At the same time, it’s a testament to how effective the right was at smearing Obama as a clandestine Muslim who planned to replace the Constitution with Islamic law and recruit your children to al-Qaeda. Each Muslim nominee for an administration position receives a level of background-dependent scrutiny from conservative fever swamps that no one of any other background receives. That has the compounding effect of disinclining the administration to seek out qualified Muslims for important roles.

It also has a policy effect. Recall this line from Obama’s speech in Cairo last June about resetting U.S.-Muslim world relations:

[I]n the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That’s why I’m committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.

Still waiting on that one. The most the administration can say on that front so far is Attorney General Eric Holder has said he’s unsure whether to appeal a decision by a federal judge that the government illegally wiretapped the extremist-linked al-Haramain charity.

This is what a smear is designed to do: raise the political stakes for straying beyond the restricted boundaries of a policy discussion. It’s fear-mongering, pure and simple. And it’s working.

The report, “Blocking Faith, Freezing Charity” picks up on a point that President Obama made in his recent speech in Egypt, in which he acknowledged that U.S. policies have made it difficult for American Muslims to fulfill their religious obligations of Zakat, or charitable giving. The problem is that the U.S. government has shut so many Muslim charities down based on suspicion that they support terrorism, and declared the broad power to freeze the assets of Muslim charities pending investigation and without revealing its evidence that the groups have engaged in any wrongdoing. What’s more, anyone who supports any of these suspected charities — even if their intentions are to support legitimate humanitarian aid — can be prosecuted for “providing material support to terrorism.”

The ACLU report notes that “A 9/11 Commission staff report on terrorism financing found that the laws that allow the Treasury Department to designate and seize the assets of charities raise “substantial civil liberty concerns.”

Despite President Obama’s acknowledgment of the problems with these policies, they have, so far, remained unchanged.

According to the ACLU: “Today, the Treasury Department has virtually unchecked power to designate groups as terrorist organizations. Terrorism financing laws are overly broad and lack procedural safeguards that would protect American charities against government mistake and abuse.”