Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan

On Meet the Press this morning, Colin Powell addressed the claim that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim:

I'm also troubled by not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said: such things as "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is "He is not a Muslim; he's a Christian." He's always been a Christian.

But the really right answer is "What if he is?" Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion: "He's a Muslim and he might be associated [with] terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine.

Powell went on to describe this photograph, of Elsheba Khan at the grave of her son, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, one of eighteen photographs in "Service," a photo-essay by the photographer Platon, in the September 29, 2008 New Yorker.