Two recent op-ed articles in the United States presented Barack Obama as a “Muslim apostate” according to “Muslim law as it is universally understood.” Since Muslims were bound to see him as an apostate, they argued, the potential next president could be seen as “al Qaeda’s candidate” because Islamists could whip up popular anger in the Muslim world by portraying him as a turncoat heading a Western war against Islam. He also risked assassination, one suggested, because Muslim law considers apostasy a crime worthy of the death sentence and bars punishment for any Muslim who kills an apostate.
There were many generalisations about Islam in these two articles, one by Edward Luttwak in the New York Times and the other by Shireen K. Burki in the Christian Science Monitor. There is no one code of Muslim law, as Luttwak (who is a strategic analyst not previously known for his mastery of Islamic jurisprudence) or Burki (who we’re told “studied Islam at school” in Pakistan) want unsuspecting readers to believe. Few Muslim countries have death for apostates on their books, and even fewer actually carry it out. This is not meant to defend any law about apostasy, which is an individual right, but just to state a few facts.
Most important of all, Obama never tires of saying that he is a committed Christian and has never practiced the religion that his father (who left his son when he was 2 years old) no longer practiced either. The fact these articles appeared amid an “Obama-is-a-Muslim” whispering campaign in an election year makes a good case for suspecting they may have been motivated more by political strategy than legal scholarship. A lot of the 368 comments on Luttwak’s article assume that’s the case. Call it the “Sharia smear.”
We considered asking around in the Muslim world for reactions to Luttwak’s article (the first to appear), but it was so unfounded that it did not seem worthwhile. There wasn’t much echo there, anyway.
A respected Islamic scholar, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, has now given a Muslim response to the supposed Islamic legal arguments the two articles are based on. “A strange paradox has emerged whereby Sharia (the religious law of Islam) has paradoxically become mythical in its alleged power to determine the behavior of Muslims everywhere, yet defenseless against the most fanciful, even outrageous claims and charges,” he remarks on the Religion Dispatches blog at Emory University, where he teaches law. An-Na’im has just published a well-reviewed book on Sharia, Islam and The Secular State .
The argument by Luttwak “is wrong from a Sharia point of view, and false in terms of the present political and legal realities of Muslim-majority countries,” An-Na’im writes. “Those who think Muslims will respond negatively to Sen. Obama based on his presumed religion have an overly simplistic view of what it means to be Muslim today.“
As for impunity for apostate killers, he asks, “how is it that the killers of the Egyptian intellectual Dr. Farag Foda were prosecuted and executed for murder by the Egyptian state in 1994?”
For all the details, the full text is here (”Swiftboating Obama/Misrepresenting Islam”) and cross-posted at The Immanent Frame (hat tip).
UPDATE: After posting this, I saw I’d missed that Ali Eteraz had already dissected Luttwak’s op-ed. Chalk it up to me being on the road…
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marcus…thank you. Your post was excellently written. Oh to have more men of your ilk . Your good common sense and wisdom. Please keep it up. Don’t stop stating your observations!!People will eventually listen!!
- Posted by annaThe fact that any Muslim country would have on their books that someone could be killed for apostasizing is wrong, duh. So don’t excuse it by saying that very few practice it. And it is in their scripture to kill infidels, that’s why it was a law. Unfortunately most Muslims are victims of terrorisim. Check out the movie Obsession, this documentary makes it very clear that the Islamic leaders are trying to model themselves after Hitler in their propaganda, and they have openly declared war on the West. We just don’t take them seriously. Obama lies, and for some reason people just look over it, because they are so desperate for economic changes. The Iraq war was a good decision, and we should attack Iran next before they attack us. Newsflash! Terrorism has actually decreased by neary 50% since we attacked Iraq and that includes any terrorist attacks still occuring in Iraq. To say the war didn’t work is ridiculous, we haven’t had an attack since. And for note, Obama is a Muslim.
- Posted by Obama liesMarcus, I think your claim to help readers “make informed decisions” falls apart when you use the cheap trick of implying that Obama is a Muslim, declaring that Muslims use ‘taqiyya’ and then concluding that all this adds up to him supporting extremist Islam. Taqiyya is a deus ex machina, a debating trick for people who want to accuse Muslims of something but don’t have proof for it. Serious people making serious arguments don’t need a crutch like this to convince people. You say several times that readers should connect the dots in your argument. But you need the ‘taqiyya’ sleight of hand to do it yourself. So a key connection is missing.
- Posted by Tom Heneghanbloggers, non-scholars and the average american really does not have to know scholarly information about islam and barack obama. all we need is functioning common sense and perhaps a streak of patriotism (it’s post-911 remember? this is where common sense comes in), to be able to see that barack obama is a tad creepy. here’s what supports my reasoning.
there’s too much evidence for obama supporting our worst fears, and it’s hinted at all over the place, beginning with his muslim background (which is a start), his associations, then some activities of his. just read what i’ve posted here:
“administrative jihad up close and personal”
http://make-informed-decisions.blogspot. com/2008/05/administrative-jihad-up-clos e-and.html
or
“evidence that raila odinga made an agreement with the islamic community to hand over kenya to sharia law. why did barack obama campaign for odinga?”
http://make-informed-decisions.blogspot. com/2008/05/evidence-that-raila-odinga-m ade.html
there’s a lot there, especially the obama-odinga-kenya connection. you’d never find hillary or mccain caught dead in kenya supporting an individual ready to hand over the kenyan government to islamic sharia law (written about below).
on associations, fox new’s sean hannity has successfully exposed obama’s william ayers connection (a confessed american terrorist), and obama spending 20 years in a church who’s pastor (with louis farrakhan) went to libya to meet with moammar khadafi (an extremist islamic terrorist), showing they sympathsize with extremist islam. not to mention what louis farrakhan himself stands for - the leader of the nation of islam. my god, come on. obama could have chosen any church, so why that one?
on activities, by the way, did you know barack obama supported and actually campaigned for raila odinga of kenya in 2006? odinga, had he been elected president of kenya, was prepared to hand over ‘muslim-declared’ areas of the country to islamic sharia law. where is obama coming from supporting a character like this? he has all kinds of islam-supporting connections - you have to connect the dots. newt gingrich wonders about it probably (hinting at this, often saying “we know nothing about obama”), pat buchanan subtly rails on obama, sean hannity of fox news has been hammering obama VERY HARD, but not coming out and saying he’s devoutly muslim, just exposing his connections to ANTI-AMERICAN individuals. it’s by implication. it’s a matter of connecting the dots and reading between the lines. what he does he does behind the scenes for sure, as most political agenda’s are handled.
another weird activity - as chairman of the senate foreign relations subcommittee on european affairs, which has important jurisdiction over nato and therefore is critical to military activities in afghanistan, barack obama has failed to hold even one hearing as chairman. he’s virtually done nothing in that position. now talk about ‘administrative jihad’ - i believe that would be considered a win in al qaeda’s eyes.
muslims are well known to practice ‘taqiyya’, or dissimulation, which is a form of deception they use to conceal the truth. were barack obama not to have had a muslim upbringing, or not to have had all the odd associations, and not to have supported people in the islamic camp (including wanting to meet with terrorist leaders without pre-conditions) .. then yes, i would wholeheartedly think that the allegation that obama is secretly supporting extremist islam is crazy. but the evidence is there. come on now, this caution is an exercise of god-given common sense based on evidence.
honestly, senator obama has so much support because of the ignorance and/or naiveness of the 18-30 demographics that follow him. they don’t have a mature ‘big picture’ of everything, not to mention just plain being in the dark to many facts about obama. i’ve campaigned (and continue to do so) on facebook for hillary and mccain, and have seen wall posts and discussion boards repeatedly DELETED by group administrators. rather than defending their candidate they find it easier to simply delete posts. is it any wonder the obama camp is in the dark STILL about full knowledge of their candidate? it’s a post-911 era and a muslim-american is now running for president? where has common sense gone?
- Posted by marcusKebor Saluur, with all respect, your comment seems to mislead on purpose by blurring the distinction between theory and practice. Yes, in theory, sharia is the law for Muslims and takes precedence over secular law. But vast numbers of Muslims live in situations (be it in Muslim countries or not) where the opposite is the case. Almost all Muslim countries give precedence to secular law over sharia. Many Muslims say they respect sharia but do not always act or decide according to it. So sweeping statements like “any Muslim will see Obama as an apostate” are based on an assumption about the factual preeminence of sharia law that is not borne out in reality. My guess is that many Muslims will not judge this case simply on what sharia says, but what they think is reasonable.
Furthermore, is this idea that one is a Muslim because one’s father is a Muslim based on the Koran or hadith? Or is it a cultural tradition that Muslims have come to assume is part of their religion. I’m not a scholar of Islam so I don’t even know where to look to check this. But I get suspicious about undocumented assertions about Islamic law, such as those Luttwak makes, because it is such a contested field.
As for your example of “Islamic grave robbery,” there is something wrong with the application of sharia in such countries if someone can “forcefully convert” an ailing father to Islam in order to shut his siblings out of their inheritance. How much does that reflect Islamic values? Whatever happened to “there is no compulsion in religion”?
- Posted by Tom HeneghanYour article (to mislead on purpose?) blurs the distinction between sharia, the only law in islam and the primary law for any muslim, and secular law.
True, few countries have a death penalty for apostasy in their secular law (if they have such, a real islamic nation is based on sharia itself). However the sharia law applies to all muslims the world over and it is never varied. Sharia is based on the Quran. It cannot be changed, cannot be misinterpreted. For a muslim, sharia is the primary law.
Thus any muslim will see Obama as an apostate, as he has inherited the religion of Islam from his father (islam is a paternal religion), and willingly and knowingly left it at some point by converting into christianity.
It does not matter whether he prayed at the mosque 5 times a day (very rare), prayed 5 times a day somewhere as a good muslim should, prayed sometimes as required by his school, social contacts and culture (in a muslim nation like Indonesia you will quickly become a social outcast if you’re not seen at the friday prayers, and avoiding the school prayer times would be nearly impossible), or never prayed anywhere at all.
He is still a muslim until he renounces islam, at which point he becomes an apostate.
(Not relating to Obama, sharia can be used to an interesting effect in muslim nations in non-muslim families: a son secretly converts to islam, forcefully converts his ailing father to islam with testifiers from the local mosque, according to sharia law inheritance can only go to a muslim, thus the son received 100% of the inheritance with the surviving wife and other children receiving nothing. This islamic grave robbery is actively practiced this day especially in islamic nations with sizable non-muslim minorities like Malaysia and Indonesia. The sharia law trumps secular law where the parties concerned are currently muslim.)
- Posted by kebor saluur[...] view” and said the NYT should not simply publish opinion pieces based on patently false facts. We blogged about this last week when a leading Muslim scholar refuted Luttwak’s article. Luttwak is a military historian [...]
- Posted by Muslim Heretics Conference » FaithWorld » Blog Archive » NYT has second thoughts about “Sharia smear” on Obama | Blogs | Reuters.comStill, you’ll be surprised how many supposed critical-thinking people believe anything that jives with their deepest beliefs.
It all depends on the amount of information one has access to, and the kind. If more people predisposed to believe a candidate for US President named “Barack Hussein Obama” was a Muslim and now is an apostate fail to get the right kind of information, who/what will make them believe otherwise?
And if certain people find that they can benefit from branding Obama as Muslim, whether current or former, and these people happen to be Strategic Constituents and/or Gatekeepers of Information, how can the opinion of someone unknown to them like An-Na’im matter? Will Al Qaeda and every radical - whether Christian or Muslim - believe otherwise?
As a Communications/PR specialist, I have an… appreciation about how information is packaged and how people process that information. Really, you’ll be surprised how easily supposedly rational people believe what they hear/see when it resonates with their deepest held beliefs, and when its echoed by their Strategic Constituents, over and above even supposedly empirical data.
- Posted by Robert Ramos