Then why is he so sensitive about the issue? Can you freaking believe this?
Two Muslim women at Barack Obama’s rally in Detroit on Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women’s headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate.
Hello? ACLU? Where are you? I can't hear you!
The campaign has apologized to the women, both Obama supporters who said they felt betrayed by their treatment at the rally.
Where is the public apology? If the McCain campaign did something like this, you can take it to the bank Katie Couric would be smiling ear to ear as she delivered the "news." But, since it's Barack Obama's campaign, she'll remain silent on the issue. So much for the media not being biased, right? We need the Fairness Doctrine reinstated like we all need a hole in the head.
“This is of course not the policy of the campaign. It is offensive and counter to Obama’s commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. “We sincerely apologize for the behavior of these volunteers.”
Sure it isn't. Just like Michelle Obama's staff getting caught during a recent appearance at Carnegie Mellon University saying, "We need more white people."
Building a human backdrop to a political candidate, a set of faces to appear on television and in photographs, is always a delicate exercise in demographics and political correctness. Advance staffers typically pick supporters out of a crowd to reflect the candidate’s message.
Advance staffers? How about advanced "racists" instead?
When Obama won the North Carolina primary amid questions about his ability to connect with white voters, for instance, he stood in front of a group of middle-aged white women waving small American flags.
On the Republican side, a Hispanic New Hampshire Democrat, Roberto Fuentes, told Politico that he was recently asked, and declined, to contribute to the “diversity” of the crowd behind Sen. John McCain at a Nashua event.
But for Obama, the old-fashioned image-making contrasts with his promise to transcend identity politics and to embrace all elements of America. The incidents in Michigan, which has one of the largest Arab and Muslim populations in the country, also highlight an aspect of his campaign that sometimes rubs Muslims the wrong way: The candidate has vigorously denied a false, viral rumor that he himself is Muslim. But the denials at times seem to imply to some that there is something wrong with the faith, though Obama occasionally adds that he means no disrespect to Islam.
Oh really? You're not a Muslim, Barack? Then how do you explain the Associated Press documents which revealed you attended a Catholic School in Indonesia registered as a Muslim? And Barack, why haven't you made your birth certificate public? Surely Barack would like to make the air clear on the subject, no?
This is very interesting, wouldn't you say?
In Senator Obama's two books, "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope," he wrote that he spent two years in a Muslim school and another two years in a Catholic school while living in Indonesia from age 6 to 10. Islam is Indonesia's dominant religion. Approximately 88% of the population of Indonesia is Muslim, making it the most populous Muslim-majority nation in the world. Indonesia has seen a dramatic rise in radical Islam in recent years.
Today, the LA Times reports that a childhood friend of Obama's claims that he did attend Friday prayers at the mosque--
The childhood friends say Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the local mosque. "We prayed but not really seriously, just following actions done by older people in the mosque. But as kids, we loved to meet our friends and went to the mosque together and played, said Zulfin Adi, who describes himself as among Obama's closest childhood friends.
"His mother often went to the church, but Barry was Muslim. He went to the mosque," Adi said. "I remember him wearing a sarong.
Additionally, the LA Times recounts statements made by Barak Obama's third- and fourth-grade teacher--
"At that time, Barry was also praying in a Catholic way, but Barry was Muslim," Dharmawan said in Obama's old classroom, where she still teaches 39 years later. "He was registered as a Muslim because his father, Lolo Soetoro, was Muslim."
The Times additionally reports that Obama was a registered Muslim and attended weekly religious instruction on the Koran, the Muslim holy book--
Bugs have eaten Obama's file in the [middle] school's archive, said Vice Principal Hardi Priyono. But two of his teachers, former Vice Principal Tine Hahiyari and third-grade teacher Effendi, said they remember clearly that at this school too, he was registered as a Muslim, which determined what class he attended during weekly religion lessons.
In three months Barrack's campaign has gone from describing the U.S. presidential hopeful as never having been a Muslim and never having been raised as a Muslim to now having never having been a practicing Muslim.
What's with the semantics? Statements from Obama's campaign appear to have evolved, to say the least. While Barak's campaign states that the senator is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago, from what friends and teachers say, it appears that for some time as a child, Senator Barack Hussein Obama identified himself as a Muslim, studying the Koran in a Muslim school and praying to Allah on Fridays at the local mosque.
Speaking of birth certificates ...
Before any of you even get the chance to tell me this is real birth certificate, don't even bother; especially when you consider the source being Markos Moulitsas himself from the Daily Kos (I won't give Markos Moulitsas a link, so you will have to copy and paste it accordingly -- http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/12/11012/6168/320/534616). Finally, look carefully at the type face, since when did they have laser printers in 1961? Look even closer, where is the official seal of notary? It looks as if I'm not the only one who smells a rat.
“I was coming to support him, and I felt like I was discriminated against by the very person who was supposed to be bringing this change, who I could really relate to,” said Hebba Aref, a 25-year-old lawyer who lives in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. “The message that I thought was delivered to us was that they do not want him associated with Muslims or Muslim supporters.”
So much for Obama "Bringing America Together."
In Detroit on Monday, the two different Obama volunteers — in separate incidents — made it clear that headscarves wouldn’t be in the picture. The volunteers gave different explanations for excluding the hijabs, one bluntly political and the other less clear.
In Aref’s case, there was no ambiguity.
That incident began when the volunteer asked Aref’s friend Ali Koussan and two others, Aref’s brother Sharif and another young lawyer, Brandon Edward Miller, whether they would like to sit behind the stage. The three young men said they would but mentioned they were with friends.
The men said the volunteer, a 20-something African-American woman in a green shirt, asked if their friends looked and were dressed like the young men, who were all light-skinned and wearing suits.
Miller said yes but mentioned that one of their friends was wearing a headscarf with her suit.
The volunteer “explained to me that because of the political climate and what’s going on in the world and what’s going on with Muslim Americans, it’s not good for [Aref] to be seen on TV or associated with Obama,” said Koussan, a law student at Wayne State University.
The political climate? What ever happened to "A Record Of Bring People Together," Barack?
Straight from Barack's website, I captured the following snippet and circled the "obvious" (click image to enlarge):
"A Record Of Bring People Together" Since when?
Look at the last item contained in the above screen capture:
"He will personally deliver occasional fireside chats via webcast?"
Does Barack think he will be the next Franklin D. Roosevelt or what?
Ok, I got side tracked, moving on ....
Both Koussan and Miller said they specifically recalled the volunteer citing the “political climate” in telling them they couldn’t sit behind Obama.
“I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Are you serious?’” Koussan recalled.
No, they are not kidding, they are very serious.
Shimaa Abdelfadeel’s story was different. She’d waited in line outside the Joe Louis Arena for three hours in the sun and was walking through the giant hall when a volunteer approached two of her non-Muslim friends, a few steps ahead of her, and asked if they’d like to sit in “special seating” behind the stage, said one friend, Brittany Marino, who, like Abdelfadeel, is a recent University of Michigan graduate who works for the university.
When they said they were with Abdelfadeel, the volunteer told them their friend would have to take off the headscarf or stay out of the special section, Marino said. They declined the seats.
After recovering from the shock of the incident, Abdelfadeel went to look for the volunteer and confronted her minutes later, she said in an e-mail interview with Politico.
“We’re not letting anyone with anything on their heads like baseball [caps] or scarves sit behind the stage,” she paraphrased the volunteer as saying, an account Marino confirmed. “It has nothing to do with your religion!”
It doesn't? Then why did you deny them the seating? In other words, it's a flat out lie.
In most work and school settings, religious dress — such as Jewish yarmulkes, Sikh turbans and Muslim hijabs — is permitted where secular clothing, such as baseball caps, is not.
“The scarf is not just something she can take off — it’s part of her identity,” said Marino.
And "identity" is what it's all about. Let this be another example of liberals and their identity based politics.
Photographs of the event also show men with hats in the section behind Obama and former Vice President Al Gore, though not directly behind the candidate.
Abdelfadeel, like Aref, felt “disappointed, angry and let down,” she later wrote.
She said she was “let down that the Obama campaign continuously perpetuates this attitude towards Muslims and Arabs — as if being merely associated [with] one is a sin.”
If you think that was a let down, just wait until Barack wins the White House.
The two women’s friends who witnessed the incidents were disappointed, too. Aref’s friend Miller said he was “shocked” by the contrast between Obama’s message and their experience.
Welcome to liberalism, folks.
“He was the one candidate who you would expect to stand up for something like that — and behind the scenes, you have something completely contrary to what he was running on,” said Koussan, Aref’s other friend.
Again, I say, welcome to liberalism.
Aref and her friends complained to the campaign, and after those complaints and an inquiry from Politico, Obama’s director of advance, Emmett S. Beliveau, called her to apologize.
An Obama aide also noted that the campaign has no policy against the candidate’s appearing with women in headscarves: The next morning at Wayne State University, Obama posed for a picture with a student wearing a hijab.
What a joke. Can you believe this? And where is Katie Couric on this?
Photographs from a Seattle rally earlier this year also clearly show a couple in Muslim garb behind the candidate.
The administrator of the Muslims4Obama group on Obama’s website, which is not a formal part of the campaign, also said she had “not heard anything regarding Muslim supporters being steered away from sitting behind Sen. Obama at the event” and noted that he had Muslim supporters present at events in Minnesota, including one at which he stood with a Muslim member of Congress, Keith Ellison.
Aref said she was glad Obama had apologized, but she was not entirely satisfied.
Obama should make a public apology, that's for sure. Why? Because the same would be expected if McCain's campaign staff did the same thing.
“I think this is a much bigger deal than maybe they’re perceiving it as,” she said, noting that Obama had placed a personal call to a television reporter he’d dismissively called “Sweetie.”
“An apology from him personally would be better,” she said, then reconsidered. “If they are true to their word, I think it would suffice to have an invitation to their next rally and have seats behind him and show up on TV.”
Yep. Welcome to Barack Obama's "Record Of Bringing People Together."