Muslims for McCain

I wish John McCain could denounce the bigots as clearly as some of his supporters did in this video. American Muslims have had a hard time of it since 9/11, and whatever your religious beliefs, as an American you ought to be disgusted by the way in which some on the right have played on such bigotry in this campaign.

Our enemy is not Islam. Our enemies are those who take their religious beliefs and turn them into justification for war and political upheaval - the forces of fundamentalist intolerance that seek to destroy liberal society and to establish a social order in which individual liberty is constrained by clerical authority.

The enemy of our freedom is not a religious minority that seeks only what any American asks of his neighbors - tolerance, goodwill and respect. The enemy is a large segment our own christian majority who fall in three camps:

-- those who seek to harness political power to a frankly religious agenda;

-- those who see no problem with that agenda but are not part of the movement; and

-- those who are somewhat concerned or even repelled by the politics of the religious right, but do not recognize that movement as a threat to our liberty.

My enemy is not Christianity, and it is not Islam. My enemy is the politicization of religion. My enemy is the use of the power of the state to impose the beliefs of a religious majority on the minority. My enemy is extremism, regardless of the particular set of beliefs and rituals of its adherents.

Before this election is over, I would like to hear John McCain and Barack Obama condemn the insults to American Muslims that have been hurled about during this campaign, but we all know that won't happen. Maybe a few words of consolation will have been spoken by November 4th, but nothing that will be much noticed or remembered.

It says something shameful about America that neither candidate dares to stand up for a religious minority under attack.