Barack Obama is a Muslim

I’ve lived my life one consonant short of being a dickhead, so I sympathise with Barack Obama’s problems over his name. If a simple misspelling could help the Republican cause this autumn, I’m sure Fox News would be happy to have him down as Osama as often as they can get away with it.

There are some in the Obama camp who believe there is a deliberate attempt to make people think their candidate is a Muslim. In a country where the arts of black propaganda managed to persuade a substantial number of voters last time around that a decorated war hero was a coward and a documented draft dodger a hero, this is far from incredible.

Media commentator Roy Greenslade gives an example in his blog today of what he says is ‘just one of the examples of the way in which the US media is helping to relay the “Obama is a Muslim” lie to American voters’. He describes as a ‘disgraceful oversight’ an MSNBC Live report that ran for 25 seconds with the caption ‘Obama Is a Muslim & He Will Not Win Because of That’ over a discussion about what people think of him in Baghdad. The caption was a ‘purported quote from an Iraqi engineer’, though you can tell from the ‘purported’ that Greenslade isn’t convinced.

There’s no doubt that branding Obama/Osama a Muslim, even subliminally, would cost him votes. Polls suggest that while being black is now less of a problem than being a woman, about as many people would vote for a Muslim in the US as for an atheist, which is as low as it gets before you start asking about crack heads and child molesters. But is there a concerted right-wing conspiracy – or, to put it more mildly, campaign – as some of Obama’s supporters are suggesting?

Well, there are certainly plenty of far-right anti-Obama people out there in the blogosphere who are doing their best to create one. Greenslade himself has attracted one or two. I am reliably informed that the following post in the comments section of his blog is not satire:

‘It's not a big lie – Obama bin Osama IS Muslim – probably a Wahabiest, as it were. He and his radical spouse first will award “reparations” to blacks – per capita annuities of many tens of thousands of dollars. Then they will begin slowly to institute Islam. How will they overcome a Christian congress? With their Democratic allies, basically an anti-American party, they will pack the supreme court with radicals who will then see to it than Islam becomes the state religion in all but name. Muslim countries will receive gobs of military assistance and other aid. Unbiased observers won't recognize America after the first two years of an Osama bin Obama administration. Be afraid, Europe. Be very afraid. We're in danger of becoming Muslim even before you achieve pure socialism and adherence to Allah.’

Bad hair day

Four thousand quid is a lot of money for hurt feelings. By way of comparison, the most you can get under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme if you lose your unborn child as a result of a violent assault (which might be expected to hurt most people’s feelings quite a lot) is £5,500. So my instinctive reaction to the news that a young Muslim woman had been awarded £4,000 for ‘injury to feelings’ after a London hairdresser refused to employ her because she wore a headscarf was:

a) That’s a bit steep (which also happens to be the exact phrase used by the hairdresser after the industrial tribunal made its ruling).
b) Why would someone who believes that women should cover up their hair in public want a job as a hairdresser anyway? and
c) I can think of a few hairdressers around my neck of the woods where business would improve immensely if the wearing of headscarfs was made compulsory for some of the staff.

I wasn’t – and I’m still not – convinced that you can really make a case that it’s religious discrimination when a ‘funky, urban’ hairdresser’s like this one, a couple of miles down the road from me at King’s Cross, says it wants its employees to look the part. But I can see the point that it should be up to an employer to demonstrate why someone in a headscarf can’t do the job. After all, I presume that the people who do (for example) breast implant surgery aren’t all required to have had a boob job done themselves.

The hairdresser concerned has been doubly unlucky in this case, however. First, she’s been stung for four grand for discrimination when, as far as it’s possible to tell, she doesn’t have a discriminatory hair on her head. And second, and far worse, she’s become a cause celebre for every Islamophobic bigot in the country.

Choose almost any internet news forum at random and check out the public comments on the story. And bear in mind that even if, like me and, it seems, most of the country, you think that the compensation award is wrong, Bushra Noah, the 19-year-old Muslim woman concerned, had trained as a hair stylist and worked in the industry for at least two years before applying for this job. ‘I know my punk from my funk and my urban from my trendy,’ she’s been quoted as saying.
What you’ll find in the news forums is visceral anti-Muslim hysteria. ‘She just sued to get money for her terrorist friends.’ ‘The Muslim woman is not interested in hairdressing but merely promoting her cause.’ ‘That ragbag Muslim creature certainly had tried this on before and got away with it!’ ‘Had she been employed I wonder if she would have demanded five breaks a day to pray.’ ‘She should be shaved, tarred and feathered … Mozzie bitch!’

The first four comments are from just the first page of a moderated – and moderate – news forum. The last one has been on the Sun’s news forum since 9 April. I’ve been watching to see if they’ll ever remove it.