What American Muslims Know All-Too-Well About Shirley Sherrod

If anyone understands the plight of Shirley Sherrod - the Georgia Department of Agriculture official who was forced to resign from her post last week, after being falsely accused by the White House and the media of making anti-white racist remarks - it is America's Arabs and Muslims, who for years have endured similar treatment.

By now, Sherrod's story should be familiar. On July 19th, right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart posted a short video excerpt from a speech Ms. Sherrod delivered to a Georgia NAACP dinner, selectively edited to give the impression that Sherrod had made discriminatory comments against white farmers, when in fact she had been recalling a parable designed to show that poor people should be treated equally, regardless of race.

At once, the video posted on the right-wing website BigGovernment.com became a cause celebre for conservatives, and within hours, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack moved in haste to protect the reputation of the Obama administration by forcing Sherrod to resign from her position. Only later did Vilsack, the White House, and the national media decide to watch Sherrod's entire speech, after which the grave injustice of her firing became clear. By the end of the week, President Obama had personally called Sherrod to apologize, and Vilsack offered her an elevated position within the Department.

Sherrod clearly fell victim to multiple levels of unjust attack, from a hysterical "gotcha" media culture to an administration far too concerned with partisan politics and unwilling to initiate a much-needed national dialogue on race. But while Sherrod's story is certainly unfortunate, her case is not unique. For years, an industry of fierce and relentless anti-Arab groups and individuals have been creating websites, posting videos, launching vicious smear campaigns, and tracking and monitoring the every move of American Muslims, Arab-Americans, and Middle East academics and scholars.

Taking quotes out of context, fabricating connections with terror groups and extremists, and making false claims questioning allegiances and loyalties, these hateful right-wing groups have spread fear, promoted bigotry, and launched organized campaigns that have led to the firings of many talented and hard-working Arab and Muslim leaders. Take, for example, the conservative Islamophobic commentator Debbie Schlussel, who falsely accused Rima Fakih, the Lebanese American woman from Oklahoma who was recently crowned Miss USA, of holding ties to Hizbollah. Or the case of Chicago lawyer Mazen Asbahi, who was abruptly forced to resign from the Obama administration as coordinator for Muslim American affairs after the Wall Street Journal wrongly alleged his ties to extremist groups.

The practice of waging hateful media campaigns against Muslims has become so widespread that a national media watch group called Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has compiled the website Smearcasting.com to document the public writings of Islamophobic activists and pundits who regularly seek to tarnish the reputation of Muslim and Arab leaders. Not surprisingly, among the "Dirty Dozen" - FAIR's term for the 12 most egregious Arab and Muslim bashers in the nation - are a host of Fox News commentators, including Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, and Bill O'Reilly. Also prominent on this list is the Middle East pundit Daniel Pipes, who in 2002 launched a website called Campus Watch, a web-based project of the conservative Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum think-tank which encouraged students to monitor and track the political views of Middle East studies professors.

Unlike Shirley Sherrod, the stories of these many Arab and Muslim American victims have fallen under the radar. While it is partly the nature of our hyper-sensitive 24-hour national media culture that is to blame, at the heart of the problem is the issue of race, and our urgent need for a national conversation on racial issues. Difficult as it may be, President Obama should lead the charge and initiate this process, rather than shying away from controversial topics for political reasons. We need as a country to delve into complicated issues through actual discussions and dialogue, not through beer summits. And American Arabs and Muslims, who have been singled out and discriminated against since 9/11, must be a part of the discussion.

Until then, the media will continue to thrive off of parsing words, questioning loyalties, and fabricating ties to terrorism, while more innocent people are victimized in the process.

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