Although the White House has declined so far to release the names of the “Muslim leaders” who met with President Obama at the White House Wednesday, according to comedian Dean Obeidallah, he and Farhana Khera, a lawyer and executive director of Muslim Advocates, were two of the fifteen.
Obeidallah, born in New Jersey, the “son of a Palestinian father and a Sicilian mother,” according to his website, hosts a SiriusXm radio show and produced a documentary called “The Muslims Are Coming!” to help “foster understanding and dispel misconceptions about Muslims.” In an article for the Daily Beast entitled “Muslims Infiltrate the White House! Me Included!”, Obeidallah noted “there are certain ground rules to these meetings, so I can’t disclose everything”, but that “clearly the No. 1 issue raised [was the] alarming rise in anti-Muslim bigotry in America.”
My comments were specific to the Republican elected officials who have made demonizing Muslims an increasingly visible part of their platform.
Obeidallah fingered Oklahoma State Rep. John Bennett, Congressman Jody Hice, Texas State Rep. Molly White, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal as examples of Republicans who are “demonizing Muslims”. The comedian did not let Democrats completely off the hook, however:
We hear nothing from the leading Democratic elected officials in response to these dangerous remarks. I can assure you that if we heard racist, anti-Semitic, or homophobic remarks by Republican elected officials, Democrats would speak out.
Obeidallah said the president’s response was “heartening”:
While Farhana Khera has not directly confirmed her participation in the meeting, she did retweet a New Day report of the meeting which said she and Obeidallah had attended.
In addition to Khera and Obeidallah, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) reports on its website that MPAC’s Hoda Elshishtawy was at the meeting, as well as American Muslim scholar Dr. Sherman Jackson. Jackson holds the King Faisal Chair in Islamic Thought and Culture and Professor of Religion and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.
