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'Smear' effort backfired, Muslims backed Obama
Attempts to "smear" Barack Obama by labeling him a Muslim backfired, and instead garnered support from Muslim communities in the recent presidential election, according to experts.
Mukit Hossain, executive director of the Herndon-based Muslim American Political Action Committee, along with other experts on Muslim studies held a telephone briefing on Nov. 6 to discuss Muslim reaction to the recent election.
Hossain estimates that between 2 and 3 million Muslims nationwide voted in the presidential election.
Northern Virginia has the state's highest concentration of Muslim voters, Hossain said. "In Fairfax, Alexandria, Arlington, Loudoun and Prince William counties there are 63,000 Muslim voters, compared to 9,000 throughout the remainder of Virginia. Fairfax County alone has 23,000."
Ahmed Younis of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies said that yet-to-be-released polling data will show that Obama may have received upward to 80 percent of the Muslim American vote nationwide.
"Attempts to link Obama to Islam obviously did not hurt him," said Jen'nan Read, Professor of Sociology at Duke University. "As a matter of fact, it helped to mobilize Muslim voters in opposition to these types of tactics."
Many other non-Muslim voters also did not garner the intended reaction when misinformed about Obama's religious affiliation.
“In an online bulletin board I go to, people would post these rumors that Obama was Muslim, and then others would jump in and say, 'So what?' It was wonderful to see,” said Lina Hashem, a Loudoun County resident and Loudoun Times-Mirror associate.
Other more pressing concerns, such as the economy, apparently played more prominently in voters' minds, for both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
"Muslim Americans are very much in step with other Americans in terms of things that concern them – the economy, foreign policy in the Middle East, and other issues – so they migrated away from the Republican party along with everyone else," she said.
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