public see what they'd really be getting with Obama as President.Brown is available for interviews to discuss the Obama drive for the White House, his perspective on the implications of an Obama administration and the details he's uncovered about the man, both inside and outside the pages of Obama Unmasked.There are several good books on Obama, and we applaud them. But no other book reveals these two secret plots, plots which clearly explain how Obama rose to power so quickly and how dearly we'll all pay if he wins.These plots could be as damaging to Obama as Deep Throat was to Nixon or Whitewater to Clinton. When these revelations hit the streets, they'll he hotter than a liberal hawking global warming.So we are asking you to get Obama Unmasked and then tell at least five friends to get a copy as well – that's how we'll stop the Obama media machine from rolling right over an unsuspecting electorate.ABOUT FLOYD BROWN…Floyd Brown is president of the National Campaign Fund, and as a media commentator, he has appeared on many network and cable TV shows including the CBS Evening News, ABC's Primetime, NBC's Today Show, FOX News, CNN, MSNBC and more. Brown is the author of three books and wrote the first bestselling Clinton expose "Slick Willie: Why America Cannot Trust Bill Clinton" in 1992. Floyd later launched the impeachment movement against President Clinton as president of Citizens United Inc. Brown organized national campaigns, including the effort to secure the confirmation of Judge Clarence Thomas. ABOUT CO-AUTHOR LEE TROXLER…Lee Troxler has launched nearly 100 national business and political campaigns, including writing and co-producing 3 feature films and dozens of video shorts, ghostwriting 12 books, incubating 9 new businesses, writing press/ speech material for two Presidents, creating 29 winning direct mail campaigns, and raising hundreds of millions for America's finest charities.BACKGROUND ON THE NOW FAMOUS WILLIE HORTON AD CAMPAIGN:The New York Times article stated, "Mr. Brown, 47, a 6-foot-6 bear of a man is perhaps best known for his involvement with the Willie Horton television advertisement that helped sink Michael S. Dukakis's candidacy in 1988," adding, "Mr. Brown has had much in his career to be delighted about as the source of scores of conservative assaults on Democrats that have earned him their lasting enmity."Before the Willie Horton ad came out, Dukakis had a healthy lead over George H.W. Bush in the polls, in part, because the liberal media glossed over Dukakis' liberal record. And it looked like Dukakis' march to the White House was unstoppable.Willie Horton was a convicted killer serving a life-sentence without the possibility of parole. Horton callously stabbed a 17-year old gas station attendant 19 times and left him in a garbage can to die. Yet, Horton was given a total of 10 weekend passes from prison!During one of those weekend passes, Horton kidnapped a young couple, stabbed, beat and gagged the boyfriend and then repeatedly violated the girlfriend multiple times while the boyfriend watched -- helpless to do anything.Dukakis supported the furlough program offering Willie Horton and many others weekend passes -- even after the Willie Horton affair came to light. The Massachusetts legislature attempted to close the furlough program but Dukakis vetoed the bill.When the Willie Horton ad came out, the left-wing media attacked Floyd. Twenty years later, fabrications and lies concerning the Willie Horton ad are still misreported by a biased media. But when the Willie Horton ad was released, the American public saw the truth. There was no hiding the fact that Dukakis was soft on crime. THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE FROM NEWSWEEK MAY BE HELPFUL WITH SHOW PREPSo What If He Were Muslim?We haven't fully accepted the notion that all religions should have equal access to the Oval Office.Ellis CoseNEWSWEEKOnce Barack Obama emerged as the Democratic candidate, it was clear the presidential contest would become a referendum on race. It was not, however, supposed to be a journey into the terrain of religious fears and prejudice. But because many Americans think Obama is not what he actually is, it has become that. Beneath the candidate's Christian exterior, they suspect, beats the heart of a Muslim. Obama has tried vigorously to rebut those suspicions, but they now seem stronger than ever. Between March and July, reports the Pew Research Center, the percentage of people who believe Obama is Muslim increased from 10 to 12 percent.Of course, even if he were a Muslim, that should be no big deal. In a country that officially separates church and state, a man's religious beliefs are his own affair. Still, nearly half a century after John F. Kennedy became America's first (and, thus far, only) Roman Catholic president, we haven't fully accepted the notion that all religions should have equal access to the Oval Office.At the start of the political season, when Mitt Romney seemed to have a shot at the Republican nomination, pollsters sought to determine whether his Mormonism might hurt him. Nearly a third of voters, they found, were less likely to support a Mormon. But some 45 percent were wary of Muslim candidates. For Obama, that is a potential problem-particularly in a race that shows ever more signs of being extremely close.Obama has accused his antagonists of fearmongering. Professing indignation, John McCain's campaign manager accused Obama of playing "the race card." It's not clear Obama was playing any such card-certainly not to the extent that the McCain camp was in trying to make a racial issue out of what arguably was not. Instead, Obama seemed to be expressing frustration with a real phenomenon: the attempt by enemies-not necessarily McCain himself-to turn him into something frightful. And what is more frightening, in this post-9/11 age, than the face of radical Islam?Obama does have some Muslim roots. His father was once a practicing Muslim, then apparently became disenchanted with the religion. But the genesis of the current misconception lies less with Obama's history than with what is, in effect, a disinformation campaign. Ever since his entry into the race, a viral (and false) e-mail has been painting Obama as the product of the radical branch of Islam "that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad on the industrialized world." For many voters, Obama's admittedly foreign background makes the claim plausible.The campaign has been ramped up another notch. In a newly released book, author Jerome Corsi (who coauthored the anti-John Kerry "Swift Boat" attack of 2004) makes Obama out to be a one-time Muslim who likely took up Christianity for purely political reasons. Floyd Brown, who claims credit for the Willie Horton ad of 1988, has also written an anti-Obama book, linking him to "anti-Semitic people" and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.The assumption is that to the extent Obama can be made out to be a Muslim, his presidential prospects will wither. It is an assumption Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, finds troubling. "It's strange to acknowledge that calling someone a Muslim is a smear," he says. He added that CAIR and others had been urging Obama to "speak out forcefully against the anti-Muslim bigotry at the core of this smear."Since certain Muslims see America as Satan, some Americans consider it perfectly acceptable to be anti-Muslim. So though the rules of civilized engagement prohibit Obama's enemies from making a big deal of his race, many feel comfortable linking him to a religion that is not his own in the hopes of triggering anti-Islamic (and other associated) anxieties. They can then claim, somewhat disingenuously, that they are not exploiting bigotry-at least not racial bigotry.Asked how they hoped to counter efforts linking Obama to Islam, Valerie Jarrett, a top Obama adviser, replied, "We continue to talk about his Christian faith." The problem is that such an approach implicitly accepts the necessity of distancing Obama from Islam-as opposed to making the arguably more prototypically American point that one's religion is one's business, that no candidate should be subjected to tests of religious faith as long as that candidate believes in separating faith from governance.Is there any bright side to the Obama-Muslim controversy? Hooper sees one. It "raised the issue of Islamophobia and allows it to be acknowledged and openly discussed." Certainly, there should be room for an intelligent discussion of religious bigotry-of whether religion actually makes a difference in how one governs, and of whether America's growing religious diversity will somehow change the political character of this nation. That discussion will not take place in the context of a political campaign, when the object is not elucidation but the taking down of an opponent. And it will not be given much attention at a convention, where the task is presenting the candidate in the most broadly appealing way. But at some point, these are issues thoughtful people will need to face head-on-rather than cede the ground to propagandists who traffic in intolerance, and who, deprived of the ability to make racial slurs with impunity, simply shift their focus to religion.

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