Obama Campaign: No Headscarves in Photos Please

This is beyond an embarrassment for Barack Obama's campaign.

Ben Smith reports:

Two Muslim women at Barack Obama's rally in Detroit Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women's headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate.

The campaign has apologized to the women, all Obama supporters who said they felt betrayed by their treatment at the rally.

"This is of course not the policy of the campaign. It is offensive and counter to Obama's commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. "We sincerely apologize for the behavior of these volunteers."

Building a human backdrop to a political candidate, a set of faces to appear on television and in photographs, is always a delicate exercise in demographics and political correctness. Advance staffers typically pick supporters out of a crowd to reflect the candidate's message.

Once again, the Obama camp steps in it.

The Associated Press hasn't picked up the story.

FOX News doesn't have it yet.

In other words, never mind. It's a non-story.

I disagree.

The campaign moved Muslim women wearing headscarves out of the shot!

Now, there's outrage from Obama spokesman Bill Burton. These were volunteers run amok. They're responsible. This isn't what Obama is about. He's everyone's candidate.

Sure he is. Just don't wear a headscarf.

The Saturday before Election 2004, my family attended President Bush's rally in Green Bay. We were selected to sit in the bleachers behind the podium. It was an honor to be up there. Watching coverage on TV later in the day, we were visible in the wider shots.

The seats provided a fascinating perspective. It was an incredible experience to look out at the crowd of enthusiastic supporters and see the faces of Americans from nearly the same vantage point as the President.

If I had the special seating and then was told a family member was "undesirable" and the campaign didn't want him or her to be associated with the President, I would have been horrified.

...In Detroit Monday the two different Obama volunteers – in separate incidents– made it clear that headscarves wouldn't be in the picture. The volunteers gave different explanations for excluding the hijabs, one bluntly political and the other less clear.

In Aref's case, there was no ambiguity.

That incident began when the volunteer asked Aref's friend Ali Koussan and two other friends, Aref's brother Sharif and another young lawyer, Brandon Edward Miller, whether they would like to sit behind the stage. The three young men said they would, but mentioned they were with friends.

The men said the volunteer, a twenty-something African American woman in a green shirt, asked if their friends looked and were dressed like the young men, who were all light-skinned and wearing suits. Miller said yes, but mentioned that one of their friends was wearing a headscarf with her suit.

The volunteer "explained to me that because of the political climate and what's going on in the world and what's going on with Muslim Americans it's not good for her to be seen on TV or associated with Obama," said Koussan, who is a law student at Wayne State University.

Both Koussan and Miller said they specifically recalled the volunteer citing the "political climate" in telling them they couldn't sit behind Obama.

"I was like, 'You've got to be kidding me. Are you serious?'" Koussan recalled.

Shimaa Abdelfadeel's story was different. She'd waited on line outside the Joe Louis Arena for three hours in the sun, and was walking through the giant hall when a volunteer approached two of her non-Muslim friends, a few steps ahead of her, and asked if they'd like to sit in "special seating" behind the stage, said one friend, Brittany Marino, who like Abdelfadeel is a recent University of Michigan graduate who works for the university.

When they said they were with Abdelfadeel, the volunteer told them their friend would have to take the headscarf off or stay out of the special section, Marino said. They declined the seats.

After recovering from the shock of the incident, Abdelfadeel went to look for the volunteer and confronted her minutes later, she said in an e-mail interview with Politico.

"We're not letting anyone with anything on their heads like baseball [caps] or scarves sit behind the stage," she paraphrased the volunteer as saying, an account Marino confirmed. "It has nothing to do with your religion!"

This really is amazing, demanding that headscarves be removed.

For the record, my husband was wearing a baseball cap when we sat behind the podium.

Of course, he removed it for the playing of the National Anthem. Other than that, he wore it.

So much for the Democrats' Big Tent. They have a strict dress code for behind the podium seating.