More on the Asbahi Tempest

by Michael Fechter  •  Aug 12, 2008 at 11:29 am

http://www.investigativeproject.org/1124/more-on-the-asbahi-tempest

Our colleague Doug Farah has an interesting post about the continuing furor over the resignation of Mazen Asbahi as Barack Obama's Muslim outreach coordinator. Check it out yourself, but Farah does a great job neatly dissecting the blowback that comes from any episode like this one. Asbahi resigned less than two weeks after joining the campaign after it was reported he had ties with groups connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.

As Farah notes:

The tactics have been familiar to any who follow these groups: attack the messenger, despite the fact that the postings simply laid out Mr. Ashbahi's multiple ties to MB groups, based on SEC filing and public records-and made no allegations of any illegality or impropriety; attack the Wall Street Journal and Glenn Simpson for following up on the report, and having the nerve to call Mr. Asbahi for comment (which is now described as a right-wing expose-in-the-making, as if belonging to FOUR-not one MB groups, as has been widely reported-were not worthy of comment, or a story when the resignation happened); blame the media et al for Mr. Asbahi's resignation, as if an e-mailed question about the relationship from a journalist were somehow an unacceptable practice in seeking information; and paint the entire thing as anti-Muslim bash-fest by the far right (see this wildly inaccurate and deceptive piece by James Zogby in the Huffington Post; and, finally, fail to address ANY of the substantive issues such associations raise.

Related Topics: Michael Fechter