The Republican campaign seems to be benefiting from, and stoking, religious defamation and hate speech, writes Abdus Sattar Ghazali* With a desperate Republican campaign playing the fear- mongering card to prop up John McCain, bigotry and Islamophobia is filtering down to local politics in the United States. A Muslim candidate, Todd Gallinger, for Irvine City Council (California) has reported receiving a phoned-in death threat after being smeared by a council member's Islamophobic remarks. Attorney Todd Gallinger, a Muslim convert, told The Los Angeles Times Thursday that a man called his office Tuesday, about three weeks after Councilman Steven Choi spoke at a forum and urged voters not to support him because he worked for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a leading Muslim civil rights group. The council, which has 35 offices in the United States and Canada, is "a dangerous Islamic organisation". Choi told 150 business leaders. The Los Angeles Times said that although Choi did not name Gallinger, the comment was clearly aimed at the 29-year-old lawyer, who has done legal work for the council's Southern California chapter in Anaheim. Gallinger represented CAIR-LA in two class action lawsuits against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI relating to delayed background checks for naturalisation applicants. Gallinger said the caller thought he was talking to him but told an employee, "I want to cut off your head just like all the other Muslims deserve." Gallinger pointed out that it was clear that the person was motivated by the political attacks against him by his opponent. Those attending the forum reported that Choi called Gallinger "a born-again Muslim" and questioned if such a person is fit to represent the residents of Irvine. The Los Angeles Times recalled that last month, retired Irvine Police Lt Patrick Rodgers, who is also running for a seat on the council, sent an e-mail to reporters describing himself as "a conservative American, red, white and blue thru and thru," and invited them to investigate Gallinger. Rodgers called his opponent "at best a terrorist group sympathiser". And a recent campaign mailer addressed to "Irvine Republicans" accused Gallinger and other Democratic candidates for mayor and city council of "touting" CAIR, which it described as "a group with terrorist ties". The Gallinger episode comes at a time when the McCain campaign has notched up attacks on Barack Obama who is riding an advantage in national opinion polls and in several states that hold the key to the election. Alarmingly, the fear- mongering card that is being played has a direct bearing on the seven million-strong American Muslim community. Barack Obama's middle name was attack fodder once again Wednesday when McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin were introduced at a rally in Lehigh, Pennsylvania. Before McCain and Palin took the stage, William Platt II, head of the Lehigh County Republican Party, referred to Obama not once, but twice by his full name. The number one most liberal senator in the United States was, you guessed it, the ambassador of change, Barack Hussein Obama, Platt said as the crowd booed. Opponents have used Obama's middle name to label him as Muslim and anti- Semitic. Last time that reference was made at a McCain event in February, McCain condemned it on stage shortly after. But this time McCain didn't denounce the comments, though campaign spokesman Paul Lindsay issued a statement saying, "we do not condone this inappropriate rhetoric." At a rally for Palin in Estero, Florida, last week, another speaker used Obama's middle name. On 4 November, yelled Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott, lets leave Barack Hussein Obama wondering what happened! At the same time, the McCain campaign is trying to tie Obama to William Ayers (now 63), a founder of the Weather Underground, a radical left anti-Vietnam War group that bombed the US Capitol and Pentagon in the early 1970s. Ayers hosted a meeting at his house in 1995 to introduce Senator Obama to neighbours during his first run for the Illinois Senate. They also served on a non-profit, anti-poverty board together. Citing a New York Times story about the Obama-Ayers relationship, Palin commented at three campaign rallies on 4 October that Obama was "palling around with terrorists". In this charged atmosphere it is not surprising that crowds in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have repeatedly booed Obama and yelled "Off with his head!" and that at a rally in Florida where Palin appeared without McCain, a man yelled out "Kill him!" On Friday a woman at a meeting held at Lakeville South High School in a suburb of Minneapolis told McCain that she could not trust Obama because he was an Arab. It is not a news that fear-mongering in the 2008 US presidential election is also being stoked by the distribution of 28 million copies of a divisive and hate-provoking DVD called Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West to residents across the nation. The Federal Election Commission has been urged to probe the distribution of the anti-Muslim film to homes in presidential election swing states through the mail and bundled in newspaper deliveries. The Clarion Fund, a shadowy Israel-based group, is financing the distribution of the hate-filled movie to help the Republican presidential candidate. Tellingly, McCain and the Republican campaign have not repudiated the controversial DVD. The Interfaith Alliance was right when it called on senators McCain and Obama to reject the film and the support of those associated with it. Indeed, the use of religion as a political weapon is reprehensible. * The writer is executive editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective (www.amperspective.com).
