[Reader-list] US: Colin Powell & a Muslim Gravestone

[Naeem Mohaiemen]

Black President in the house!! It's really going to happen, holy cow! - Naeem

On "Meet the Press" today, Colin L. Powell concluded his endorsement
of Sen. Barack Obama by referring to the death of a Muslim soldier,
Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan of Manahawkin, N.J., who was killed in Iraq
on Aug. 6, 2007, and whose remains were buried in Arlington. Kareem
Rashad Sultan Khan and three other soldiers....were killed in Baquba
after a bomb detonated while they were checking abandoned houses for
explosives. They served in the Stryker Brigade combat team of the
Army's 2nd Infantry Division, based in Ft. Lewis, Washington. Mr. Khan
graduated from Southern Regional High School in Manahawkin in 2005,
and enlisted in the Army a few months later, spurred by his memories
of the 9/11 terror attacks. "His Muslim faith did not make him not
want to go. It never stopped him," his father, Feroze Khan, told the
Gannett News Service in a story printed shortly after his death. "He
looked at it that he's American and he has a job to do." This is what
Powell said about Khan on "Meet the Press:"He was 14 years old at the
time of 9/11, and he waited until he could go serve his country, and
he gave his life," Mr. Powell said. "Now, we have got to stop
polarizing ourselves in this way."

http://www.truveo.com/Meet-the-PressCollin-Powell-Endorsing-Barack-Obama/id/738770379

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/19/135740/17/131/635488


> "They're trying to connect [Obama] to some kind of terrorist feelings, and
> I think that's inappropriate," Powell said. "Now I understand what
> politics is all about - I know how you can go after one another. And
> that's good. But I think this goes too far. And I think it has made the
> McCain campaign look a little narrow. It's not what the American people
> are looking for. And I look at these kinds of approaches to the campaign,
> and they trouble me. And the party has moved even further to the right,
> and Governor Palin has indicated a further rightward shift."
> Powell said he has "heard senior members of my own party drop the
> suggestion [that Obama's] a Muslim and might be associated with
> terrorists."

> "This is not the way we should be doing it in America. I feel strongly
> about this particular point," Powell said. "We have got to stop polarizing
> ourselves in this way. And John McCain is as non-discriminatory as anyone
> I know. But I'm troubled about the fact that within the party, we have
> these kinds of expressions."


> "This Powell endorsement is the nail in the coffin," said one Republican
> official, speaking anonymously to offer candid thoughts about the party's
> nominee. "Not just because of him, but the indictment he laid out of the
> McCain campaign."