The New Yorker published a letter from the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee on why the magazine’s controversial cover, which depicted Sen. Barack Obama as a Muslim, was so offensive.

“Why is the label “Muslim” such a powerful and popular weapon against Obama?,” Kareem Shora, the group’s executive director asked in the letter.

“And what should the Obama camp be doing, instead of denouncing a magazine cover? What needs to be challenged at full volume is the association between a man in Muslim clothing and terrorism, and the underlying assumptions that being Muslim is the same as being un-American, that being Muslim is the same as being violent, that being Muslim is the same as being Osama bin Laden,” writes Shora.

You can read the full letter here.

FI2W wrote extensively – when the cover first came out – on the larger question raised by Shora on why being a Muslim should be seen as a ‘smear’ .

Check out “Liberal Snobs and the Rest of Us: Arab Americans Respond to the New Yorker Cover.”

Ashwini Anburajan is Founder and CEO of a Social Data Collective, a private data marketplace that allows consumers to access, control and monetize their data. Social Data Collective allows consumers to trade data from a variety of sources for high quality products and services offered by brand partners. She was previously Director of Partner Development at Buzzfeed, and at Outcast prior to that. She has created cutting edge thought leadership and has advised some of the largest names in media on their social publishing strategy, including USA Today, New York Times, Hearst and CondeNast.