The question asked was "Would you be comfortable appointing a Muslim in your cabinet or as a federal judge". His answer was "No. I will not." And then he went on for several minutes about why he would never appoint a Muslim:
http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=92488

So his answer is a completely lie, and his fabricated explanation still makes no sense. He's claiming he meant "I was thinking of American-killing terrorist Muslims, so I would appoint them, I just wouldn't be comfortable around them."

He can't be racist, he's black.

Islam isn't a race (though he's obviously using it as a euphemism for 'dirty ayrabs')

Ironically, there are more Muslims in Southeast Asia than in the Middle East.

/the more you know

A traditional ploy of conservative minorities is to point a finger at a group that people will hate or distrust more, like Muslims. It's also how corporations break up unions, and how fascist regimes muster support from the bottom up. There's always someone to hate, distrust, or fear. That's the conservative way.

Baleen, That is not how conservatives work. Cain is a fringe candidate anyways, plus the distrust of Muslims is nothing new. I didn't see Obama putting any Muslims in cabinet positions.

I thought Obama was a Muslim. Come on man, think before you post.

Cena, you're invoking what's called the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. You can't argue that the current conservative-oriented party, the GOP, isn't using fear of gays, Mexicans, Muslims, atheists, or any number of other small groups to try and scare its base into keeping it in power. If you saw the rest of the candidates (especially Bachmann), you'd know this; they only vary in how virulent they are in their rhetoric.

Yes, religious discrimination is probably a better term to use than racism. But a more apropos analogy would be refusing to serve Italians, and saying it's because you hate Catholics. The fact that the person is ignorant or mistaken about where most Catholics are from doesn't make him not racist. And Cain's discriminatory policies are bigotry, regardless of whether it's coupled with otherwise legitimate criticism of the ideology. When the discrimination comes in the form of taking away rights of other people based on looks and ancestry, racism is still involved.

In my experience, anti-Islamic sentiment has some racism mixed right in there. White Muslims are as hated as the darker-skinned Muslims, but it's a different kind of hate: it's a "you traitor!" kind of hate, which assumes that white people should belong to a white people religion, since Islam is for brown people who probably smell funny.

I think most people would call this "racist" because it's so easy to say. Religious descrimination doesn't have a convenient "ist/ism" form. Theistist? Theismism?

AntiSemite? AntiPapist? Use your words, People.

Seriously. The words like racism and racist are extremely abused and overused. Takeawayfood, religious discrimination is the best word we have for this, but people like Irish Whiskey are lazy and like to throw the R-Bomb everywhere, because they don't care who they slander.

nothing but Buddhists up in this bitch