WSJ’s got the story on the resignation of Mazen Asbahi as Obama’s coordinator for Muslims and Arab-Americans. The problem?
In 2000, Mr. Asbahi briefly served on the board of Allied Assets Advisors Fund, a Delaware-registered trust. Its other board members at the time included Jamal Said, the imam at a fundamentalist-controlled mosque in Illinois.
“I served on that board for only a few weeks before resigning as soon as I became aware of public allegations against another member of the board,” Mr. Asbahi said in his resignation letter. “Since concerns have been raised about that brief time, I am stepping down…to avoid distracting from Barack Obama’s message of change.”
I have no idea whether there is anything more here than meets the eye. But it does seem to me that just about anyone who’s been any kind of a player in national Muslim affairs–serving on boards, etc.–is going to run into a guilt-by-association problem. Whether or not Asbahi acted purely on his own or received a push out the door, the Obama campaign is going to have to face up to that.