Currently, much ado is being made about the long-standing relationship between Democratic presidential frontrunner Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack’s long-time pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ located in our collective hometown of Chicago. Based on fiery rhetoric from the archives of Reverend Wright’s decades-long pastoral tenure, the proverbial race card has quickly shuffled itself back into our presidential political deck of playing cards.

But is this political deck stacked against the African-American civil rights lawyer from Chicago?

Acknowledging and denouncing the Farrakhan-esque pulpit style of Reverend Wright, an equally important question to ask is that if an African-American Democratic senator has to rightfully politically distance himself from the brimstone rhetoric of a spiritual advisor; as Americans, we should also have the moral clarity to ask white Republican political leaders to denounce and condemn the equally hateful and apocalyptic rhetoric coming from their own spiritual advisors.

Reverend Franklin Graham, son of the respected televangelist Billy Graham, was once the spiritual advisor of our current president, George W. Bush. The esteemed Reverend Graham once also told NBC Nightly News in November 2001 that “The God of Islam is not the Same God… I believe it is a very wicked and evil religion…”

When asked by both NBC Nightly News and his hometown Charlotte Observer whether he would apologize, he defiantly stood by his comments and refused an apology. Even less of a collective peep was heard from the incredibly shrinking tent of the Republican Party.

According to news reports, none of the other white Republican Christian leaders contacted by NBC News, including the late Reverend Jerry Falwell, who made scathing anti-Islamic remarks in an interview earlier that year, and Reverend Pat Robertson of The 700 Club, would comment on Graham's attacks. 

"Obviously, Mr. Graham is tone deaf in this respect," said Newsweek religion editor Ken Woodward of the incident. "He's certainly not his father's son in terms of discretion." 

Incidentally, it is also hard to remember whether President Bush was cornered by political pundits into denouncing Reverned Graham on national television night like Senator Obama. Furthermore, nobody saw President Bush’s chief speechwriters sharpening their collective pencils to give a major address on race in America (a la Obama) in the political aftermath of Franklin Graham’s NBC Nightly News fiasco.

Either way, let us fast forward to today.

Our current Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), recently hailed as a “spiritual guide” an Ohio megachurch pastor who has called upon Christians to wage a "war" against the "false religion" of Islam with the aim of destroying it.

According to David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation, in February 2008, McCain appeared at a campaign rally in Cincinnati with the Reverend Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, a supersize Pentecostal institution that features his own television studio.

To exemplify the point, Mr. Corn then cites a chapter from Reverend Parsley’s 2005 book in which Reverend Parsley writes:

“The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion [Islam] destroyed…”

Nonetheless, Senator McCain, with Reverend Parsley by his side at the February 2008 Cincinnati rally, called the evangelical minister a "spiritual guide."

As a nation, why do we ask the black Democratic Senator to apologize for his pastor’s controversial remarks when we are collectively silent in asking for that same righteous condemnation from the Republican camp of intolerant agents serving as loyal right-wing evangelical surrogates for Senator John McCain.

If race is truly not an issue in this presidential campaign, then along with every other American of color, I will be waiting for Senator McCain’s apology for his evangelical firebrands and look forward to his next major national address on the status of race in America.

But as the Republican Party continues to prove, we should not be holding our collective breath.

Arsalan Iftikhar is Contributing Editor for Islamica magazine in Washington D.C.