Neither 2008 presidential candidate visited a mosque during the campaign.

Evidence

The presidential campaign was eye-opening, proving just how pervasive anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment is today. On the one hand, you had the Obama campaign running away as fast as it could from any hint that Obama was anywhere connected to Muslims. His Web site listed the accusation that he was a “secret Muslim” as a “smear,” as if there is something horrible about being Muslim. The McCain campaign was even worse. The Arizona senator repeatedly talked about the United States not as a multifaith country, but as a Christian nation. He constantly invoked the “Judeo-Christian” values of the country in a manner that left not just Muslims but Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, and many others out in the cold. Confronted in a town hall meeting with a woman who claimed she couldn’t trust Obama because she had heard he was “an Arab,” McCain shook his head and reassured her. “No ma’am,” he said. “He’s a decent family man, a citizen,” as if being an Arab was the opposite of being a decent family man or a citizen, even! Neither candidate stepped foot in a mosque during the campaign, though they did visit churches and synagogues. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 1219

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Standing-directive interest in how political elites signal belonging and exclusion through religious spaces; akin to church-visit rituals of American campaigning.