--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > In a message dated 1/5/08 8:07:15 P.M. Central Standard Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > Have Americans got a problem with Muslims then? > > Jim. > > Evidently Judy thinks so because in my original post I referred > to Obama as a Muslim and she and a couple others became overly > defensive of it, calling it a dirty trick and a lie etc. and > calling me a xenophobe and a racist. You know, the common attack > liberals make against people that don't share their political > agenda. Yet she was the one all upset at Obama being referred to > as a Muslim as if it were an insult and a smear.
What liberals tend to dislike most about right-wingers is not their political agenda but their propensity to lie, as MDixon does above. First, it wasn't I who called him a xenophobe and a racist. I called him an unscrupulous cynic for having deliberately attempted to elicit outrage about his lie that Obama is a Muslim so he could then call the folks who objected xenophobes and racists, just as he does above, by pretending that they considered it a smear. With possibly a few exceptions, on this forum nobody thinks it would reflect badly on Obama were he a Muslim. In other less knowledgeable and sophisticated venues in this country, of course, Muslims are considered evil and treacherous, which is why right-wingers are trying to spread the rumor that Obama is a Muslim. What's so offensive about the rumor is its *appeal* to xenophobia and its exploitation of ignorance. MDixon knows all this (just as he knew from the start that Obama isn't Muslim) because I explained it to him in my initial response. So his current post involves several layers of quite disgraceful disingenuity and deception. I think the > average Muslim in the know would have said "No, he's not a Muslim > even though his father and stepfather were." I doubt they would > have taken it as a smear, probably more as a complement. Of course the "average Muslim" would not consider it a smear. However, Muslims "in the know" would add that Obama's father had become an atheist by the time he met Obama's mother (who was raised Christian but was not a believer) and divorced her when Obama was two years old. His stepfather's heritage was Muslim, but he did not practice Islam and separated from Obama's mother after five years. So even to say Obama has "Muslim roots" is a gross exaggeration. He was neither brought up as nor educated as a Muslim.
