CHICAGO — Barack Obama’s victory not only belied the so-called Bradley effect for black candidates. Experts say it also defied an “Osama effect” — opposition efforts to sway voters by connecting Obama to radical Islam.
In fact, experts say the scare tactic mobilized record numbers of American Muslim voters and others to forgive Obama’s slights toward the Muslim community and choose him as the nation’s next president.
“It was perfectly all right to call him Muslim, to call him Arab because that was a smear that we haven’t said as a nation: ‘That’s not OK,’ ” said Jen’nan Ghazal Read, an associate professor of sociology at Duke University. “Maybe (Obama’s election) will bring that to the fore. It’s not OK to say Muslims are not American. They are as American as anyone else.”
That was evident in Tuesday’s voting patterns. Preliminary results of a survey by the American Muslim Task Force for Civil Rights and Elections suggest about 90 percent of Muslims voted for Obama, while only 2 percent chose John McCain. Preliminary Gallup polls reflect similar numbers.
Ahmed Younis of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies pointed out that for the first time in American history, the white-male majority did not vote for the winner. Instead, Obama was elected by a coalition of Americans as diverse as the nation itself but who share a set of common ideals.
“This vote was a vote pursuant to an American identity,” Younis said.
