Ask a Muslim and Obama campaign

First, here is a link to a youtube video of a news report documenting the upstate New York absentee ballot scandal. NY Election Mix-Up. After watching the report, I think that this spelling error might not have that big of issue as the media is making it out to be. In the report, it states that only 300 ballots were sent out before the error was noticed and the remaining ballots were shredded with new ballots being resent. 300 people is not a very large audience but it is now an opportunity for republicans to once again draw attention to Obama and his possible ties to Islam as well as his ties terrorism most notable William Ayers.

This also reminded me of an event regarding Obama during the summer. People on his staff refused seats to two Muslim women, who were wearing traditional Muslim head scarves (hijabs) during a rally in Michigan. (You can read more about it here). The reason that the staff members refused them seats because they feared the damage the media could cause if they were able to get still images of Obama with these women in the background as questions regarding his ties to Islam would be an issue. The news story stems from the fact that Obama issued an apology to these two women. Avoiding the possibility of an image is very interesting since I feel a still image is more powerful than an article (people, who can be lazy, are going to stop at image for a second as opposed to stopping at an article that would explain what happened at the rally). I wonder why though the Obama campaign went to such lengths to sever any links between Obama and Islam? Well, I shouldn't really ask the question since I know the answer. It's unfortunate that terrorist organizations and suicide bombers explain their actions through Islam/Koran/Allah when in reality their religion does promote this behavior.

I feel that a major problems existing for Muslims and the way they are portrayed in the media is due to the fact that we don't know really anything about the religion. Since we don't know much, we are easily swayed by things in the media, even if they are false. This just reminded me of something I heard awhile ago on a local Los Angeles radio show. For a while on Kroq's early morning talk show Kevin and Bean, they had a series of segments called "Ask a..." This originated in response to the popularity of Gustav Arellano's newspaper column and book called "Ask a Mexican." Kevin and Bean, to help confirm/debunk stereotypes and get laughs, continued this idea and had "Ask a...Black, Midget, Stripper, etc." Most of these segments tended to be on the funnier side of things then the serious. However, when they had "Ask a Muslim," I found the comedic aspects usually present in the segments had taken a back seat to the informational parts. I think that the segment is very good (a 30 minute introduction to the Islamic faith). I recommend that everyone take a listen if they are courious about Islam (I might need to take another listen since I don't know if I am using the terms Islam/Muslim correctly, something that is discussed in the below clip).

Kroq (106.7) Kevin and Bean's ASK A MUSLIM