![](\"https:\/\/www.altmuslim.com\/ee_images\/rafi_hussein.jpg\")
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/p><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n
On September 2nd, 2008, my son Rafi was born at St. Mary\u2019s Hospital in London, England. I remember at the time that the excitement over Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin was sweeping through the Republican National Convention and things were suddenly starting to look gloomy for Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama. As an Obama supporter, I was fortunate enough not to have to dwell on that. I was pleasantly distracted by diaper changes, Facebook birth announcements, and sleeplessness.<\/p>\n
Like many American Muslims, I found myself gravitating towards Obama early in his campaign, when \u2013 ironically \u2013 some were starting to air their suspicions about his curious background. As the child of immigrants, Obama\u2019s unique story mirrored my own story and that of my parents. Granted, it wasn\u2019t a traditional American story, but it has become a more typical one. And as a Democrat, I was of course aghast at the past eight years of the Bush presidency (along with up to 80% of my fellow Americans).<\/p>\n
Though the election is now over, it may take still weeks or months for many of us to grasp the enormity of what has just happened. I\u2019m not necessarily referring to Obama\u2019s victory, but to the relentless campaign by the Republican right wing of xenophobic imagery, inference, and conjecture \u2013 all intended to suffocate his campaign. Although Obama hardly seemed to blink (does he ever?), the Muslim-tinged attacks, accelerating to the last days, sent American Muslims into a state of quiet shock. It has been the most sustained and aggressive onslaught of anti-Muslim hysteria ever foisted on the American public. <\/p>\n
Given the state of the economy and a sideshow of characters from Bill Ayers to Joe the Plumber, this war of attrition has not been obvious to most observers. Drenched in nuance, it took the nearly two-year length of the campaign and the extended primary season battle between Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton to begin to see a pattern. But when all the clues are pieced together, the resulting picture is damning.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.altmuslim.com\/images\/spacer.gif\"){kind=spacer}
<\/td>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.altmuslim.com\/images\/special_header.png\")
\n