Obama as “radical muslim”
By Ed Madden, Columbia

I ran into a friend in the grocery store, and we started talking about politics.

“I hope you’re not planning to vote for that Obama,” he said.

Why? “You know he’s a Muslim.”

Living in South Carolina, you get used to hearing the national news talk about the nasty politics of our state. We are the land of push polls and Lee Atwater—the state that famously spread false rumors about McCain’s child in the last election, the state that saw religious prejudice alive and well in fake Christmas cards sent out last month to attack Romney. It’s become the standard intro to national stories about the Republican primary here—as predictable as the inevitable Confederate flag question at the debates.

But here I was, talking with a friend in Kroger—a friend whose opinion I valued—hearing that Barak Obama was a radical Muslim who refused to put his hand on the Bible when he was sworn in. “He won’t put his hand on the Bible,” he repeated.

It was one thing to hear family members from Elgin and Rock Hill argue that white country folks they live among wouldn’t vote for a black man, much less one named “Obama.” But this was something else. To substantiate what he was saying, he even cited Snopes.com, the website famous for its examinations of urban and email myths.

So when I got home, I went to Snopes.com. Not only did I find webpages that dispelled email rumors that Obama is a radical Muslim, but I also found a notice that one of the emails currently in circulation actually cites Snopes. The email claims, “We were told this was checked out on snopes.com. It is factual. Check for yourself.” There’s a link to the website on Snopes.com. As the Snopes editors add: “It’s our guess that whoever included that bit is counting on folks to not check, as our article says the opposite: that the polemic is not factual but rather is false.”

Later that evening, my grandmother called. I love talking politics with my grandmother, something I wish I’d discovered much earlier. A country woman and an evangelical Christian, she is appalled by George Bush and the war, appalled by the ways working class rural folk vote against their own best interests. She shakes her head when she describes her women’s Bible class and their single-issue focus on abortion.

She called to ask about the upcoming primary. “Don’t vote for Obama,” she said. Why? “He’s Muslim.”

A couple of days later, when I went to get my hair cut, the sweet African-American woman cutting my hair also told me her beliefs wouldn’t let her vote for Obama: she’s a Christian, and he’s a Muslim.

According to news reports—including an interview with Obama’s Buddhist sister in Sunday’s New York Times—Obama has been a member of a Christian church for over 20 years.

But neither my friend nor my grandmother nor the salon stylist believed me when I said this is a myth. All were convinced. While they would vote Democratic, neither would vote for Obama because of this story—the lie that refuses to die.

I know that Obama’s complicated cultural background lends credence to this myth. A Kenyan father, an Indonesian step-father, a childhood and education abroad, an anthropologist mother who encouraged her children to understand all religions—these things may seem risky to some folks.

I also know that racism and religious bigotry—not to mention dirty politics from both parties—fuel this particular myth. I know that the internet enables wide distribution of this story—just as it keeps that Neiman Marcus cookie recipe story alive and online long after it has been disproved.

But this particular myth—driven by anti-Islamic fears, political urgency, and the racism we like to think Obama’s campaign belies—has an extraordinary tenacity, even among those I trust and love, those I think of as neither racist nor bigoted, those whose political opinions I value.

What does this say about the racial and religious differences that still divide us? What does this say about our ability as Americans to disentangle our fear of terrorists from our ability to relate to the Muslim neighbors? What does this say, indeed, about our ability to export a “secular” democracy to the rest of the world?

More importantly, what does this say about the power of rumor, the power of internet myths, to affect our political decisions?

We do what we can. I assured them all this was a rumor. And I sent the Snopes.com webpage links to my friend.

Ed Madden is Associate Professor of English and Director of Undergraduate Program in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina.