McCain had an opportunity to wash the smears away. But instead he added another layer.

Sen. John McCain owes Arab Americans an apology.

“I don’t trust Obama,” a woman told McCain at an Oct. 10 campaign rally in Minnesota. “I have read about him. He’s an Arab.”

“No, ma’am,” responded McCain, shaking his head. “He’s a decent family man.”

When he was setting the woman straight, McCain sported a look that said he was proud of his principles, even if they put him in opposition to the crowd around him.

But what was there to be proud of?

In his rebuke to his supporter, McCain counterposed being Arab with being a decent family man. That’s news to me, and to the legions of decent, Arab-American family men out there!

In fact, rather than squelching the bald-faced racism of the woman’s remark, McCain’s comment enhances it. Imagine the outrage if the woman had said, “I have read about him. He’s a Jew.” And McCain had answered, “No ma’am. He’s a decent family man.” The outrage would be deafening, and rightly so.

Herein lies the problem with the McCain-Palin campaign. Increasingly desperate and with an economy crashing around them, they are resorting to dirty politics and cheap smears. The mood at their campaign rallies is consequently growing ugly. (“Kill him” and “Off with his head” were two utterances from the crowd in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.)

Confronted with the hatred, McCain seems honestly bewildered at times, but he should recognize that he and his supporters helped create this monster.

McCain himself proclaimed in an interview last year with Beliefnet.com that the Constitution establishes the United States as a Christian nation. He now constantly invokes the “Judeo-Christian” values of the country in a manner that leaves not just Muslims but Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, and many others out in the cold.

In the last few weeks, 28 million copies of the DVD “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” have been distributed as a supplement in newspapers (including the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education) in key battleground states in an attempt, it would seem, to scare voters into voting for McCain. The DVD suggests with sensational music and graphic imagery that a large number of Muslims in this country are sympathetic to the radicals and that they are a fifth column, poised to take over the United States at a moment’s notice.

The consequences of all of this fear-mongering translates into what appears to be a troubling rise in violence against Muslim Americans, including a recent arson against a mosque in Joplin, Mo., a death threat against a Muslim candidate in a California city council race and an assault on a Muslim woman by a masked gunman in Elmhurst, Ill.

The smear campaign that Republicans are running against Sen. Barack Obama is not only sullying the dialogue in this country. It is also jeopardizing the life and liberty of Arab Americans and Muslim Americans.

McCain had an opportunity to wash the smears away. But instead he added another layer.

Moustafa Bayoumi, an associate professor of English at Brooklyn College, is author of the recent book “How Does It Feel to be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America” (The Penguin Press). He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.