A recent Salon article exploring the “surprisingly warm” relationship between Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the Muslim community leans on the Republican presidential candidate’s ties to the Aga Khan, religious leader of the Ismailis — a sect of Shia Islam — as evidence he is well-connected to at least one group of Muslims.

Its headline wonders if Perry will be considered “the pro-Shariah candidate,” during his bid to win the GOP nomination, a label sure to make some conservative voters cringe.

Perry has embraced small sects of Islam like the Ismailis, while avoiding close ties to the broader Muslim community.

Perry’s cozy relationship with the Aga Khan, an extremely affluent jet-setting billionaire, is mutually and monetarily beneficial. Khan’s far-reaching network spends $350 million a year on projects in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The governor has capitalized on the leader’s scope and influence, agreeing to partnerships, including a deal with The University of Texas and the Aga Khan University in Pakistan to bring Muslim history and cultural studies to high school educators.

The pair have shared about a decade of friendship, hosting and attending various invitation-only events. For instance, in April 2008 the Austin American-Statesman reported on Perry’s plans to host a private dinner “to honor the Aga Khan, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad celebrating his 50th year as the spiritual leader of a Muslim sect.”

The powerful alliance between the West Texas politician and the Kenyan-raised Ismaili leader may have some pivotal right-wing voters thinking twice about a Perry ticket — especially in light of the hard-line approaches against Islam voiced by his opponents — but is the bond really indicative of Perry’s larger relationship with Muslims?

So soon after his controversial Christian prayer event in Houston, it sounds unlikely that anyone would fault Perry for being too inclusive of other religions. The event followed months of protests by faith leaders and activist groups who condemned its lack of religious diversity and said it blurred church-state boundaries.

Muslim groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and leaders like Imam Qasim Khan, president and CEO of the Islamic organization Shades of White, denounced Perry for promoting Christianity above all others. The day before the rally Qasim Khan, joined by leaders of a plurality of faith backgrounds, called the governor a “contradictory politician,” one that claims to be religious but fails to help those most in need.

Many of the evangelical leaders who backed “The Response” have a history of contentious statements about Islam — like the suggestion Muslims do not deserve First Amendment rights and should be kept out of the U.S. altogether. Bryan Fischer, a spokesman for the American Family Association, which bankrolled Perry’s event, detailed four steps to “save Western Civilization” on the group’s blog in May.

The steps include eradicating all mosques, denying Muslims inclusion into the U.S. military, and cutting off Muslim migration to the United States. “There is no such thing as moderate Islam. Islam itself is a dangerous infection, and every devout Muslim is a carrier,” he wrote.

Another “Response” host with a history of anti-Muslim sentiments is Dave Welch, executive director of the Texas Pastor Council, who said earlier this year that Texas’ Speaker of the House should be allowed to follow any religion, just as long as he’s not Muslim, as the Texas Independent previously reported.

Cultivating ties to minor sects
Mustafaa Carroll of the Council on American-Islamic Relations says Perry’s relatioship with the Muslim community is fairly middle-of-the-road in practice. The exclusivity of his recent prayer rally didn’t help him build any alliances with Muslims, he said, but overall the tone is neither supportive nor negative.

“As far as I can tell, the governor doesn’t have a strong relationship with the mainstream Muslim community,” said Carroll. “He mostly sticks to interacting with minority groups within Islam like the Ahmadiyya and the Ismailis and hasn’t done anything to overwhelmingly gain support from Muslims.”

Carroll mentioned Perry’s 2003 ceremonial signing of Texas’ Halal Law, which seeks to protect consumers from product mislabeling, as Perry’s most memorable act supporting the Muslim community — but could not point to any other major event like it.

“I think he hasn’t branched out because it’s seen as a risk for some politicians to align with the majority of Muslims, they may feel safer with minority groups with less connectivity.”

“I can’t speak to his motivations aligning with [the Aga Khan], but there may be some other benefits in that relationship,” he added.

‘I do believe this could be a problem’
That halal bill was hailed as the “Texas Muslim community’s First Legislative victory” in the state by the Freedom and Justice Foundation, an activist group that lobbied for its passage — but the community’s advocates in the State Capitol focused most of their attention on defeating a pair of anti-Sharia bills that floated around this past Legislative session. And unlike the halal legislation, those bills were embraced by Perry.

“We met with the governor’s office and he seemed to really support the bill,” said Pat Carlson of the conservative Texas Eagle Forum, who called the numerical assignment of H.B. 911, “appropriate.” “Although he didn’t have the power to push it­ — that’s controlled by [Texas Speaker Joe] Straus — he gave me every indication he agreed with the bill.”

The legislation suggested a constitutional amendment prohibiting Texas courts from enforcing, considering or applying religious or cultural law. Though the bills did not explicitly mention Sharia, author Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, did not exclude it, as the Texas Independent previously reported.

As for his long-time partnership with the Aga Khan, Carlson said the bond could pose a sizable roadblock in currying favor with conservative voters.

“I do believe this could be a problem for Gov. Perry in his presidential bid,” she said. “We should not be showing a preference in Texas schools for a religion that is guided by Sharia law […] it is totally incompatible with our U.S. and Texas Constitutions. It is a complete political, social, legal and economic system controlling every aspect of a Muslim’s life.”

Carroll, though, disagreed, saying that if Perry showed any true support for the anti-Sharia bill, it was “strictly political.” He considers Sharia Law a “non-existent” threat drummed up for partisan reasons. Sharia is a cultural underpinning, he said, not a codified edict; Muslims end up having to defend it because efforts to limit Sharia stomp on their First Amendment rights, Carroll said.

“It’s a red herring, it’s a non-issue,” he said. “The idea people have conjured up that Muslims are trying to overtake our constitution is the biggest lie ever told.”

KTUL TV in Tulsa reports that less than 1 percent of the population of Oklahoma is Muslim. Supporters of the law tell KTUL that the suit that has so far barred implementation has no merit.

Today, The New York Times editorialized against the law, saying it is now up to the courts to prevent such “hatred from spreading further.”

It’s bad enough that in its hatred the state amendment singles out a religion’s law for condemnation, in violation of the nation’s Constitution. Or that it forbids a longstanding practice of mentioning the laws of other nations in a legal ruling. It is not even clear what the implications might be if the courts allowed this measure.

Would private contracts or wills drawn up under religious law, a common practice, be unenforceable, or only those drawn up by Muslims? Could a judge refer to the Bible in a ruling, but not the Koran? How about the Book of Mormon or the teachings of Confucius?

The voters of Oklahoma were badly misled by demagogues into passing a profoundly un-American measure. Now it is up to the federal courts to prevent the hatred from spreading further.

Ali Hasan

Against this backdrop, you want reporters to cover the story about a pastor threatening to burn a Quran. I know it becomes a spectacle when you see the small-time religious figure hopping from one national media appearance to another, but I’d rather see stories like that overplayed than ignored.

Denver’s media should take extra steps to air out signs of bigotry toward Muslims in our own community. The stories are out there, I’m sure. They just have to be told.

Here’s the kind of story I mean.

In an Aug. 2 column in the Huffington Post, Colorado Republican Ali Hasan asked his “fellow conservatives” to “quit lying.”

“If you are against the mosque,” he wrote, “then call yourself a bigot and give us the gift of an honest dialogue, the kind we carry on so proudly here in America.”

As you might imagine, this wasn’t received very well in GOP circles, and the anger reverberated on talk radio, blogs, and, of course, Facebook.

Writing on her friend Nikki Mata’s Facebook page the day Hasan’s column appeared, prominent 912 activist Virginia Young expressed her view.

Young is the founder of the IN GOD WE TRUST 912 PROJECT and the Broomfield 912 Project , which is apparently one of the most influential 912 groups in Colorado. Tea Party groups like hers had a major impact on the Republican Party this election cycle, producing GOP candidates like Ken Buck and Dan Maes.

“I am bigot,” she wrote. “Latisha I am still waiting after 9 years for American Muslims to take to the streets and denounce the events of 9/11. Why hasn’t that happened? Taqiyya perhaps?”

Latisha’s post, to which Young was responding, stated, “I am a Republican and I do not have a big issue with the mosque being built near Ground Zero. It is simply place of prayer. I DO NOT agree with calling people bigots just because they don’t agree with you…”

Young had a different view, and as a 912 leader in Denver, her opinion means something. Was she serious? Is she a bigot? What did she mean?

I emailed her to find out. I asked to interview her about the mosque issue.

Salzman [Sept 1]: I have a copy of something you apparently wrote on Nikki’s Facebook page. I spoke with Nikki about her comments. I’d like to discuss yours with you.

Young [minutes later]: Please forward a copy to me.

Salzman: [an hour later}: You wrote…“I am a bigot,” and a few other comments. I don’t want to report this without hearing what you have to say about it.

Young [minutes later]: Oh yes, I said I guess I am a bigot then, if that is what Ali Hasan defines us as, if I oppose the Mosque at Ground Zero. What are your thoughts on the Ground Zero Mosque?

Salzman [minutes later]: Where does ground zero mean to you? Do you think mosques should be built anywhere in America?

Young: No response

Salzman [next day]: Did you get this? Thanks.

Young: [no response]

Salzman [a few days later]: Before I publish your “bigot” comment, I hope you’ll give me a more detailed response than you’ve provided below. I want to be fair to you. I also hope you’ll explain the rest of your facebook comment, “Latisha I am still waiting after 9 years for American Muslims to take to the streets and denounce the events of 9/11. Why hasn’t that happened? Taqiyya perhaps?”

If you’d like to talk on the phone, just let me know.

In any case, I hope you’ll have time to drop me a quick explanatory note.

So that was about a week ago, and I haven’t heard back from Young. So I don’t think she wants to converse about it anymore, do you?

But Young’s Facebook friend, Mata, who also wrote in the Facebook conversation that she was a bigot, but with less severe overtones, readily explained herself to me in a phone interview.

“I was being facetious,” she said immediately, explaining that she’s against the mosque personally but doesn’t believe the government should stop it.

“The backers of the mosque say they want to do outreach,” she told me. “If you want to do outreach, that indicates that you want to foster good feelings, but if depending the poll if 60-70 percent are opposed to what your doing, how does that foster positive feelings?”

“If it puts people in such an uproar, aren’t you undermining what you are trying to accomplish?” she said, adding that she does not oppose the construction of mosques elsewhere in America.

But plenty of other Americans do. Even if you don’t follow this issue very closely, you probably remember last month’s Economist poll with these shocking results:

* 14 percent of Americans believe no mosques should be built.
* 80 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Democrats have an unfavorable view of Islam.
* 48 percent agree that “there are some places in the United States where it is not appropriate to build mosques, though it would be appropriate for other religions to build houses of worship.”

Commenting on the poll last month, The Denver Post’s Mike Litwin wrote:

There’s bigotry at work — bigotry that needs to be called out — but it’s not exactly old-line religious bigotry. We were attacked by radical Islamists. There are many radical Islamists who say they want to see America destroyed. We have been fighting for nearly a decade against Islamic terrorists but also fighting on the same side as Muslims.

It’s confusing. Obviously, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are not terrorists. Just as obviously, Islam is not a monolith. As far as anyone knows, there are no terrorists involved in the Lower Manhattan mosque/community center/swimming pool. In any case, the hard part of freedom of religion comes when the religion is not popular.

In this blog post, I’m calling out Tea Party leader Virginia Young for being a bigot, until she directly states otherwise. I take Niki Mata at her word that she’s not. I believe her.

Littwin is right that bigotry should be called out. We owe to Muslims and of course we owe it to ourselves and to this country.

It’s also why I called Phil Wolf, who owns the Wheat Ridge car dealership that erected a billboard last year showing President Obama dressed in a turban and stating, “President or Jihad.” His billboard got a lot of attention, as it should have. I had been wanting to call him for a long time to find out if he was a bigot.

I asked Wolf if he supports the construction of mosques in Denver.

“We got to identify who the enemy is,” he said. “If the activity of the enemy is building mosques, they shouldn’t be allowed.”

I asked him if he thinks Islam is the enemy.

“That’s what’s out there,” he said. “That’s the public perception. As far as the public knowledge is concerned, they are. And if they are, there should be zero tolerance. We should go back to what happened during World War II. Look what happened to the Japanese. And guess what? There’s a lot of wonderful Muslim and Japanese people. But we didn’t tolerate the enemy. We just don’t call anybody the enemy anymore.”

Wolf is planning to unveil a new billboard at his dealership along I-70 in the next few months. Its theme will reflect what he told me above in my interview. And he had a lot more to say in a similar vein.

I hope 912 activist Virginia Young and other Tea Party leaders will join me in protesting Wolf’s offensive views, and his new billboard.

And I hope Wolf’s story, and other signs of bigotry in America, get the media

“Why is it so important, why does everyone have to explain the importance of having other people come to keep aspects of their culture but attack our desire to retain our own?” Tancredo asked the audience at the Conservative Western Summit.

Tancredo (see video below) was among a slew of conservative guest speakers, including U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., journalist Michelle Malkin and other talk-radio regulars addressing a crowded hotel ballroom at the event hosted by the Centennial Institute and 710 KNUS.

“We are the last hope of the western world, this country. Europe has been Islamisized,” Tancredo told the audience, which went on to laud Geert Wilders, the head of the Party for Freedom, an anti-Islamic group that looks to stop Islamic immigration. Wilders ran on a platform of banning new mosques and the Koran, according to the Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/7815699/Geert-Wilders-could-be-kingmaker-in-Dutch-parliament-after-coming-third.html.

Noting that Wilders is on trial in the Netherlands for hate speech, Tancredo said “this cult of multiculturalism has us by the throat.”

Tancredo pleaded for the country to fight against U.S. Balkanization by ensuring English is the predominate language. He said it was one way of keeping a nation of many backgrounds and nationalities together.

During his speech, Tancredo commented that when asking students at a Colorado elementary school if they liked their school, they said they “love it,” but when asked what they thought of the country, the room went into dead silence. He said they had never been taught what to love.

“Nothing has hurt the GOP more than Republican candidates who appear senseless or racist — Jane Norton, candidate for the U.S. Senate, has managed to appear as both,” he writes.

At issue is Norton’s controversial war on terror messaging. A new Norton foreign policy statement and video ad blasts the Obama administration as soft on terror, saying liberals have forgotten the 9/11 attacks. Offended Democrats and veterans groups have demanded she take down the ad, arguing that it’s beyond inappropriate to call into question patriotism or concerns for national safety or reverence for the 9/11 dead based on difference in policy.

Hasan goes one further, pointing out that the fear mongering Norton has resorted to is also racist, that she sweepingly attacks “Islam” as a stand in for “terrorism” in an attempt to trade on religious ignorance and bias:

In a redesign of her campaign theme, Norton’s Web site now carries a video that starts with the bold quote, “OBAMA DOCTRINE TO MAKE CLEAR NO WAR ON ISLAM — REUTERS, 5.26.10.” The quote plays over a chorus of dark sounds, communicating that Norton disagrees with Obama — she doesn’t want to go to war against ‘radical Islam’ or ‘fundamentalist Muslims’ — no, Norton wants to go after “Islam.”

As the video plays, one waits for explanation of why all Muslims should be slaughtered, but Norton offers nothing. Is her desire to kill all Muslims based on the fact that many Muslims have brown skin? Or that some speak with accents? Or that some wear turbans? The fact that the quote was displayed without direct explanation leaves the door open to assume that Norton is a racist.

But more importantly, as a lifelong Republican, who was born and raised in Colorado, and as a practicing Muslim, I founded the groups Muslims For America and Muslims For Bush, with the hope of getting more Muslims in America involved, and potentially, registered into the Republican fabric. And nothing undoes this hard work more than politicians who seek division over wisdom. It is one of the reasons why I remain proud of my endorsement of Ken Buck over Norton, because Buck has a record of reaching out to Muslims in Weld County and getting to know them, demonstrating the kind of politician who will strengthen the GOP — someone with wisdom who builds bridges, not barriers.

Overall, I would say my mother surmises it best — in watching Norton’s new commercial, my mother said, “Well, there’s 57 Muslims countries. I guess Jane should just pick one and get started.”
Jane, good luck.

So far Norton has defied calls to take down the ad. “It’s staying up,” her campaign said. Norton has gone equally negative in her primary battle against Buck, calling him corrupt and ethically challenged in a series of media appearances and in campaign ads like the one posted on the radio Tuesday.

Once the frontrunner in the primary race, Norton has steadily lost ground. Buck is now up strong double digits in the polls. He won a slim victory in the caucus voting in March and a landslide in the delegate voting in the GOP state assembly in May. Norton chose not to participate in the assembly. Norton’s enormous lead in fundraising has also dwindled.

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“I hope this award builds [Obama's] commitment to world peace,” she said. “I urge the president to continue to engage with my country, not just on the nuclear issue but on human rights and democracy.”

Ebadi’s life history, the subject of a memoir stacked on a table at the back of the event, gave the views she expressed gravity beyond her titles.

Iran’s first female judge, Ebadi supported the Islamic Revolution in 1978 and the overthrow of the Shah. She was only 31. Her shocked colleagues demanded to know what she was thinking. “You’re supporting people who will take away your job!”

Of course they were right. Ebadi was soon demoted to clerk in the courtroom in which she once presided and found herself enraged two years later on the day the country’s Islamic penal code was issued. The new laws stripped women of rights, reducing them to chattel, she wrote, setting relations between the sexes back 1400 years.

A decade later she had climbed back to work as a human rights attorney, taking on brutal cases of paramilitary attacks and murders. She was imprisoned for her work and, at one point, digging through government documents in a double-murder case, found the official authorization for her own assassination.

Her address at Naropa keynoted a two-day “Women’s Leadership and Activism in the Muslim World” conference but she took the opportunity to speak less of women than on international relations. She took particular issue with the work of U.S. political theorist Samuel Huntington, whose article and book Clash of Civilizations, steered thinking on international affairs in the 1990s, positing that conflict among the major cultures of the world would come to define international relations in the wake of the Cold War.

Shirin Ebadi and Banafsheh Keynoush (Tomasic/TCI)

“Huntington’s peers are the dictators in the Middle East,” Ebadi said. “They think the same, that our civilizations are incompatible. Both sides selectively interpret Islam.”

Middle Eastern leaders, she said, use Islam as a shield. “They use Islam to hide behind and violate human rights. Like Huntington, they claim Islam is not compatible with democracy. But this is their interpretation. They interpret Islam in a way that grants them power and supports their power. Any objection to them is then an objection to Islam.

“They said they could not sign on to the UN convention on torture because it was not compatible with Islam. This is a bizarre reading of the Koran.”

Ebadi mocked the idea floated by the same leaders that, instead of abiding by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they would write their own “Islamic Declaration of Human Rights.”

“How many declarations do we need?” said Ebadi. “If Muslims are allowed to draft their own, we will have a Christian Declaration and a Hindu Declaration… We will have as many declarations as there are faiths. It would be impossible.”

In speaking to the failings of the patriarchal and provincial worldviews that pervade among the leaders of the Middle East, where internationalism is seen as weakness and women are patronized, Ebadi also seemed to be making subtle reference to similar lines of thought that persist in the West generally and in the U.S. in particular.

Colorado U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, this year spearheaded a so-called sovereignty caucus that seeks to untangle the U.S. from international treaties, for example. Former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo this week decried UN laws that work to restrain the U.S. from using incendiary weapons like napalm on enemy combatants in Afghanistan. And on Wednesday Arizona women descended on the office of Republican Senator Jon Kyl, who mocked a maternity care bill as something he had no use for. The women cited increasingly outdated views held by U.S. lawmakers who oppose the kind of workplace rights and social programs that support women and foster greater equality between the genders.

Ebadi’s position on Iran’s nuclear program, however, drew the greatest reaction from the crowd here. Asked if she supported her country’s pursuit of nuclear power, she seemed again to be speaking to issues Coloradans are grappling with today.

“We are a big country,” she said. “And we receive a lot of sun.”

Cheers erupted.

“If we put one tenth of the money we have put into nuclear power into developing solar, we would have enough to power the country and to export energy as well. But we have not invested even one dollar in solar power. Sanctions hurt the people of Iran. If the government wanted what was best for the people, it would abandon nuclear power.”

Ebadi also expressed her feeling that the reform movement in Iran, which protested the election results this summer, is only gaining power and legitimacy.

“Throughout the protests, the people never once resorted to violence. Yet they wouldn’t retreat from their demands. I know the people will be victorious.”

Ebadi spoke through translator Banafsheh Keynoush, a lecturer at Tufts, the University of San Francisco and San Francisco State University. Her forthcoming book is titled Iran and Saudi Arabia: Friends or Rivals?

The Women’s Leadership and Activism in the Muslim World symposium runs through Saturday. It is sponsored by Naropa’s Peace Studies Department and the Cordoba Initiative and is being held at Naropa’s Nalanda campus in Boulder.

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Video after the jump.

The Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel, who shot the video, reports that Bachmann also touched on the priorities of Republicans, should they retake Congress in 2010. They would “pass repealer bill after repealer bill” in order to prevent the creation of a one-world currency and to pull the government back from controlling the “36 percent of private business profits” Bachmann claimed it had taken over.

She also said Michigan residents were “depressed enough” without Gitmo prisoners being relocated to state facilities where they could inspire more terrorists.

“This is where they learn conversion to Islam!” said Bachmann. “In the prisons!”

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But champion iconoclast John Caruso at his blog The Distant Ocean makes a mockery of such over-the-top interpretations of the speech — over-the-top interpretations on both the right and the left — by culling quotes from Bush on the same topics and passing them off as parts of the Obama speech. Brilliant!

On deference for Muslim culture and traditions (ie, the “Holy Koran”):

George W. Bush: We have great respect for the commitment that all Muslims make to faith, family, and education. And Americans of many backgrounds seek to learn more about the rich tradition of Islam. [...] I have asked young Americans to study the language and customs of the broader Middle East. And for the first time in our nation’s history, we have added a Koran to the White House Library.

On commitment to a state of Palestine and recognition of the suffering of the Palestinians:

Bush: I’m committed to two democratic states — Israel and Palestine — living side-by-side in peace and security. I’m committed to a Palestinian state that has territorial integrity and will live peacefully with the Jewish state of Israel. [...] The Palestinian people have suffered from decades of corruption and violence and the daily humiliation of occupation.

There’s also the refusal to kowtow to AIPAC and Israel, as though the president — whichever one it may be– was unconcerned with the potential political cost:

Bush: Israel also has a large stake in the success of a democratic Palestine. Permanent occupation threatens Israel’s identity and democracy. A stable, peaceful Palestinian state is necessary to achieve the security that Israel longs for. So I challenge Israel to take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable, credible Palestinian state.

And the bold demand that Israel stop all settlement activity:

Bush: Israeli settlement activity in occupied territories must stop. And the occupation must end through withdrawal to secure and recognize boundaries consistent with United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338. [...] Israel should also show a respect, a respect for and concern about the dignity of the Palestinian people who are and will be their neighbors.

And the thoughtful overtures to the people of Iran and an embrace of multilateralism:

Bush: Let me speak directly to the citizens of Iran: America respects you, and we respect your country. We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom. And our nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran.

To overcome dangers in our world, we must also take the offensive by encouraging economic progress, and fighting disease, and spreading hope in hopeless lands. Isolationism would not only tie our hands in fighting enemies, it would keep us from helping our friends in desperate need. We show compassion abroad because Americans believe in the God-given dignity and worth of a villager with HIV/AIDS, or an infant with malaria, or a refugee fleeing genocide, or a young girl sold into slavery.

Here he is also on the need to draw a clear distinction between Muslims in general and Muslim terrorists:

Bush: By deliberately murdering the innocent to advance their aims, these extremists defy the fundamental principles of international order. They show contempt for all who respect life and value human dignity. They reject the words of the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, or any standard of conscience or morality.

So, what to make of the ex-President’s confusing sentiments? Frank Gaffney might offer the same cautionary interpretation he provided today in considering the nearly identical sentiments expressed in Egypt by Obama:

Whether Mr. [Bush] actually is a Muslim or simply play[ed] one in the presidency may, in the end, be irrelevant. What is alarming is that in aligning himself and his policies with those of Shariah-adherents such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the president greatly intensif[ied] the already enormous pressure on peaceful, tolerant American Muslims to submit to such forces — and heightened expectations, here and abroad, that the rest of us will do so as well.

Read Caruso in full. Then read Gaffney again. You could get stuck doing that all night because, in Crazyland USA, who needs cocktails anymore?

Arguing with someone (cough … Rush Limbaugh) that Obama capitulated to Islam over Western concerns? Whip this out.

Note the relative size of the words “people” and “must” in the cloud. Looks like Obama is setting the stage for a new foreign policy of mutual obligation in finding peace in the Middle East.

h/t @tomaswk and @citizensnews via Twitter

A depiction of a mosque was erected in Denver's Civic Center Park during the Democratic National Convention to promote understanding and tolerance. (Photo/Lisa B, Flickr)

Members of Colorado’s Muslim community Monday praised former Secretary of State Colin Powell for his interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday in which the retired Republican Army general endorsed Democrat Barack Obama and condemned his own party’s attempts to portray Obama as a Muslim associated with terrorists.

“I’m also troubled by, not what Sen. (John) McCain says, but what members of the party say and it is permitted to be said, such things as, ‘Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian,” Powell told host Tom Brokaw.

“But the really right answer is what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, ‘He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.’ This is not the way we should be doing it in America.”

Powell, a Jamaican-American who served as National Security Advisor in the Reagan administration and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, also spoke of the sacrifices of Muslim-American soldiers who have died in combat in Iraq.

“I was deeply touched by Powell’s words and I agree with them,” said Ali Hasan, a Republican candidate for state House District 56 who lives in Beaver Creek. “However, I have been disappointed with Obama’s lack of outreach to the Muslim community. Obama, in my mind, has gone at great lengths to distance himself from the Islamic religion, rather than to actually discuss his special role in being someone that could unite divisions between America and the Muslim world.”

Hasan founded Muslims for Bush and later Muslims for America. He supports McCain for president but argues that both McCain and Obama have failed in making Muslim-American relations a campaign issue.
“I wouldn’t say that McCain has done a better job necessarily, but in actuality I wish both men would outreach the same way our President W. Bush did. So far, President W. Bush is one of few politicians to go to a Mosque, take off his shoes, kiss our Imam, and officially declare Islam as a religion of peace,” Hasan said.

“(Bush) has a terrific history of taking on members in his own party, including the likes of Franklin Graham, Tom Delay, and Tom Tancredo, for remarks that are divisive and xenophobic.”
Hasan, whose parents immigrated to Pueblo from Pakistan, did not specifically address McCain campaign tactics such as recent robo-calls portraying Obama as a terrorist, or anti-Muslim comments by some audience members at McCain-Palin rallies.

Muzaffar J. Shah, president of the Colorado Muslim Society, declined to single out either campaign but did say both candidates have failed to speak out strongly enough on the issue.

“I wish the leaders like Colin Powell would come up like the way he spoke [Sunday],” Shah said. “It was very balanced and it was very good for the country to unite and to keep away this poison within the society. So he was very good. I commend him for that.

“I wish the leadership, whether it’s Democrats or Republicans, would come out exactly the same way and talk about these kinds of issues and keep in mind that we have to treat each other with respect and we have to live together peacefully,” said Shah, who moved to Colorado 27 years ago from the disputed Indian state of Kashmir.