Obamas’s staff is planning a visit for the days following the NATO summit in early April. The President will be joined by his Secretary of the State, Hillary Clinton. Obama wants to thank the Berliners for their help during the election, the Focus assumes.

Back in July 2008, in the midst of the election, Obama drew a massive crowd to the Siegessäule, but did not deliver a particularly historic speech. The event will be remembered more for the passion he did spark with Berliners and maybe even for the provincial debate around the question where Obama will speak. His words were more directed at the television viewers and voters back home than at the 200,000 Berliners in front of him.

If he returns in April, there is no election holding him back on formulating a new understanding of transatlantic relations in the 21st century. Everything he might promise to the European public will be more than a campaign pledge; Obama’s word will carry the weight of his office. All that is a big if—it all depends on Obama’s intention to deliver more than a mere thank you note.

Last week, the transition team announced that all politically-appointed ambassadors must vacate their post by January 20. Timken is totally cool with that. And the Ohioan businessman turned diplomat has some friendly words to say about his future Commander-in-Chief. He called Obama’s speech at Berlin’s victory column a “giant show”, which I’m sure is a compliment. Timken is even intimately familiar with the President-elect’s biography and appreciates his honesty: “That Obama so unabashedly admitted his drug usage is astounding. It would be more desirable if he and his wife were vanguards in the fight against drugs. Someone who has the top job in country should be a moral role model.”

But Timken, who according to malicious rumors got his job by raising $300,000 for the 2004 Bush campaign (earning him “Super Ranger”-status), is still rolling. He’s showing fond concern for Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton’s wellbeing, saying that her husband needs to be “thoroughly checked. A lot of tricky questions are probably coming his way.”

Nevertheless, he feels the obligation to say at least a few nice words about his current boss, pointing out Bush’s accomplishments in Africa, his successful fight against terror and the fact that Angela Merkel installed a video conference system specifically for her groping buddy George W.

What will she do with it now that Bush leaves office? Tapmag has a suggestion: Call up William Timken in Ohio!

No, I am not referring to the announcement by Senator McCain of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his Running Mate, which prompted his daughter, Meghan McCain, to gush on her blog about how “incredibly inspired” she was by this choice. One can just hope that when Meghan writes about “the evolution in the role of women as leaders in politics” and how this was “a great moment for young women everywhere” she realizes that if it hadn’t been for another women in politics, this would quite probably never have happened (Maybe someone can pass over those “Herstory” signs left over from the DNC to St. Paul).

Still, let us not miss the historic moment of a female candidate on the Republican ticket – which was in trouble of getting lost amidst all the speculations surrounding Governor Palin’s family. It was announced Monday that one of the Governor’s children, 17-year-old Bristol, is five months pregnant. While pro-life groups rejoced and the McCain campaign blamed the biased media for cruel reporting, this interesting conversation was broadcast on Fox News.

Click here to watch it.

I never thought I’d say this, but I agree with a commentator on Fox. With Kondracke, that is.

Not Part of the Campaign?

The problem I have with what Mr. Kristol, and many others, are saying, is that- of course this is part of the campaign. It is part of the campaign because it enables voters to get a grasp of the candidate, to see her personal side, and because all candidate’s families are inevitably in the spotlight. It is especially strange to request that this situation be left out of coverage if it is then carefully staged into a hug-and-kiss moment at an airport and the convention.

When you become a candidate for the second highest elected office in the nation, you know the media are going to dig out all the dead bodies left anywhere. Now Mrs. Palin’s daughter can open up a newspaper from New York to Chicago to China and Germany and read that she is pregnant. Of course it’s personal. But you know it’ll get out before you accept an offer to become vice president of the United States. So complaining about the mean media, in my eyes, isn’t really in order.

It should not be part of a dirt campaign against the Palin’s, that is right. Now, no one is going to step onto that thin ice.

A Family Like Any Other

An argument raised in favour of the Palins was that this showed them as a normal American family with normal problems, the problems that your neighbor or friend or colleage might have. Of course, it is wonderful to embrace a person with all their mistakes, that stands out of question.

But isn’t it a little discomforting that teenage pregnancy is considered “normal”? Something that can happen to the best of families, and does happen to them all the time? Teenage pregnancy is not some kind of inevitable fate, it is easily avoided by using contraception (or, as some want to believe, by abstinence… I dare the assumption that maybe one percent of the abstinence-only supporters were themselves abstinent in their teenage years. All the abstinence is nice talk until you fall head over heels in love.)

Therefore, the issue that these events raise deserves to be talked about, in a respectful way. It puts an idea into question that McCain has rallied for: Should there be programs to educate teenagers about sex? Apparently, the Senator doesn’t think so. In the light of these events, he might want to reconsider.

To find out, www.tapmag.net (TM) asked Katrin Simon (KS) of the Free University of Berlin a few questions. Katrin Simon is a PhD student in Islamic Studies, specializing in African American Islam, who just returned from New York where she conducted fieldwork.

TM:
Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinejad, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Jihad… Since 9/11 2001, it seems like Islam has been one of the hottest potatoes out there – politically and religiously. Yet, google “muslim vote 2008 election,” and you get 303,000 hits (July 18, 2008), but hardly any from the mainstream media, dealing with the Muslim vote during this election.

Do Muslims not have a say in U.S. politics, are they not relevant, or do they simply not care?

KS:

American Muslims definitely care! They have to, since they are under scrutiny from various sides: the government and aligned institutions, other faith communities in the U.S., the American public and media in general, or Muslims worldwide. As we have millions of Muslims in the U.S. (around 6 million is the most quoted number) they are also relevant since these persons are possible voters. The question is if they matter as “Muslims,” that is, if they form something like a ‘Muslim voting block,’ where self-identifying Muslims rally around a “Muslim opinion.”

The U.S. Muslim community is the most diverse in the whole world. More than a third are African-Americans (mostly converts), a third have an Arab background, and a quarter a South Asian one. You could only speak about a Muslim voting bloc if those people gave priority to their Muslim identity instead of national, ethnic, racial, or class considerations. But studies show that there exist huge fissures along these lines, although there seems to be a tendency towards a “Muslim consciousness” since 9/11. Before, immigrant Muslims, who were mainly middle-class, gave priority to their conservative attitudes in moral issues and economy, and came out supporting G.W. Bush strongly in the 2000 election, whereas African American Muslims voted mostly Democrat, like the black community in general. Since 9/11 and the Iraq war, however, immigrant Muslims share with their black Muslim brethren the feeling of marginalization, stigmatization, and alienation from mainstream America and in 2004 shifted to John Kerry.

Nonetheless, ethnic lobby groups still represent more Muslim voters than decidedly Muslim lobby groups. From a strategic point of view, this is definitely more effective, since support from a Muslim group still gains negative press for any politician. The main reason for the invisibility of a Muslim voting block is that American Muslims have failed in establishing effective advocacy groups that add an outspoken ‘Muslim perspective’ to American public debates. Whether there is no will, or simply a lack of ability, to do that is a hotly contested issue even within the American Muslim community.

TM:
One of the most persistent, and effectual, scare tactics of the 2008 campaign has been to refer to, and speculate about, Barack Obama’s Muslim ties. One might ask, why this should even be offensive in the first place, in a country like the US, where the 1st Amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion? But the Obama campaign has wasted quite a lot of energy and time on denying those claims (e.g., “Know the Facts” from Obama’s homepage stating: “Obama has never been a Muslim, and is a commited Christian”). In fact, according to recent surveys, in the wake of the much-debated The New Yorker cover, 12% still thought Obama is Muslim.

In 2008, how is this still possible? And who has failed more in improving the “Muslim image” in the US – the media, the politicians, or the Muslims themselves?

KS:
When I talk to non-Muslim Americans, I am sometimes told that they cannot vote for a Muslim. The name (Barack Hussein Obama), the stepfather [Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia], and his having attended a Muslim school [in Jakarta, Indonesia] (which is false), seem to be proof enough. Sometimes people add that if Obama was an apostate he would have already been killed by Muslims, so he must still be a Muslim. But fortunately, these voices become increasingly silent.
The point is that being Muslim still seems to contradict the possibility of being a ‘good American citizen,’ as if it were a question of double loyalties. We should not forget that it took a long time before Catholics stopped being accused of being more loyal to the Vatican than to the U.S. [editors note: even JFK battled with this throughout the majority of his 1960 presidential campaign]. So Muslims are definitely not the first groups [charged with such accusations]. But since 9/11, “Islam” as a whole is perceived as the big enemy of America, and voting for a Muslim could mean to vote for the wolf in sheep’s clothing – for the enemy within.

Even a half-educated American public believes to know this much about Islam: that in “Islam” there is no division of religious and state affairs; and they take that as proof that a Muslim president could not possibly distinguish between his own religious identity and political considerations (G.W. Bush, by the way, is the best proof of a president who was bringing his own religious convictions to the office). But unfortunately, the American public, including the media, fail to acknowledge that something like “the Islam” does not exist – that Islam is as diverse as the 1 billion Muslims in the world, and that there is no single, exclusive opinion about how politics and religion should relate to each other. But who failed in improving the Muslim image in the U.S. is difficult to say. I tend to think that this question is so tightly connected with American foreign policy that as long as, especially, the situation in the Middle East is presented as a “clash of civilization” with Islam – instead of as tensions in a region whose inhabitants are predominantly Muslim – this image won’t change.

TM:
Recently, Obama has struggled to cater to Jewish voters, going so far as to declaring that “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel – and it must remain undivided” (words which Obama later admitted were “poorly chosen”).

On the Muslim side, however, the presidential candidates have not done much catering. For instance, Mrs. Clinton returned $50,000 in political contributions, which she received from the American Muslim Alliance (AMA). This is a woman who ended up loaning her own campaign over $10,000,000 of her own money! What is more, in September 2007, at the 44th annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in Chicago, all of the Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls in the race at that time were invited to speak. Not one accepted the invitation!

Are American Muslims really that bad? Is there simply no room for Muslims in American politics?

KS:
A brilliant article in Islamica Magazine dealt with the Muslim community’s “Obama problem”. Its author, Firas Ahmad, wrote about the difficulty of supporting a candidate, while knowing that each support from your side will lessen his chances of winning. Obama would lose much more votes if he is suspected of having too close ties to Islam, than he could gain by directly addressing possible Muslim voters. This is the only reason why a politician would reject a voting block, although he usually will try to get as many voters as possible, especially in such a competitive and open-ended campaign. So the question here relates directly to the public image of Islam and Muslims in the U.S. Furthermore, this point is directly connected to the important Jewish vote: American media reported a lot about disappointed Jewish voters, who think about switching to McCain instead of voting for Obama, now that Hillary is done. This could be dangerous for Obama, since Jews have traditionally been a reliable support of the Democratic vote.

As for the ISNA convention: no politician would risk being seen in a picture, let alone on TV, together with certain participants of the biggest Muslim gatherings in America. Most of them are definitely good and loyal citizens, but a few are nonetheless famous for their critical attitude towards the American political system. The Muslim vote is [simply] not important enough. Also, thanks to Bush, most Muslims will not vote Republican anyway. So Obama has no reason to show up with Muslims in public. Most Muslim I have been talking to understand that this would only bring damage to his campaign, and if there is anything most American Muslims currently want, it is for Obama [to win the election].

TM:
On January 4, 2007, Keith Ellison (R, DFL–MN) became the first Muslim to assume office in the US Congress.

On March 13, 2008, André Carson became the United States Representative for Indiana’s 7th congressional district, becoming the second Muslim to hold office in the US Congress.

Ellison was sworn in using Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an from 1764, rather than a Bible – a first-time-ever in the history of the United States. Sure enough, this garnered a lot of controversy in the national media, to which Ellison responded: “It demonstrates that from the very beginning of our country, we had people who were visionary, who were religiously tolerant, who believed that knowledge and wisdom could be gleaned from any number of sources, including the Quran.”

Are Ellison and Carson an indication of a new breed of American political visionaries?

KS:
Did Ellison and Carson get elected because they were Muslim? I don’t think so. They are both African Americans, and in the black community, there is almost no family without [a Muslim member] – be it “orthodox Islam,” Nation of Islam or anything else. Their religious identity is neither their only point of reference when they make politics, nor, from what I can tell, their prioritized focus. Only the kind of scandal that emerged as soon as the media covered Ellison’s story, his possible connections to the Nation of Islam (which most white Americans perceive as anti-white racist), and his wish to be sworn in on the Qur’an, put Ellison on the spot. He had to make clear, whether his religious convictions threaten his loyalty towards his job as an American politician. I think, he chose the best way by bringing his Muslim identity in a context with American history, with a Founding Father even, and religious tolerance as one of the traditionally most important American values. I am not sure if he thought about that before he got into that trouble – I tend to think that it was a sort of invented narrative, but definitely a helpful and convincing one.

At a talk at NYU, Ellison stressed his eagerness to bring America back to the ideals on which it was founded. He explained that he became a better Muslim during his election campaign. When “Media&Co.” harrassed him, he was forced to study Islam more extensively, he told the audience, and he realized then, during these hardships, how far this country was from the values it had once promised to its citizens.

TM:
In New York, you were conducting fieldwork by attending Salaatul Jum’ah (Friday prayer) at the Masjid at-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn. What were the things being addressed there? Also, the imams are (in)famous, amongst other things, for their political influence on the Muslim community. How would you describe their role during this elections?

KS:
Almost each khutba (sermon) dealt, in one way or another, with politics and the [2008] elections. But, as far as I can tell, this is not representative of all mosques in the U.S. My impression is that African American mosques put a higher emphasis on political debates, similar to most black churches (with which many of the black imams grew up). Immigrant mosques (and most American mosques are still ethnic mosques), however, only talk indirectly about political affairs, e.g., by addressing moral value topics, but rarely by naming politicians or parties.

A big topic is of course American foreign policy. But interestingly, most sermons dealt much more with Palestine than with Iraq. Palestine also seems to be the big topic around which African American and immigrant Muslims unite, although immigrants are in general more concerned with foreign policy issues, whereas black Muslims focus on domestic policy. But Palestine was repeatedly presented as the symbol of American (and Israeli) hubris and hypocrisy, where democratic evolutions are oppressed in the name of democracy and human rights.

Also, the khtubas emphasized Muslim experiences of discrimination in the U.S. – be it at airports, in schools or at the working place; of raids and detaining; and biased and skewed media representation. Again, the hypocrisy of the American system was addressed, which, for many Muslims, seems neither willing, nor able, to fulfill the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – although they recognize the core values that are the basis of these documents. Only one imam openly questioned the system as a whole, and the values on which it was grounded.

For a long time, it was a contested issue within the American Muslim community, whether one could, and should, participate in elections. Today, obviously, most agree that if one wants to have any influence, one has to vote. Even Louis Farrakhan from the Nation of Islam openly endorsed Obama, and encouraged his audience to vote for him (which was, ironically, possibly more detrimental than beneficial to the Obama campaign).

Many Muslims have difficulties endorsing a candidate who, on the one hand, supports an end to the Iraq mission and shows no open hostility towards Muslims, while, on the other, favors the possibility of homosexual civil unions and a liberal abortion law. This is, by the way, a problem that many Muslims face in Europe as well: although they are, for the most part, conservative regarding moral issues, they nonetheless vote for liberal parties who represent their economic interest and embrace a multi-cultural and tolerant model of society (including groups many Muslims have problems with). At the same time, conservative parties often reject conservative Muslim voters by anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant rhetoric. This is one reason why some Muslims favored Republican Ron Paul – a “compassionate conservative.”
But all imams were united in their opinion that it is a blessing that the system forbids Bush to run for a third term. And most of them seem to hope that Obama, as soon as the election is over, can openly articulate his sympathy for American Muslims – which they believe he sincerely feels, even if he has to hide it for now.

Written and edited by Peter Dahl

You know, I always said to Bill “We can not and will not be defeated!” For christsakes, he got into the White House, and he knows probably half as much about health care, trade negotiations and the Iraq War as I do. Who could – no, better – who dared to stop me? I had the pundits, I had the funding, I had the media. I was a historical inevitability.

And then you came in – tall, handsome, big smile, “an agent of change.” I have to admit, I did not take you serious. Heck, I even considered you my running mate for a brief period. And then all these college kids added you as a friend on facebook.

And with that, I lost the media. They loved you. They saw this black JFK, who voted against the Iraq War early. Not that it mattered, we still went to war, but you did! To them, you could right all wrongs. Oh, looky here, Obama plays Basketball, and looky there, his wife is a brilliant speaker and has a mind on her own. Cute kids, by the way. And boy, what a mother Obama has, can you believe that? Hello, I am married to a former President! But it didn’t matter at that point

It did matter a couple of weeks later. Suddenly, Bill wasn’t an asset anymore, he turned into a liability. I tell you what: He has never been an advantage for me in my political career. It was just that all these campaign strategists and public opinion experts thought he could win back some of the votes you claimed. So he got back on stage, white-haired and red-faced, kicking the living shit out of you. A perfect example of the old-style politics you want to overcome. Great. That really helped me, thanks a lot. And with that, I lost the pundits.

Also gone by this moment: my funding. I had to dip into my own pocket to keep it going, you know?

Ah Barack, it could have just been us three: you, me, and the American people. Fair game. But somehow, somewhere things got out of hand. Maybe it was the fact that I didn’t had planned anything for the primaries. I thought of them as a nice ride to the real deal later this year. Maybe I misread the general feeling, and people really crave inspiration more than CEO talk about how to run the country and clean up the mess in Iraq. Maybe race is less of a divider than gender. Point is: I don’t know.

Anyhow, I made sure you had to bite the bullet and focus on the primaries because I stayed in and in and in – in fact, I’m still running. Because you owe me, Barack. You took it all. I had the media, the pundits, the funding, I even did alright in the polls. Now my campaign’s broke, I have no game and no promising options left. Vice-Presidency? I don’t know. Oh, you owe me.

Why am I writing this letter then?

Since you are almost President now (not like McCain can beat you, you beat me and that’s almost impossible to pull off), could you maybe throw this Vanity Fair writer out of the country? You just don’t do this to people. That would be awesome, thanks!

One last thing, don’t tell Bill about this letter. Good luck for November!

Best,

Hillary

By Kolja Langnese