Oliver Willis caught this the other day: rightwing whackjob Debbie Schlussel is once again inserting extra hatred in to the Presidential campaign, by attacking Barack Obama for meeting with Shiite religious leader Imam Hussien Al-Qazwini, the leader of the largest mosque in America.
Obama met with Qazwini before his town hall last week in Warren, Michigan. They chatted for a few minutes, and Qazwini gave Obama a copy of his new book. Predictably, the wingers have gone crazy.
It makes sense that Obama would meet with the Imam. Qazwini came to the United States in 1992. He was first in California, but eventually ended up in Dearborn Michigan, home of the largest population of Middle Eastern Arabs outside the Middle East. The Arab-American population in Detroit—between a quarter and a half million—is diverse, but the largest group is Lebanese Shiite Muslims. Beginning in the 1990's, the Shiite Lebanese were joined by Iraqi Shiites.
Like these new immigrants, Qazwini is from Iraq. His Grandfather was an Ayatollah in Karbala who Saddam arrested, and he died in prison. The family fled Iraq, Hussein Al-Qazwini came to the US, and unlike most of the Arab-American community, was a strong advocate for overthrowing Saddam. Eventually, however, even many of the Arab-Americans who supported the invasion of Iraq—always a small group--became disillusioned with the US occupation of Iraq and turned on Bush and the GOP.
Which brings us to the fun part about the wingers going crazy over Obama's meeting with Qazwini. How many of the wingers were going crazy in 2003 when Qazwini gave an opening prayer before Congress? Who complained that Qazwini met with staffers of the Bush administration's National Security Council to talk about the overthrow of Saddam? Where were the complaints about the four or five invitations to visit Bush at the White House extended to Qazwini? Did the wingers flip out when Qazwini participated in the roll-out of Bush's Faith Based Initiative, an event that took place at the White House?
And what about those events Bush attended in Dearborn, the ones with these great photos found by Oliver:
Most of the wingers are just hypocrites, or incapable of using Google as a way to avoid embarrassing themselves. They're just pushing this garbage because they're authoritarian Republicans. If it was McCain meeting with Qazwini, they probably wouldn't utter a peep.
But Schlussel is another story. That woman truly is obsessed with all things Muslim. She's not only obsessed with the Obama was once a Muslim, so he's always a Muslim insanity, she doesn't want any politician to have anything to do with any Muslim or Arab leader (and for her "Arab" and "Muslim" are often used as synonyms). She's already succeeded in getting the McCain campaign to buckle under from her pressure to distance themselves from an Arab-American in Michigan who's raised money for Bush and plenty of other politicians, both Democratic and Republican.
The McCain campaign has shown that they will disrespect Arabs and Muslims rather than say no to haters like Schlussel, the bigots in the wingnuttosphere, and the nativists who make up a sizable chunk of the GOP base. So the question is, will McCain do as almost every other major politician does, and meet with Imam Qazwini? Or will he show that it's the same old Republican party, the one that will offer lip service about tolerance but which in the end refuses to denounce bigotry and hatred?
