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It was Keith Ellison who took his oath of office on a Koran. Keith Ellison, KEITH ELLISON! Different man, different state, different house of Congress. But more or less the same skin color, and so the writers of viral e-mails are counting on their readers not to be able to tell any of "them" apart. Scams like this count on people to remember an actual incident, but to remember it vaguely, and not to know the name of the Muslim Congressman, so that when Karl Rove -- er, whoever planted this rumor -- pulls a switcheroo and substitutes Obama's name, the readers will be too credulous and lazy to look up the correct information. Instead, they'll say, "Oh yeah, I remember that. So that was Obama, was it?"
An earlier letter writer suggested that "racism" is the wrong term for bigotry against Muslims, since Islam is a religous faith rather than a religious group. Maybe so, but just as German anti-Semites deliberately blurred the line between the religion of Judaism and the Jewish "race" for many decades before Hitler, bigots who attack Obama are using "Muslim" as a code for swarthy-skinned outsider. And when people argue with a straight face that being the grandson of a Muslim makes him a Muslim under Sharia law, that argument is not similar to the one Hitler used to define "Jew." They are using THE SAME ARGUMENT.
