re: #3 Obdicut

He is very, very, very slightly marginally right— one of the reasons we’re seeing more anti-Muslim rhetoric now is because of the absence of Bush. Bush, his other faults aside, made sure to repeatedly state that we were not at war with Islam, not at war with Muslims, and that, in fact, we were fighting radical Muslims for the sake of other Muslims…

Problem is that the many of the people who heeded Bush on this issue simply don’t trust Obama. Conservative Islamophobes grudgingly followed Bush, but won’t even listen to Obama on the issue. They’ve already made up their minds that Obama is overly sympathetic to Muslims and may even be “one of them.”

The anti-Muslim bigotry was simmering just below the surface for the last decade. So, in a way, Reynolds is right. If only Obama had done a better job convincing reactionaries that he’s really not a disguised Muslim, then there might be less anti-Islamic lunacy right now.