Jason Leopold examines the case of a United States Navy chaplain, Lieutenant Commander Brian K. Waite, who has been accused of abusing his position to promote right-wing evangelical Christianity within the US military:

“Waite is the author of Islam Uncovered, which holds that the Muslim faith is itself culpable for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Military.com reported. ‘Undoubtedly our world will experience additional terrorist attempts or strikes all in the name of Allah. Some of these attacks may occur within the borders of our own nation by the remaining cell groups interspersed and hiding among the Muslim population of the United States. My words may make a number of Muslims in this country and abroad very uncomfortable. To them I would say, “Deal with it!” The suspicion that you encounter is merely a consequence to your own belief system….’ Waite’s book says. ‘…Should Islam be immune from attack because it calls itself a religion? If Adolf Hitler called Nazism a religion, would we be speaking German today? Evil is evil, no matter what nomenclature it hides under.’ The book was removed from bookstore shelves after it was discovered that Waite had plagiarized much of the material and that the supporting blurbs on the back cover of the book from prominent members of the religious community had been fabricated.”

OpEdNews.com, 11 March 2008

Update:  See “Navy chaplain fired from teaching job after report exposed his anti-Islamic views”, Dissident Voice, 29 March 2008

Western Iowa Congressman Steve King says al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists around the globe will be “dancing in the streets” if Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is elected president.

Radio Iowa, 8 March 2008

See also “The hateful and divisive record of bigot Steve King”, Think Progress, 8 March 2008

Ali Eteraz takes issue with those who criticise Barack Obama for failing to take a principled stand against the “Muslim smear” campaign. He posts a video in which Obama says:

“I have never been a Muslim. Am not a Muslim. These emails are obviously not just offensive to me, somebody who is a devout Christian, who’s been going to the same Church for the last twenty years, but it’s also offensive to Muslims, because it plays into, obviously, a certain fear-mongering there.”

And at the end of the video, Jane Fissler Hoffman, a minister from the Obama’s Church says: “There is absolutely nothing wrong with being Muslim. But second of all, Senator Obama doesn’t happen to be Muslim. He is a Christian and he’s a member of my Church.”

“Obama has devoted a lot of time to defending himself against these charges that question his religious beliefs and his patriotism. The gist of this has been – I am not now and never have been a Muslim. I am a Christian and a patriot. And, other candidates have apologized for anyone in their campaign who might have intimated that Barak was a Muslim, or have denied being responsible for such statements. The problem with this defense is that it seems to many American Muslims that what we are not hearing is an apology for the bigotry.”

Sheila Musaji in The American Muslim, 2 March 2008

Naomi Klein on Barack Obama’s response to the “Muslim smear” campaign:

“What is disturbing about the campaign’s response is that it leaves unchallenged the disgraceful and racist premise behind the entire ‘Muslim smear’: that being Muslim is de facto a source of shame. Obama’s supporters often say they are being ‘Swift-boated’ (a pejorative term derived from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against the 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry), casually accepting the idea that being accused of Muslimhood is tantamount to being accused of treason.

“Substitute another faith or ethnicity, and you’d expect a very different response. Consider a report from the archives of the Nation. Thirteen years ago Daniel Singer, the magazine’s late Europe correspondent, went to Poland to cover a presidential election. He reported that the race had descended into an ugly debate over whether one of the candidates, Aleksander Kwasniewski, was a closet Jew. The press claimed his mother was buried in a Jewish cemetery (she was still alive), and a popular TV show aired a skit featuring the Christian candidate dressed as a Hassidic Jew. ‘What perturbed me,’ Singer said, ‘was that Kwasniewski’s lawyers threatened to sue for slander rather than press for an indictment under the law condemning racist propaganda’.

“We should expect no less of the Obama campaign. When asked during the Ohio debate about Louis Farrakhan’s support for his candidacy, Obama did not hesitate to call Farrakhan’s antisemitic comments ‘unacceptable and reprehensible’. When the turban photo flap came up in the same debate, he used the occasion to say nothing at all.”

Guardian, 1 March 2008