Is President Obama, despite everything he has said and despite being a decades-long member of a Christian church, actually a Muslim? As the world’s most populous Muslim country, prepares to welcome him back, State Islamic University lecturer Bandung Nurrohman tells his readers that while Obama very well might be a Muslim – in the broadest possible sense – all Indonesians should welcome him and pray that he succeeds.
For The Jakarta Post, Bandung Nurrohman writes in part:
People who defend the idea that Obama is Muslim put forward a few points. Obama was the most recent of a long line of Muslim males. His full name is Barack Hussein Obama, and using the name of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson as his middle name proclaims, or at least leads one to assume, that he was born a Muslim.
Obama’s father was a Muslim. Obama’s grandfather was a Muslim. Obama’s stepfather was a Muslim. Sarah, who Obama calls his grandmother, is Muslim. Obama’s stepbrothers and stepsisters are Muslim. Obama’s sister Maya was quoted by The New York Times as saying, “My whole family was Muslim.” For a time, he was educated and lived as a Muslim in Indonesia and was registered as Muslim when he studied in elementary school.
Since Islam can be defined narrowly or broadly, although he of course cannot be called Muslim in the narrow sense, he can be called Muslim if we use the broader meaning of Islam: as the religion of followers of all prophets recognized in the Quran since Adam.
So it’s not completely incorrect for Indonesian Muslims to greet him as a Muslim brother when he visits Indonesia in June. Indonesian Christians can do the same. What’s on his Web site – that he has never been Muslim – is correct in the sense that he never voluntarily and officially registered himself as an adult as Muslim.
In addition, when someone serves as a public leader or head of a state, what he or she does for people or for humanity is more important than his own religion or belief. They are expected to act justly for all. Al-Ghazali as well as al-Mawardi, two respected scholars in Islamic history, said that power might endure with non-believers but cannot endure with corruption and tyranny.
Rather than being busy finding out what his religion is, which today only Obama knows, it would be better for Muslims in Indonesia to ask themselves what they can do to help him prove that he is deserving of the Nobel Prize presented to him. Isn’t peace and justice in this world a purpose that both Muslims and Christians share?
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