Most kids who have played the telephone game know that as a secret gets passed from one person to the next, the details of the original message become distorted.
Apparently, adults also enjoy this game, especially when politics are involved.
A column written by Mansoor Ijaz in The Christian Science Monitor on Nov. 27, titled “A Muslim belongs in the Cabinet,” claims that Romney “demonstrated an aggravating hypocrisy” when responding to Ijaz’s question during a political fundraiser in Las Vegas.
According to Ijaz, he asked what Romney’s stance was on including a qualified American of the Islamic faith in his cabinet, given Romney’s position that jihadism is the principal foreign policy threat facing Americans today.
Ijaz claims Romney’s response was, “based on the number of American Muslims (as a percentage) in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration.”
By the time the news of this column reached me, Ijaz’s assertions had transformed into “Romney hates Muslims.”
Being an experienced player of the telephone game, I looked to the source for some clarification.
FoxNews.com and msnbc.com both reported the day after the Monitor column was published that Romney “rejected” and then “clarified” what was said to Ijaz.
Romney is quoted as saying the question Ijaz asked was, “Did I need to have a Muslim in my cabinet to be able to confront the radical jihad and would it be more important to have a Muslim in my cabinet?”
His answer was that he didn’t need a Muslim in his cabinet to combat the jihad any more than the United States needed a Japanese person’s help to combat Japan during World War II.
Fair enough.
People who don’t like Romney will side with Ijaz. People who support the former Massachusetts governor will say Romney has cleared his name.
I have taken Romney’s side, but not because of my political or religious beliefs.
The public has the responsibility to take political attacks and commentaries with a grain of salt. Whether it’s Romney’s or Ijaz’s story you can trust — or if the truth lies somewhere between the two — things can’t always be taken at face value.
Let’s forget, for the moment, that Ijaz is a Democratic Party fundraiser who has contributed to people such as Bill Clinton and John Kerry.
Instead, let’s focus on Ijaz’s other agenda.
He is an American-born citizen of the Islamic faith who has devoted himself to “raise up the voices of disaffected Muslims everywhere and help them, too, share in America’s promise.” He has helped the United States initiate several diplomatic conversations with Middle East countries over the years.
In a way, Ijaz was asking Romney if the presidential candidate would ever consider having him in his cabinet. It’s not implausible to think Ijaz entered that fundraiser with the intent to write a column on Romney’s response no matter what his answer was. It just so happens he got a response worth mentioning. Did he go outside the journalistic bounds to get the response he wanted? Probably not.
But as experience in this field has led me to understand, truth-seeking can often be a self-fulfilling journey.