Obama-Is-Not-A-Muslimade

Photo by JenWaller

Hey, remember the good old days when Obama was a Muslim and went to school in a madrassa?  It had to seriously bum out the Republicans when that fell apart.  Well, for about five minutes, and then they switched to the Obama's-pastor-is-an-angry-black-man narrative.  Well, now Edward Luttwak has come up with an innovative new spin on why Obama's non-Muslimness is a bad thing:

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that... his father said he renounced his religion....

(...)

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....

(...)

Because no government is likely to allow the prosecution of a President Obama... 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.

Wow.  So Luttwak is actually suggesting that if we elect Obama, we'll have to worry about Muslims taking potshots at him because they have some kind of sharia obligation and immunity?  Not that we should base our votes on that or anything - we just need to think about whether we want our next president to be assassinated by Muslim extremists.  Maybe Obama should pick a running mate who would be an effective deterrent - um, is there any legal reason that Joe Lieberman couldn't be on both tickets?

Seriously, in addition to being total and complete wankery, Luttwak's argument is also total and complete crap:

...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....

I'm not entirely sure what agenda Luttwak is peddling, or if he's just trying to stir shit up.  He's an odd duck: An ex-cold-warrior who is now more neocom than neocon (check out some of his other NYT pieces), so he's something of an apostate himself.  He also appears to be a member of the Muslims-are-insane-barbarians crowd (perhaps they replaced the Soviets as his Designated Object Of Paranoid Loathing), so it's possible he was aiming at Islam rather than Obama.  But that doesn't make the piece any less appalling, or the Times any less despicable for printing such trash as if it were serious commentary.

(h/t Moderate Voice for the great debunking quote and Julia for the Luttwak profile)