What’s the Matter With the Muslim Vote?

For years, Muslims and Islam have been the center of some of the most heated and controversial debates in the Western world – about things as fickle as faith, democracy, and values. “Clash of Civilizations;” 9/11; the Cartoon Controversy; the veil (a symbol of oppression, or a symbol of unshakable faith); Palestine and Israel; Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran… Therefore, one could have expected Muslims to take center stage during the 2008 elections. But what happened?

To find out, I (P) asked Katrin Simon (KS), assistant professor of Islamic studies at the Free University Berlin, a few questions…

In the Hue of History

In a little more than 13 hours, U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama will stand in the golden hue of Victoria, at the foot of Prussian greatness, walking in the footsteps of American greats before him.

Germans know their history well. To this day, over 50 years after WWII, and almost 20 years since the Wall gave way to German unity, they are still struggling with their past. To this day, you will still find Germans in their forties being asked, if they ever met Hitler when they were in the Hitlerjugend. And to this day, you will still find young Europeans carrying within them the resentment passed down through generations, from when they were occupied by the Nazi regime.

No page in history is the mere sum of its words. It holds the lives and fates of the thousands before it, who paved the way. It holds the hearts and souls of those who changed it. And it owes its life to those, whose story it did not tell.

In a New Yorker Minute

They did it. With the stroke of a pen, The New Yorker did what the Republicans have been trying to do ever since Obama proved a force to be reckoned with in the 2008 election: they created the perfect GOP Smear Campaign poster.

On its July 21, 2008, cover, The New Yorker is portraying Barack and Michelle Obama in the Oval Office as fist-bumping, ‘fro donning (Michelle), US flag burning, bin-Laden-outfit wearing (Obama) and bin-Laden praising (crowning the mantlepiece) connivers.

The Obama Campaign is incensed, and HuffPost is not about to quench the fire. But let’s be honest: this cartoon barely has enough spark to ignite the bomb in the Prophet Muhammad’s turban (if you still don’t know how it got there, ask Jyllands-Posten), let alone a firecracker. To be sure, I’m not even certain if this qualifies as a stroke for freedom of speech.

The Fat of the Land

Thank God Obama stuck to guns and religion, when trying to illustrate the big bind America has gotten itself into over the last years. One can only imagine what would have happened, if he had been deemed elitist for stressing an even (literally) bigger one: obesity. The Mister Softee jingle (“Bubblicious RMX” feat. Celine Dion and Enrique Iglesias) would go triple platinum, Ronald McDonald would clinch a last-minute nomination and pull home an election landslide, and Coca-Cola would break the NASDAQ after announcing its plan to fuse with leading water providers to deliver sparkling soft drinks fresh from the tap.

We Hood, We Votin’, and Throwin’ it Uuuup!

Just when you thought the Dems were beginning to move in circles, looking to something as colorful as gas taxes to spike the “Donkey Punch,” Obama supporters turn the knobs and change the beat.

Following Will.I.Am’s wildly popular “Yes We Can,” featuring soul saint John Legend, basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and the angelic Scarlett Johansson (just to name a few), TI$A (from the superior, but much overlooked, hip-hop/r’n'b producer/writer/super group Sa-Ra Creative Partners) drops another MTV/Hollywood gem to keep the election spectacle vibrant.

Obama for President: American Dream or Forever Hopeful?

Call him the Black Kennedy, the Tiger Woods of politics, or the Second Coming. The epithets used to describe presidential hopeful Barack Obama (D-Ill) are a testimony to an election that is so much more than politics. There is something close to biblical about rain, when the skies give way to an almost cathartic downpour, draining off the drudge, sins and conversation-residuals clogging the streets. In any Hollywood movie (especially considering the writers’ strike) it could have been a Second Coming scenario, yet it was an unassuming Monday with weather more befitting of an unassuming British city pronounced Gloomster (but probably spelled Gleucmcester) in the midst of Berlin. The prophesized savior of American politics, Barack Obama, drew close to a 100 people, who sought shelter in the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung on this rainy, borderline-suicidal Monday evening, to learn about the self-professed harbinger of a new era – in a country so far from theirs.

Who’s Barack Obama?

Feel like you don’t know all there is to know about the “Second Coming”? Still unsure how to categorize this newest high-rise on the Democratic block? Here’s your chance:

“Wer ist Barack Obama? Vortrag und Diskussion” featuring Christoph von Marschall, Washington correspondent for the Tagesspiegel

Time: Monday, 21. Januar, 2008 @ 18.30 Uhr
Place: Galerie der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Rosenthaler Str. 40/41, Berlin-Mitte
Free Entry/Eintritt frei

Excerpt from the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung’s own description (in German):
Der Vorwahlkampf in den USA ist in vollem Gange und Barack Obama ist der Überraschungskandidat mit guten Chancen auf das Präsidentenamt.
Obama gilt als der “Kennedy seiner Generation”: ein Hoffnungsträger, der einen neuen Stil einführt und die Schranken des Establishments niederreißt.
Doch welche politischen Positionen und welche Werte vertritt er? Was hat die Welt zu erwarten, wenn er als erster Afroamerikaner ins Weiße Haus einziehen sollte? Und vor welchem gesellschaftlichen Hintergrund konnte er in so kurzer Zeit so erfolgreich werden?

Christoph von Marschall begleitet seit einem Jahr Barack Obama im Wahlkampf und verfolgt die Vorwahlen aus nächster Nähe.

Fachkontakt: Barbara Assheuer assheuer@boell.de

By Peter Dahl

Have Prophets Replaced Pork as Denmark’s Main Export?

It’s election time in the Danish Kingdom, and what better way to churn out those votes, than to let the Prophet Muhammad work his magic?

The Danish People’s Party (DPP, Dansk Folkeparti) has published election posters (here) featuring a drawing by Alexander Ross from 1683 of the Prophet. The poster reads in bold, capital letters: “Freedom of Speech is Danish, Censorship Isn’t – We Hang on to the Danish Values,” and continues, “Danish People’s Party – Your Country, Your Choice.” According to Danish People’s Party’s party leader, Pia Kjærsgaard, “We [Danish People's Party] are not doing this to provoke, but are doing it exactly because a drawing – a 400 year old drawing of Muhammad – is a symbol of the freedom of speech in Denmark, because we hung on to that freedom of speech.”

Maher Roasts Nuts Live

Bill Maher’s at it again.

The man who brought you “Politically Incorrect,” which ABC eventually took off the air in 2002 after Maher made a comment on live radio that the 9/11 terrorists were not cowards, but “we [the American government] have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away,” might just have hit home with the political right.

From the 78th Floor to the Stairway to Heaven

Sometimes, silence seems louder than the shrillest noise. In New York, where noise is the norm, silence can pierce your heart and penetrate your soul, until you feel like crying.

6 years after 2 planes pierced the hearts of an entire nation, and penetrated the souls of the Western world, the silence at Ground Zero still screams. And though the pain will never go away, New York is back on its feet.