WASHINGTON: The traditional Arab dress was a favourite costume in the US capital on the Halloween night when people dress up as ghosts to ward off evil spirits.

Another favourite was the long-skirt and spectacle frame that Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin wears. Parading downtown Washington, Sarah Palin lookalikes were also holding fake-guns, firing into the air and shouting: “War, war. We want war.”

Both garbs conveyed obvious political messages. Palin lookalikes were Democrats and Obama supporters who see the Alaska governor as a war-mongering conservative who “not only wants to continue President Bush’s wars but wants to start her own war as well”, as one of them said.

Those dressed as Arabs were mostly Republicans but some of them were also Democrats. When this correspondent stopped one and asked him to identify himself, he said: “I have no name. I am an Arab ghost.”

“But why Arab,” he was asked. “Because all Muslims are terrorists,” he said. “That’s not right,” said another who was wearing an Osama mask. “Not all, but most are.”

And this explains what forces Senator Barack Obama, a US presidential front-runner, to hide his Muslim roots. He never writes his full name, Barack Husain Obama. He has not addressed an exclusive Muslim gathering and avoids Muslim media, although he has given interviews to other ethnic and religious media outlets.

At a recent news conference in New York, leaders of the American Muslim Alliance said any overt expression of support from a Muslim group for Senator Obama was likely to hurt rather than help his bid for the White House.

They claimed that Obama supporters had requested leading Muslim organisations and groups not to declare their support for the Democratic candidate openly as they fear it would be used to decry the senator as a Muslim which was unacceptable to many in America.

Mr Obama, who on Nov 4 could become the first black American elected to the White House, is Christian. But as a son of a Kenyan Muslim father and American mother, who spent his childhood in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim nation, he fears being tagged as a Muslim.

So his faith has become an election issue.

In a joint statement this week, about 100 Islamic scholars pointed out that “not since the election of John Kennedy (a Catholic) in 1960 has the faith of a US presidential candidate generated so much distortion as the false claims that Senator Obama is a stealth Muslim”.

“This is part of an Islamophobic hate campaign that fuels prejudice against Muslims in America and worldwide,” the group said.

In September, a controversial DVD on Islam was circulated across the United States. The video, titled “Obses-

sion: Radical Islam’s War Against the West”, showed images of young children reciting appeals for jihad mixed with archival footage of Hitler Youths.

In an interview to New York’s Newsday newspaper, Dr Hafizur Rehman, a paediatrician of Pakistani origin, said hearing people wrongly say that Mr Obama is a Muslim, hurts him.

He cringes, too, when he hears people expressing relief that Mr Obama is not a Mus-lim. “Either way, they’re implying that there’s something wrong with being a Muslim,” he said.

And it is not just the Muslims who have been hurt by the McCain campaign’s effort to make Islam an issue.

Even former secretary of state, Colin Powell, himself a Republican and an old friend of the Republican candidate John McCain, was upset.

“Is there something wrong with being Muslim in America? No, that’s not America,” said Mr Powell.He referred to the death of a Pakistani Muslim soldier, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan of Manahawkin, New Jersey, who was killed in Iraq on Aug 6, 2007, and whose remains were buried in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington.

“He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could go serve his country, and he gave his life,” Mr Powell said. “Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourselves in this way.”