Note from Rafik Beekun: Very few commentators of an international stature like Maureen Dowd have examined at length Powell’s statement about the Islamophobic statements made by many in the Republican party over the past year. My wife is a Navy veteran. My son is now serving in the Navy. My father-in-law served in the Army. My sister-in-law was career Air Force. Are we less American because we are Muslims or related to Muslims? I commend General Powell for speaking out on this issue on National TV, and I thank Maureen for talking about this issue.
By MAUREEN DOWD, Op-Ed Columnist, New York Times
Published: October 21, 2008
Colin Powell had been bugged by many things in his party’s campaign this fall: the insidious merging of rumors that Barack Obama was Muslim with intimations that he was a terrorist sympathizer; the assertion that Sarah Palin was ready to be president; the uniformed sheriff who introduced Governor Palin by sneering about Barack Hussein Obama; the scorn with which Republicans spit out the words “community organizer”; the Republicans’ argument that using taxes to “spread the wealth” was socialist when the purpose of taxes is to spread the wealth; Palin’s insidious notion that small towns in states that went for W. were “the real America.”
But what sent him over the edge and made him realize he had to speak out was when he opened his New Yorker three weeks ago and saw a picture of a mother pressing her head against the gravestone of her son, a 20-year-old soldier who had been killed in Iraq. On the headstone were engraved his name, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, his awards — the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star — and a crescent and a star to denote his Islamic faith.
“I stared at it for an hour,” he told me. “Who could debate that this kid lying in Arlington with Christian and Jewish and nondenominational buddies was not a fine American?”
Please click here to read the whole column from Maureen.
Additional Link:
The Islamic Workplace 
Posted on October 22, 2008
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