NEW YORK, Nov 9: A survey of Muslims living in the United States has revealed that a majority of them voted for Democrat nominee Barack Obama but kept their presidential preference a secret in the months leading up to Nov 4.

They feared that an endorsement from them might in fact work against Senator Obama because this was an election year in which the word “Muslim” was used as shorthand to connote anti-American leanings and a hidden love of terrorism.

A report of the survey by the American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Elections, of over 600 Muslims in more than 10 states, including Florida and Pennsylvania, revealed that 89 per cent of respondents voted for

Obama, and only 2 per cent voted for John McCain. It also indicated that 95 per cent of Muslims cast a ballot in this year’s presidential election — the highest turnout in a US election ever — and 14 per cent of those were first-time voters.

The Gallup Centre for Muslim studies estimated that

US Muslims favoured Obama in greater numbers than did Hispanics (67 per cent of whom voted for Obama) — and nearly matched that of African-Americans, 93 per cent of whom voted for Obama.

On the critical the issue of demonising Islam and consequently the Muslims, a report in the Newsweek magazine said that a recent study by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a media watchdog group, found that the mainstream press didn’t do enough to challenge the election-year smears of Islam by such conservative talk show hosts as Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, or counter accusations that Obama was “one of them” by detractors such as “Obama Nation” author Jerome Corsi.

“We are the bogeyman now,” joked secular Muslim women last month during a conversation regarding Obama (she preferred to remain anonymous). “Yes, I want to shout my endorsement of him from the rooftops, but I do not want to mess up any chance of Obama becoming the next president. How crazy is his position we’ve been put in?”