A "Mosque" and Obama's Religion: Coddling the Dangerously Ignorant

I see a connection between the furor over building a Muslim community center (containing a mosque) in lower Manhattan, and the controversy over some polls that show about a fourth of Americans believe Barack Obama is Muslim.

Both of these "news" items were manufactured to distract a willfully uninformed electorate from the lack of solutions our elected "leaders" have to address America's failing economy, education system, and infrastructure.

But that isn't the connection I have in mind.

Simply, we are allowing racism and  ignorance to guide public discourse.

Creating a furor over the proposed cultural center, just because it is sponsored by a Muslim organization (and has a mosque inside of it), belies the carelessness and cynicism of a public that continues to equate a single religion with the terrorist act on September 11, and doing so to perpetuate fear, and sway opinion through self-righteousness. 

This is nothing more than morally bankrupt politicians, who prey on the ignorance of what seems to be an increasingly uneducated public, to garner votes.

Obama's religion is an even bigger So What.  Except that the media, and especially Obama's supporters, are going out of their way to "reassure" people that Obama is "really a Christian"....  The implication here being that he is certainly not one of those nasty Muslims....

Really?  Is it easier, and more politically expedient, for the President's handlers and the media to assuage the uninformed back into their misconceptions, by convincing them that there really isn't a monster under their beds?  Isn't this pandering to the basest, most obvious prejudice?  Or are a sizeable block of voters really that far beyond reason?...Is this the issue that will elect or unseat a politician?

Doesn't anyone see that these two "issues" represent a form of sanctioned racism?

Poll Shows More Americans Wrongly Believe Obama Is Muslim




Confusion about the president's beliefs appears to be growing among the population, according to a new poll from the nonpartisan Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The poll found that 18 percent of those surveyed wrongly identified Obama as Muslim, up from 11 percent in March 2009. At the same time, the number of Americans who said they believed, correctly, that Obama is Christian has declined from 48 percent in March 2009 to 34 percent today. But 43 percent of Americans now say they don't know what Obama's religion is at all.
The Pew poll was conducted between July 21 and Aug. 5, before Obama weighed in on the controversial plan to build an Islamic center near the site of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.
The misinformation continues to exist despite the president's own declarations of his Christian faith and the statements of his spiritual advisers.