Barack Hussein Obama -- Insult to Islam?

October 15, 2008
Barack Hussein Obama -- Insult to Islam?

This evening's debate is the big political news. So as a registered contrarian I won't really talk about it today :-) I'll comment afterwards, but Barack will win. McCain will pull his punches and only get out half his words and Obama will have him for dinner. Unless ...

Unless McCain asks the one question that will scare Obama into stutters.

"Are you ridda and if so do you understand the international ramifications?"

Ok. Look. I'm not a wingnut. I don't believe that Obama is [intentionlly or under U.S. law] a Muslim and has been lying to us. I don't believe he was born overseas and is therefore ineligible to be President (although I'm still researching that one for fun :-) I don't believe he attended terrorist training camps.

Obama acknowledges that his father and stepfather were Muslim.

In Islam the religion of the father is the religion of the child

Obama has rejected Islam as his personal religion and claims to be Christian

Indeed, he has been slammed by the right-wingers for attending an (admittedly radical, but still Christian) Christian church for the past 20 years or so. Indeed, if I'm right, it would be better for him to convert to Islam! There is no reason we can't have a Muslim as President.

By renouncing Islam and claiming to be Christian, he has committed apostasy (called "ridda" in Islam). That is not a uniquely Islamic concept; most religions and certainly the Christians also claim that one who rejects their religion, eg: Christianity, is an apostate. But the Christian response is generally more benign than the Islamic one.

Nor is there a "universal" Islamic response. It varies from country to country and sect to sect. But it is universally a "big deal" in the Muslim world.

Even without a fatwa, the punishment is death in many Islamic countries and the cultural movement is towards a stricter interpretation and harsher penalties. This is true even in such critical countries as Pakistan and carrying out that punishment is the sacred duty of all Muslims. But it appears likely that fatwas will indeed be issued.

As I understand it, electing Obama would be an insult to Islam, Islamic peoples and the entire Islamic world. Countries the U.S. thinks of as friends, will be insulted. Some of the greatest and most respected contempary scholars and teachers of Islam still say that apostosy should carry the death sentence and is a more heinous crime than murder. Doubtless there are many Islamic governments who would rather deal with Obama than McCain. But even in the most secular Muslim country, there will be enormous pressure from the religious powers not to deal with a country led by an apostate. Moreover, there appears to be a movement towards applying Islamic law (sharia) in even secular countries.

Please understand ... an apostate is very different than an infidel. We're constantly called infidels by some in the Islamic world. We're used to it and think of it as no big deal. But an infidel is just one who has not yet seen the light. Essentially a pagan, if you will. Christians who were never Muslims are infidels, but not apostates.

Granted that this is not Obama's "fault". But hey, there is nothing inherently "fair" about the world. It isn't Obama's "fault" that he is an innately tremendous natural orator. It isn't McCain's "fault" that his mouth and brain aren't always in sync when speaking under pressure. This has nothing to do with "fault". But what is, is.

If things are as I understand them to be (and Obama has been honest regarding his religion), international relations relating to the Middle East will be very difficult if he is elected. Some countries we have considered "friends" will not speak with Obama. Indeed, U.S. participation in peace talks, negotiations, anything related to the Middle East, may be curtailed. [Not that I wouldn't mind a four or eight year break from having to deal with that part of the world ... but it isn't realistic and it would be extremely dangerous.]

In fact, Obama may not be physically safe in Islamic countries. [Or anywhere else, although to some extent that comes with the job regardless of your religion.]

I am bewildered at the lack of Islamic uproar about this to date. Possibly most "Joe six-pack" Muslims [yes, I know - just looking for a little gallows humor] in Turkey or Kuwait or Iran don't know (or care) enough about Obama to even be aware of it. But certainly the leaders, both secular and religious, of Islamic countries are aware of this. There are only a few possibilities that I can think of to explain it.

One is that it honestly never occurred to them. I find that difficult to believe, but it is possible. The second is that Barack is indeed lying and really is a Muslim and just pretending to be a Christian (and the powers in the Islamic world know this and have kept it quiet. In (particularly) radical Islam such lying is acceptable if it serves the greater Islamic good (in this case, having a Muslim as head of the Great Satan). I don't believe this. It just sounds to wing-nuttish. The third possibility is that I'm wrong. That is certainly possible. If you find an error in my facts or logic, please advise! The fourth possibility is that the entire Islamic world would so much rather deal with Barack than McCain that they are all just tacitly ignoring this "inconvenient" fact. If so, I have to believe that it will be raised after the election by, say Iran, in order to try to further the schism between the U.S. and the Islamic world. In other words, out friends aren't saying anything because they want to deal with Obama badly enough to "overlook" or intentionally "not notice", and our enemies are not saying anything in hopes that he is elected so that they can then use this against us.

It is mildly interesting that I attempted to post a comment [as a true and respectful seeker of knowledge of Islam]on Al Jazeera's online English language site asking that question and the moderators wouldn't print it. I followed it up with an email to them asking the same question, noting that I understood why they might not want to publish the question on the site. I haven't heard back from them either.

Those are the only reasonable possibilities I've been able to discover. Everything else sounds distinctly like something from the paranoid fringe. For instance, there is a dedicated segment of the population who I think of as paranoid conspiratorationalists who believe that this is ALL a setup by the puppet masters that really pull the strings in this world. Under that theory, Obama was selected to be elected by the international community of puppeteers and that this is just part of a larger program for bringing down the U.S. and globalizing the world. That theory has been around since at least the '60s when it was a somewhat popular left-wing rant. Indeed, the wingnuts from both the left and right seem to often see this issue similarly but from completely different perspectives. The extreme right-wing thought the attack on the World Trade Center was appropriate because it represented all that was wrong in the world: this conspiracy to globalize and internationalize everything. The extreme left-wing thought it was the right thing because it represented the conspiracy by the giant corporations to take over the world and turn us all into a corpocracy.

I don't believe those theories. I'm truly not wing-nutty enough. But I'm running out of other explanations :-)

I hope (!), especially since it appears that he is going to be elected, that I'm flat wrong. If so, please tell me where I glitched either facts or logic.

Otherwise, we have a problem of Biblical (and Koranic! :-) proportions.