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Obama, the Apostate

May 13th, 2008
By JEB KOOGLER

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I’m a little surprised at those who took at face value Edward Luttwak’s piece in yesterday’s New York Times. In an astonishing article, Luttwak makes the case that a President Obama is likely to find his relationship with the Islamic world to be tense and volatile. The reason? As an “apostate” (his words, not mine), the Senator from Illinois would be subject to the death penalty under classical Shari’a law.

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings.

A brief note about the author before I get into the meat of his argument. Luttwak, a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is infamous for his article in Foreign Affairs, back in 1999, entitled “Give War A Chance.” It’s a fascinating read in which Mr. Luttwak makes the case that the best approach to warfare is essentially to ‘let it rage’ until one side defeats the other. Genocide in Darfur? Let ‘em fight it out. Warfare in Bosnia, Sri Lanka, the Congo? Better not get involved. Indeed, Luttwak wrote an op-ed in the NYT about Iraq not too long ago making basically the same argument: only by killing each others will the various parties find peace. Coming from a man who has suggested that the United Nations would be most useful if it just “helped the strong defeat the weak faster,” it was with curious revulsion that I read yesterday’s op-ed.

And, indeed, Luttwak did not disappoint. His basic premise – that Obama, the former Muslim, will be treated as an apostate in the Islamic world – is left unsubstantiated. The fact is, Obama has never been a Muslim and is not recognized internationally as such. As Islamic legal expert Ali Eteraz points out:

Religion is not hereditary as it is in Judaism. Islam is not a race. Just because a child has a Muslim father — which, again, Obama didn’t — doesn’t mean anything unless the child is being raised as a Muslim. At the time of birth, Muslims engage in a symbolic act — of saying the Call to Prayer in the child’s ear — that renders a child Muslim. If Obama’s father was agnostic/atheist, then he wouldn’t have done such a thing.

No call to prayer in the ear, not raised as a Muslim, born to an atheist father, and then abandoned to a Christian mother both by father and his family, equals not Muslim. Obama is right to say he had no religion until he became a Christian. Those who actually study Muslims see that there are millions of inter-religious marriages — between Muslim men and Hindu women for example — in which the children are being raised as pantheists, or even, Hindu. When these children grow up, they aren’t killed for being apostates (though some Muslims do thumb their noses at the father for “allowing” his children to be raised non-Muslim).

It is difficult to read, say, the Middle Eastern press, and then draw the conclusion that Muslims are just waiting to bear their teeth at a President Obama. In fact, many Middle Easterners seem positively excited about an Obama presidency. In Iran, not exactly the bastion of liberal thought, people are fascinated by the American presidential campaign and most Iranians appear to want Obama to win — including, perhaps, the Iranian regime itself. Similar reports, suggesting widespread interest in an Obama presidency, have appeared throughout the Middle Eastern press. While it would be impossible to draw any conclusions about what relations would be like with the Islamic world under an Obama administration, there are certainly no indications that such ties would be strained due to allegations of apostasy.



This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 9:30 am and is filed under Newsweek Blogitics, Barack Obama. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 13 Comments

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    I put this on the same shelf as a report in Wash. Tmes about what some handwriting experts say about the cindidates.
    It's my ho-hum shelf.
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    According to the report of Larry Rohter of April 10, 2008, in The New York Times, the Obama campaign staff, when questioned about the revelation of Obama's 1981 trip to Karachi, stated: "Mr. Obama visited Pakistan in 1981, on the way back from Indonesia, where his mother and half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, were living. He spent 'about three weeks' there, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton, said, staying in Karachi with the family of a college friend, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, but also traveling to Hyderabad, in India."

    These new revelations about Obama's college travels to Karachi and Hyderabad raise the question of whether Obama is a Muslim apostate, a question muzzled by Obama's constant incantation that he is a 20 year member of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. One wonders why, if Obama was always a Christian, he was "baptised" by Pastor Jeremiah Wright Jr. as an adult. The simple truth is that by Obama's own numerous accounts there are different versions of the purported truth as to whether his mother was an atheist, an agnostic, a or a deeply spiritual person who provided Obama with religious reading material from various religions. Moreover, published reports in Indonesian newspapers in 2006 and 2007 indicated that Obama's mother was a practicing Muslim, as was the entire family. In a New York Times op-ed piece of March 6, 2007, by Nicholas Kristof on Obama, Kristof wrote: "Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as 'one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.'” That piece was written during the period (described below by Paul Watson) when the Obama campaign was struggling with the American body politic's potential acceptance of an Obama who was a Muslim apostate.

    Why has the press not looked further into this bundle of contradictions from the printed words of Dreams of My Father to Obama's own public statements and his campaign's inconsistent responses to press inquires. The critical question to be answered is not whether Obama is now a Christian as opposed to being a Muslim, but whether Obama was ever a Muslim, as numerous friends and teachers have unequivocally indicated before Obama announced his candidacy for President in February 2007. Obama should be called to publicly dispute the credible evidence indicating that Obama is a Muslim apostate because Obama himself, as well as his campaign website have made it an issue by publicly proclaiming, "Obama Has Never Been A Muslim, And Is a Committed Christian."

    Obama's previously undisclosed and unrevealed trip to Karachi and to Hyderabad are troubling in light of Obama's Dreams of My Father accounts of a Muslim heritage and the unbiased reporting of Los Angeles Times Djakarta Bureau Chief Paul Watson's on site investigation of Obama's prior practice of Islam reported in the March 16, 2007 edition of the Los Angeles Times. There Watson wrote:

    " Obama's campaign aides have emphasized his strong Christian beliefs and downplayed any Islamic connection. The Illinois senator was raised 'in a secular household in Indonesia by his stepfather and mother,' his chief spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said in a statement in January after false reports began circulating that Obama had attended a radical madrasa, or Koranic school, as a child.

    "'To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago,' Gibbs' Jan. 24 statement said. In a statement to The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday[March 14, 2007], the campaign offered slightly different wording, saying: 'Obama has never been a practicing Muslim.' The satement added that as a child, Obama had spent time in the neighborhood's Islamic center."

    Thereafter, Watson noted:

    " His former Roman Catholic and Muslim teachers, along with two people who were identified by Obama's grade-school teacher as childhood friends, say Obama was registered by his family as a Muslim at both of the schools he attended.

    " That registration meant that during the third and fourth grades, Obama learned about Islam for two hours each week in religion class.

    "The childhood friends say Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the local mosque. 'We prayed but not really seriously, just following actions done by older people in the mosque. But as kids, we loved to meet our friends and went to the mosque together and played,' said Zulfin Adi, who describes himself as among Obama's closest childhood friends.

    " The campaign's national press secretary, Bill Burton, said Wednesday that the friends were recalling events 'that are 40 years old and subject to four decades of other information.' Obama's younger sister, Maya Soetoro, said in a statement released by the campaign that the family attended the mosque only 'for big communal events,' not every Friday."

    Continuing to report on his investigation, Watson wrote:

    "Adi said he often visited the Soetoro family at their home, a small flat-roofed bungalow at 16 Haji Ramli St. Today, he runs an Internet cafe and purified water business from the same small Jakarta house where he grew up near Obama.

    "Theirs was a middle-class neighborhood, but Haji Ramli Street was a dirt lane where Obama used to while away the hours kicking a soccer ball. In the long rainy season, it turned to thick, mucky soup; Obama and his friends wore plastic bags over their shoes to walk though it, said Adi, who at 46 is the same age as Obama.

    " Neighborhood Muslims worshiped in a nearby house, which has since been replaced by a larger mosque. Sometimes, when the muezzin sounded the call to prayer, Lolo and Barry would walk to the makeshift mosque together, Adi said.

    "His mother often went to the church, but Barry was Muslim. He went to the mosque," Adi said. "I remember him wearing a sarong."

    On January 16, 2007, Obama launched BarackObama.com and issued a press release stating that on February 20, 2007, he would make an announcement on his running for President of the United States, as reported by local Station NBC5 in Chicago. Following that announcement, The Kalim Post, an Indonesian newspaper carried a story about Obama's Indonesian friends clearly discussing that Obama was a practicing Muslim when he lived in Djakarta, reporting in Indonesian: " Mengenai agama yang dianut sang senator AS, Akhmad Solikhin, wakil kepala SDN 1 Menteng, tidak yakin Barry beragama Islam. . . .menurut Tine sang guru, Barry mengikuti pelajaran agama Islam semasa sekolah." That translates into English as: " Concerning the religion that was followed by the US senator, Akhmad Solikhin, the representative of the SDN head 1 Menteng, was not sure Barry was religious Islam. . . . according to his teacher(guru) Barry took part in the Islam religious lesson during the period of the school." Additionally, another Indonesian newspaper The Benjarmasin Post, in a July 9, 2006 report on Barack Obama's time in Indonesia, based upon Obama's local friends in Djakarta wrote:"Barry dulu memang beragama Islam," which clearly translates into English: " Barry was previously quite religious [in] Islam."
    These are important issues to the American body politic because Obama has proclaimed that he was never a Muslim during his campaigning in Iowa in December 2007. Why? Because Obama's Muslim friends in Indonesia, as well as Paul Watson, the well respected bureau chief of The Los Angeles Times have indicated that Obama once practiced Islam and these reports were based upon information discussed well before Obama became a serious, if not leading, contender for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Simply put, what does it say about the personal integrity, and candor ( i.e., honesty) of Obama the candidate who seeks the highest office in the land by misrepresentation and deception on such a straightforward issue. This is particularly important since the Obama campaign's website has a November 12, 2007 web page titled, "Obama Has Never Been A Muslim, And Is a Committed Christian." Yet, the web page fails to refute the Watson report of March 16, 2007 ( although it makes reference to the Watson report of March 16, 2007, the reference is neutral and fails to dispute the personal accounts of those interviewed by Watson) or the reports of the two Indonesian newspapers of July 2006 and January 27, 2007, which reported on Djakarta residents that stated, without motive to lie, that Obama once was a practicing Muslim. Again, integrity is a huge personal attribute that is appropriately considered by the body politic. Why has Obama not responded to the dispute on a point-by-point basis when over 13 percent of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim apostate and has misrepresented his former Muslim affiliation by simply intoning that he "has never been a Muslim," despite reputable evidence to the contrary.

    The Obama campaign website makes the unsubstantiated claim: "Barack Obama Is Not and Has Never Been a Muslim. Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ." Did Paul Watson fabricate a story about Obama's Muslim prayers at a Djakarta mosque? Were the quotations form the Los Angeles Times report of march 16, 2007, which can be accessed on the Obama website by a hyper-link false? Was the account of one of Obama's closest friend in Djakarta an utter falsehood, which hoodwinked Watson to write: "The childhood friends say Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the local mosque. 'We prayed but not really seriously, just following actions done by older people in the mosque. But as kids, we loved to meet our friends and went to the mosque together and played,' said Zulfin Adi, who describes himself as among Obama's closest childhood friends." What motive to fabricate such basic historical facts did Zulfin Adi and /or Watson have at the time the report was published? I submit none whatsoever.
    According to the SWAMP, the Chicago Tribune's political bog of December 22, 2007, Barrack Obama specifically denied EVER practicing Islam. Obama stated: "I've always been a Christian" and "I have never practiced [Islam]." This raise the question: Is Barack Obama an Impostor? Did Obama's answers to direct questions obfuscate the truth? Was Obama deliberately lying to gain the highest office of the land by blatant misrepresentations of material facts that his campaign considers so important that it has dedicated a good portion of its website to support the claim that: " Obama Has Never Been A Muslim, And Is a Committed Christian."

    Returning to the April 10, 2008 New York Times report of Obama's San Francisco revelation of his 1981 trip to Pakistan seems to undermine the Obama website claim of November 12, 2007 that, "Obama Has Never Been A Muslim, And Is a Committed Christian," as well as his personal public representation that, "I've always been a Christian" and "I have never practiced Islam."

    This is a fundamental question of personal integrity of Obama, not an anti-Muslim attack on a political candidate. Why has the news media missed the big question of whether Obama may have deliberately lied about his past practice of Islam to secure the Democratic nomination.

    I know a bit more than the average American about Islam and Pakistan. Two of my four sisters were born in British colonial Karachi, India, what is now Pakistan. (My oldest sister Maureen was born in England, my twin sister and I were born in Mumbai, India years after the partition of 1947). My late father had to travel to Kashmir to rescue my oldest three sisters from a boarding school during the chaos and atrocities of early 1948 in Karachi. My family suffered greatly from Louie Mountbatten's partition of India. My grandfather was the last Mayor of Karachi under British rule. He lost almost all as a refugee who settled in Bombay.

    My maternal uncle who negotiated, in 1946, the production of Chrysler cars in India that commenced in 1948, with Walter Chrysler at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York fared better, as did my father who earned his Ph.D. from Edinburgh in 1935, who relocated our family to Bombay in 1948, before me and my twin sister were born.
    We lived in the centre of Bombay off Pedder Road. I was educated at Saint Joseph Convent School in Panchgani, India, as was my three other sisters before me and my twin came to the United States, where we studied as undergraduates and later in professional schools. One of the girls in our graduating class, a Muslim, became a famous Bollywood movie star, another a rock singer. My husband, who worked for a multinational corporations did a great deal of business with Middle-Eastern African and Asian countries and, in particular Pakistani and Indian companies.

    One of my faternal uncles, a barrister trained at Lincoln's Inn in London remained in Karachi until 1979, principally by virtue of the fact that he was a brilliant lawyer and Ali Bhutto's barrister. He immigrated to Bombay in 1979 after all attempts to save Bhutto from hanging at the hand of the military madman and dictator Mohammed Zia failed.

    When my husband and I visited Bombay in 1979 we had the opportunity to visit my uncle the barrister. He warned us of the incipiency of radical Islam through the imposition of Islamic law (Shariah) on once British Common Law countries. My husband and I ( we are both American Lawyers) could not grasp the significant point of my uncle's insightful analysis. We do now. Pakistan has been at the core of radical Islam since Zia and has drawn to it young Muslim radicals. Is that the reason Obama concealed his 1981 trip to Karachi?

    East Africa (Kenya, Somalia, the Ogaden sector of Ethiopia and Tanzania), like Pakistan has become a breeding ground for radical Islam. Barack Obama's affinity for, association with, and self professed knowledge of Islam, gives one great pause because of his categorical denial of his Islamic past without specific repudiation of the scores of sources that undermine, if not totally belie, his assertion that he never practiced Islam. Is Obama to be believed, particularly given his ambitions to seek the Democratic nomination from 2006 onward? Why has the Obama campaign changed its story between Obama not being a "practicing" Muslim in its March 14, 2007 statement to Paul Watson from its January 24,2007 statement issued by Obama campaign spokesperson Robert Gibbs that: "To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago," to change once again following Paul Watson's investigative report of March 16, 2007. Again, like the Obama denials of knowledge of the hate based, racist and Marxist ideology, which has been mischaracterized as Black Liberation Theology spewed by his Pastor Wright, Obama's various accounts of Obama's Muslim heritage, both written in Dreams of My Father and given by his campaign spokesperson, are a web of contradictions.

    In the words of Sir Walter Scott "O, what a tangled web we weave When first we practise to deceive." Marmion, 1808.

    Can the United States of America sober up from its Obama intoxication to question Obama's categorical claim that he NEVER practiced Islam? What has happened to the healthy skepticism once the hallmark of American journalism? Like the Pastor Wright issue, this matter of Obama's claim to never practicing Islam has not been properly aired by the press, save Paul Watson and The Los Angeles Times.

    Why would a college student from Occidental college in Los Angeles, California, visit two hot bed cities of fundamentalist Islamic doctrine in 1981 unless the student embraced radical Islamic ideology? Why not spend that time with his mother in Djakarta, rather than in Karachi and Hyderabad cavorting with the radical Chandoo brothers?
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    Its called traveling buddy. People do it all the time.

    So the article is completely off, especially since Obam a was apparently never a practicing muslim. Also, they seem to have managed their mysoginistic tendencies with regards to Condi. No muslim dignitaries have insisted on her being stoned to death for not being escorted by a family member or wearing those slutty pantsuits that fully expose the neck and facial features.

    I love it, first he was too muslim, now we have problems because he's not.
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    I attended Catholic services fairly regularly for a while with a childhood friend , because we wanted to go together, and she couldn't reciprocate by coming to my Protestant church services I learned to recite the prayers in Latin, and I enjoyed the ritual.
    I guess that makes me a Catholic..
    No, wait...

    I attended an evangelical church for a while with another friend. I loved the music (still do), and the Pastor was a fun loving guy. I guess that makes me an evangelical.
    No, wait...

    My mother was raised as a Baptist, and my father was raised as a Mehtodist.
    They attended (with me) a series of Lutheran churches as a matter of compromise and availability. That makes me a triple striped mongrel Protestant, I guess.
    No, wait.....

    I've attended Native American rituals honoirng nature. I must be a red-skin pagan, I fuess.
    No wait....

    In college, I spent a lot of time with friends from Iran, India and Israel.
    I spent a lot of time with friends from Hungary, France and Denmark.
    I'm still in contact with many of them.
    I must have renounced my loyalty to America in favor of these other counties, I guess.
    No, wait....

    I spent 20 years working in the Diamond District of NYC I must have become Jewish, then, I guess.
    No. WAIT.
    HOLD ON THERE.

    I define who I am, not other people, not friends, not acquaintances, not the places I've visited or the places I've lived.

    Every exposure to something new and different has enriched me and widened my horizons of understanding.
    That's why I choose to be an atheist loyal American.

    That's why I appreciate what Obama's background adds to his grasp of the world and of America.
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    Runasim,

    Wow, that is a lot of words (and I read most of them). I confess I missed the ones where it shows the Senator is/was a Muslim, though. I'd suggest leading with that information next time you post.

    For my part, I promise to be more skeptical of politicians' categorical claims, as you so wisely suggest. Nevertheless, I'll still vote for the one whose policies, ideas, and worldview I most agree with.

    Cheers.
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    Sorry, obviously I meant to respond to TruthfulLiberal, not runasim.
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