As critical as I can be with Obama, I think Derrick Z. Jackson is off base when he charges that Obama is somehow behaving in a manner that is unfair or biased against Muslims.

I WISH Barack Obama were a Muslim. Better that than having supercilious staffers whisk women in Islamic head scarves out of photo-ops. Better that than telling Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the nation’s first Muslim congressman, not to come help Obama in Iowa and North Carolina. Better that than wooing red states by wobbling before the modern equivalent of the Red Scare. In his year-and-a-half-long run for president, Obama has visited churches and synagogues, but no mosque. This has the musty feel of light-skinned African-Americans passing for white, paranoid over daylight visits from dark-skinned relatives.

Barack Obama is under no obligation to attend a mosque. The folks who moved the headscarved women were volunteers, and Obama apologized for their behavior. And Keith Ellison may or may not be useful on the campaign trail in Iowa or North Carolina. If they ask him to campaign in Dearborn, Michigan, is that religious profiling, or just smart politics and effective use of a surrogate?

There are a lot of good reasons to give Barack Obama grief, but this isn’t one of them.