In fact, experts say the scare tactic mobilized record numbers of American Muslim voters and others to forgive Obama's slights of the Muslim community and choose him as the nation's next president.

"It was perfectly all right to call him Muslim, to call him Arab, because that was a smear that we haven't said as a nation: 'That's not OK,' " said Jen'nan Ghazal Read, an associate professor of sociology at Duke University. "Maybe [Obama's election] will bring that to the fore. It's not OK to say Muslims are not American. They are as American as anyone else."

That was evident in Tuesday's voting patterns. Preliminary results of a survey by the American Muslim Task Force for Civil Rights and Elections suggest about 90 percent of Muslims voted for Obama, while only 2 percent chose John McCain. Preliminary Gallup polls reflect similar numbers. 

Ahmed Younis of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies pointed out that the white, male majority did not vote for the winner. Instead, Obama was elected by a coalition of Americans as diverse as the nation itself but who share a set of common ideals. 

"This vote was a vote pursuant to an American identity," Younis said. "Pursuant to an experience in America that has significant concern for an economy that's failing, concern for a health-care system that does not seem to meet the needs of the people. Bread-and-butter issues that Americans vote upon, the American Muslim community does as well."

As it was for many voters, this year's election was for Muslim voters a referendum on the eight-year Bush administration, said Agha Saeed, chairman of the American Muslim Task Force. Many Muslims watched a president who promised to protect them instead chip away at their civil liberties with legislation such as the Patriot Act. 

Ahmed Rehab, executive director for the Chicago chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, said those violations, as well as right-wing attempts to cast a shadow on both Obama and Islam, eclipsed affronts by the Obama campaign. And when right-wing pundits used his middle name, Hussein, as if it was a slur, it only endeared him more to many Muslim voters.

The Obama campaign removed volunteers from campaign staffs over allegations they had ties to controversial American Muslim leaders. It also prevented two Muslim women wearing head scarves from standing behind Obama at a Michigan rally. 

"It's not missed on them at all," Rehab said. "We live in a larger society of more than just us and the progress of others and were responding to that as well."

Younis agreed. He said Obama's election represents a "magic spear in the heart of the clash-of-civilization theory," which says the principles of Islam and Western civilization are at odds.