So two Muslims in headscarves were barred from appearing on camera at an Obama event in Michigan. Obama’s spokesperson promptly apologized and said this was the decision of individual volunteers, not indicative of campaign policy. The women asked for a personal apology from Obama himself.

I’ve been wondering when this was going to become an issue.

After seven years of being treated as the greatest threat to America since Joseph Stalin, few Muslims have the energy to muster outrage over a botched photo-op. But the incident speaks to the mutual
ambivalence between Obama and Muslim Americans. As one
editor at Islamica Magazine noted, “Muslim support for Obama is akin to George Bush’s support for democracy in the Middle East. The mere association with the former will undercut the credibility of the latter.”

The Muslim-American demographic, traditionally divided between Republicans and Democrats, has moved to the left by a comfortable margin since the passing of the PATRIOT Act, the war in Iraq, and other assorted failures of this administration. Supporting Obama, however, has proved to be tricky territory. As the candidate continues to face down the Is-Obama-Muslim? question, those who actually are Muslim wish that he would, just once in a while, take a page out of Seinfeld and add “…not that there’s anything wrong with that!” Until then, they don’t see themselves welcomed en masse at his campaign headquarters.

I was talking to my mother about this last spring. She volunteered for the Obama campaign in Iowa, and passed my thoughts on to another organizer on the East Coast. He responded:

One of the things I find most enjoyable about this campaign is the ability of individuals to use their own gifts and abilities to contribute in the best way they can. When I volunteered just before Iowa they asked me what I wanted to do and I said I would sweep floors if they wanted and I meant it. I would encourage Muslims regardless of their political beliefs not to stay in the shadows, but to form
groups and let people know that they love their country as much as all of us. When people get to know you better we realize we’re not that different. To be sure Muslims are under more scrutiny, that comes and goes, and it’s the history of this country.

I will be glad to help you and your friends find a way to participate, be [it] in phone banking, getting hooked up with other groups, etc. Think of your life experience, skills, your time allowance, and how
you might apply them.

I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand it contradicts the notion that Obama’s campaign is overtly distancing itself from Muslim support, and that’s reassuring.

Yet that line — “let people know that they love their country as much as all of us” — troubles me. It implies that Muslim loyalties remain in question, and that any Muslim critique of American foreign policy
is somehow more suspicious than that which comes from other sources.

Granted this note came from another campaign volunteer, not Obama himself, but it’s a sentiment consistent with the feeling that Muslims are welcome in the political process only if they first make strenuous efforts to pass and assimilate. “Change” might be fine for other people, but Muslims need to prove their commitment to the status quo. (Does anyone doubt the women above would have been accepted in the photo if only they hadn’t veiled?)

Certainly this sentiment isn’t limited to the Obama campaign, but it’s especially disappointing to find it there. Obama of all people should understand that many of the “gifts and abilities” Muslim Americans
could contribute to his campaign will be directly related to their status as Muslims. They bring an in-depth understanding of Islamic history and culture. Fluency in the languages of the Middle
East and Central Asia. First-hand experience living under the corrupt regimes the U.S. alternatively supports and invades. First-hand experience fleeing those same regimes. And, crucially, first-hand experience of the diversity within the Muslim community, in the United States and abroad.

I would like to think that Obama and his staffers would appreciate this. I began supporting him the moment I heard him defend the rights of Arab Americans in his 2004 convention speech, something he dared to do at a time when both George Bush and the Iraq war enjoyed far more popularity than they do now. I was further impressed after reading Dreams from My Father, where he described how, due to his name, he’d been frequently mistaken for Muslim by African-American converts while living in Chicago, a city with one of the most mature and diverse Muslim communities in the country. He would correct them, and tell an abbreviated story of his family history, but his comfort with Islam was palpable; he was never offended by the error. It wasn’t his religion, but it was fine if it was yours.

I’ve talked to many Muslims who see this in him, even if they cynically accept that it’s a facet of his character he must downplay to win the election. They realize that, ironically, the candidate who
understands Islam the best is the candidate who can least afford to say so.

Nevertheless, there is a difference between distancing himself from Islam, the religion, and distancing himself from Muslims, the people. Whether intentional or not, events like the one in Michigan cross that
line.