In 2007 and 2008, Barack Obama ran for president as a world citizen, multiracial and multicultural, created by nature and the Almighty to bring healing and peace to the world.

Muslims, Andrew Sullivan said, would see in his face a different America: “A brown-skinned man whose father was an African … who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close.”