Some Muslim Americans are unhappy with Sen. Barrack Obama for simply denying the reports of hate groups that he is a closet Muslim without bothering to attack the notion that being Muslim should be considered negative.

Many Muslim Americans sense that some of the presidential candidates have tolerated conflating Islam with terrorism, while, at best, treating Muslim voters as a liability to be kept at arm’s length.

Omar Sacirbey, writing for the Religion News Service (RNS), says that many Muslim voters are especially disappointed with Obama for merely denying that he is a closet Muslim, and leaving it at that. They say he could have at least defended Muslims, or knocked down the notion that being a Muslim is somehow a negative.

“I think he knows Islam isn’t a violent religion, but he certainly has some sort of hesitancy to talk about his experience with it because of a fear that this will damage his campaign,” said Quasim Rashid, 25, who covered the issue on his weekly Muslim-themed online radio show.

Many feel the reaction of the rumors over Obama’s alleged Muslim tendencies reflects their dim political status since 9/11. In fact, some Muslims aren’t surprised at all.

“I wish Barack had been more vocal about the fact that there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim,” Pamela Taylor, a Muslim-American activist in Indianapolis, told RNS. But she added, “Clearly no one wants to be deemed a ‘Muzzie-lover.’”

Some candidates were keeping Muslims at a distance even before 9/11. In her 2000 race for the Senate in New York, Hillary Clinton returned $ 50,000 in contributions from the American Muslim Alliance after her Republican opponent alleged, wrongly, that the group had terrorist links.

The irony is that George W. Bush was the first – and so far the only one – major presidential candidate ever actively to seek the Muslim vote. In 2000, Bush went to many mosques and Muslim events and condemned the policy of using secret evidence against accused terrorists. He said he would stop the practice. Exit polls in November 2000 showed he won the overwhelming majority of Muslim voters.

The Obama controversy stems from a 2007 article in the conservative Insight magazine, which alleged that Obama, whose middle name is Hussein, attended a radical Islamic school as a young boy in Indonesia.

A recent flurry of e-mails has been suggesting Obama’s Kenyan father and/or Indonesian stepfather was a radical Muslim, and say Obama took his oath of office on a Quran instead of a Bible. They also suggest that Obama refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance and that his church membership is a charade to conceal his Muslim identity.

John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion &Public Life in Washington, said “general antipathy” toward Muslims helps give those rumors staying power. “Some issues like this are very difficult to dispel,” Green said, “because they have a face validity in them. Hussein is a Muslim name, and to many Americans, Obama sounds very Arabic.”

Numerous news outlets have shown the rumors to be baseless.

Obama’s biological father, from Kenya, was a secular Muslim who divorced Obama’s non-practicing Protestant mother when Barack was two. She then married an Indonesian non-practicing Muslim and moved to Jakarta. Barack attended the first to the fourth grades there – a Catholic school for two years and a state school for two years.

Obama’s autobiography, Dreams From My Father, describes the state school as a “Muslim school” and relates how the teacher complained to his mother, because “I made faces during Qoranic studies.” At the Catholic school, Obama was registered as a Muslim. Israella Dharmawan, 64, Obama’s first grade teacher at the Catholic school, told Los Angeles Time last year that Obama was registered on school records as Muslim because his father was Muslim.

While Obama’s campaign has generated some buzz on Muslim websites – including a Muslims for Obama website – some Muslims resent what they see as Obama’s cold shoulder.

Manan Ahmed, a Chicago-based blogger at the Muslim-themed Web Site www.chapatimystery.com, wrote in an open letter to Obama. In it, he said: “You could have simply said, ‘While I am a Christian, I resent the implications in being branded a terrorist-sympathizer merely by association with Muslims.’ Instead, your campaign sought to play the defensive card.’”

That may be changing. Speaking in Boise, Idaho, on the eve of the Super Tuesday primaries, Obama referred to the e-mails and the closet-Muslim rumors.

“Don’t try to insult, not just me, but people of the Islamic faith by playing on people’s fears,” Obama said. “I know who I am.” And, in a recent interview with Christianity Today, he said, “I am respectful of the religion, but it’s not my own.”

Still, some Muslims – even Obama’s supporters – seem resigned to their status in American political life. “Frankly, as a Muslim, I’d rather stay away from publicly supporting Obama,” said Ani Zonnefeld, a Muslim activist in California. “Believe me, this will be held against him.”