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He has Muslim family connections. His half brother recently referred to his Muslim background. I don't see how it helps to treat being a Muslim as a smear and to try to discount the reasons people believe he is a Muslim. There's more basis to the belief than there was to the false belief that Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11. Treating them as no different in their quality and failing to address facts is patronizing and damaging to the credibilty of efforts to cleanse public debate. For instance, if someone said, I know Obama's father was Muslim and his half brother sees him as having a Muslim background, simply calling the person ignorant is not a good response. One would need to further explore the significance to that person of the actual facts. Personally, I think we went astray when we started getting politicians who were not Deists, ala the Founding Fathers. The increasingly sectarian flavor to our politics is dangerous. It is now part of our public discourse to discuss people's religion. Obama's is a more complicated discussion. Claiming it isn't and slamming people for caring won't work, now that we have legitimated a popularized religious test for office.
