Is it a big deal if presidential campaigns bash Muslims?

It’s just part of the political mudslinging, no? It won’t impact the Average Joe or Average Jalaal. Right?

Wrong!

How do you think bigots in the workplace get the balls to undermine or harass workers that are different than they are, dress differently than they do, pray to a different god?

If they hear surrogates of John McCain spewing hate about Muslims on the stump it’s like a free prejudice pass.

And folks, this isn’t just a recent phenomenon. Hillary Clinton even stoked the anti-Muslim flames when she was running against Obama in the primaries.

It amazes me that people can be so desperate for power they’ll use anything they can to grab it.

That’s why I was heartened when I heard Colin Powell this week on Meet the Press.

If you guys missed it here’s a video of the interview. I suggest you listen to it all, especially the part about Muslim bashing.

For those of you who don’t have time to listen to the entire interview, here’s an excerpt of a key part:

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

Exactly! And at the risk of tooting my own horn, I wrote about this in the Huffington Post months ago in a blog post titled, “So What If Obama Were Muslim?”

In it, I talked about the Muslim bias that had been bubbling up during the election process:

Race has been the linchpin in American bigotry, but after two planes flew into the World Trade Center towers, everything seemed to shift a bit.

Proof of the transformation has been evident during this presidential contest.

Rumors that Obama may be a Muslim are reported in the press as a “smear campaign.”

The bias is not merely stuck in politics. It will, and already has, permeated the workplace.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, recently reported that there were 2,652 incidents and e of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment in 2007 — “the highest number of civil rights cases ever recorded in the Washington-based group’s report.”

The study found that, “discrimination in the workplace against those already employed increased by 18 percent, with 384 cases reported in 2006 and 452 cases reported in 2007. There was also a 34 percent increase in reports of discrimination against those seeking employment. Cases involving denial of religious accommodation in the workplace jumped eight percent.”

Politicians may think they can say anything during an election and it will all go away once Nov. 5th rolls around. But unfortunately, the seeds sowed by the recent hateful/political speech will inevitably grow into weeds that choke Muslim workers in the workplace and beyond unless more people like Powell say enough is enough.