An adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Muslim affairs resigned less than one month after he took the job, said a TV news report on Wednesday.
According to CNN's report, the adviser, Mazen Asbahi, joined the Obama's campaign on July 26 as its national coordinator for Muslim affairs, but quit the job on Monday for an old business connection with a fundamentalist Islamic imam.
The corporate lawyer in Chicago, Illinois, the state Obama represents in the Senate, said in a letter to the campaign "I am stepping down from the volunteer role I recently agreed to take on with the Obama campaign as Arab American and Muslim American outreach coordinator in order to avoid distracting from Barack Obama's message of change."
A separate report by the Wall Street Journal said that Asbahi has served on the board of the Dow Jones Islamic Index Fund for a few weeks in 2000, where he worked with the other board member, Jamal Said, imam at a mosque in Illinois.
According to the report, Said was linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and was named by the U.S. Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in the racketeering trial of suspected Hamas fund-raisers that ended in a mistrial.
"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," Asbahi said in the letter.
Obama, a Christian, has been seeking a balance during his campaign for the White House between dispelling rumors that he is a Muslim and having no offense against Muslims.
"I have repeatedly on various occasions said I am not a Muslim, but this whole strategy of suggesting that I am is indicative of anti-Muslim sentiment that we have to fight against," he said to reporters last month.
Source:Xinhua
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