The Problems With Junior

As the sleek veneer begins to fade and tarnish, and as a reticent media feels the unrelenting tug of duty - or perhaps shame - the questions about Obama's past are finally gaining credibility and momentum. Furthermore, the notions of his incompetency and ineligibility are suddenly seeming more plausible to a larger portion of Americans, no longer cavalierly dismissed with a shrug and a wave of the hand.

I was among a sizeable crowd of bloggers and pundits who were sounding the alarm about Obama's past associations, from William Ayers to Reverend Wright. But the core of Obama's character was formed long before he would meet either of those men. It is derived from the dreams of his father and the call to prayer in Jakarta.

While the buzz lately is about the percentage of people who believe Obama to be a Muslim, the media elites are demanding to know how so many people could be so gullible, an irony I find immensely amusing. Equally as ironic is their intense desire to convince those "gullible" people that the President is a Christian, a group they are normally engaged in mocking.

But to believe that Obama is a Muslim is less of a stretch than vice versa. While he may not be a practicing or active Muslim, there is no question that he is a cultural Muslim. He was born to a Muslim father and an atheist mother. In the world of Islam, he is a Muslim. For him to claim otherwise makes him an Apostate, one more hated by Muslims than even infidels, but we'll get to that particular problem later.

His birth to Barack Sr. makes him a Muslim, that much is clear. What Junior chose to become later in life may have meaning to him or not, but to Muslims, he will always be a Muslim. That was clear throughout the campaign, when people like Mohamar Gadhafi were enthralled at the prospect of a Muslim becoming president of the United States. Louis Farrakhan, leader of The Nation of Islam, felt the same way. Remember these pertinent facts, they will come in handy.

Ann Dunham, Obama's mother, divorced Barack Sr. when the president was three years old, ostensibly because she discovered that the father of her child already had a wife and family back in Kenya. She subsequently married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian man working towards his masters degree at the University of Hawaii. When Obama was five years old, Soetoro was recalled to Indonesia by his government. A year later, Ann Dunham and her six-year-old followed. Soetoro eventually adopted Obama, who then became young Barry Soetoro.

So the young Soetoro was now an Indonesian citizen, and attended madrassa, taking reading lessons on the Qur'an. Obama has confided that he once got in trouble for making faces during Qur'an studies. He himself has stated recently that the sweetest sound he ever heard was the Muslim call to prayer at sunset. During an interview with George Stephanopoulos in the campaign season of 2008, Obama slipped, referring to "my Muslim" faith. (Stephanopoulos dutifully corrected the gaffe).



Since he's been president, Obama has spent more time reaching out to Muslims and slamming Israel, defending the Ground Zero mosque while decrying home building in Jerusalem. He's coddled Iran - the country he said he would never permit to have a nuclear weapon - and as a result, Achmedinejad has jammed his thumb in our eye. In a matter of hours, Iran and Russia will begin loading fuel rods into the newly finished nuclear reactors.

Obama spoke in Cairo, Egypt, where he offered apologies on our behalf for having been "arrogant", something I personally did not need representation on in such fashion. But the interesting part is the fact that he made it out of there alive. Here's why.

According to the Qur'an, an Apostate is a Muslim who has committed a worse crime than murder; conversion from Islam. Don't take my word for it, however, read from a "newspaper" that has, since the election, become the official propaganda machine of the Obama administration, The New York Times:

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. (Some may point to cases in which lesser punishments were ordered — as with some Egyptian intellectuals who have been punished for writings that were construed as apostasy — but those were really instances of supposed heresy, not explicitly declared apostasy as in Senator Obama’s case.)

It is true that the criminal codes in most Muslim countries do not mandate execution for apostasy (although a law doing exactly that is pending before Iran’s Parliament and in two Malaysian states). But as a practical matter, in very few Islamic countries do the governments have sufficient authority to resist demands for the punishment of apostates at the hands of religious authorities.

For example, in Iran in 1994 the intervention of Pope John Paul II and others won a Christian convert a last-minute reprieve, but the man was abducted and killed shortly after his release. Likewise, in 2006 in Afghanistan, a Christian convert had to be declared insane to prevent his execution, and he was still forced to flee to Italy.

Because no government is likely to allow the prosecution of a President Obama — not even those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the only two countries where Islamic religious courts dominate over secular law — another provision of Muslim law is perhaps more relevant: it prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing.

At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards.

Curious, the reception he received in a Muslim country, then. So when people like Joel Achenbach write OpEd's in the Washington Post titled, "Are Americans total numbskulls?", the question must be reversed upon them immediately. Is Obama a Muslim, or an Apostate? For someone who should be most reviled in a Muslim country, he certainly seemed cozy. Perhaps he didn't convert? Or he returned?

Claiming that he and his family would find a new church in the DC area by Easter, that hasn't happened. The excuse is that he doesn't want to be a disruption. Apparently that is only true of a Christian church as he and his family don't seem to mind fouling traffic on the streets and airports on New York, feel comfortable closing sections of prime beach areas in Spain, and cause security havoc at professional sporting events. Nope, we can't attend church because we'll "interfere".

Maybe Obama is a Christian Apostate. He's safe, there is no penalty for that in the true religion of peace beyond disappointment. "How can people believe that Obama is a Muslim?" How can they deny it?

Sphere: Related Content