GUAYNABO, Puerto Rico – Miles from the Democratic Party’s machinations to decide whether she will get her votes counted in the disputed primaries of Florida and Michigan, Hillary Clinton on Saturday smiled and clapped her way through the streets and small towns of Puerto Rico.

Clinton, who trails front-runner Barack Obama by what most consider an insurmountable gap in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, waved from a campaign truck at bystanders who gathered in the steamy afternoon heat to cheer her on.

Accompanied by loudspeakers blaring “Hillary Clinton, La Proxima Presidenta,” pounding music and trucks carrying photographers, television crews and reporters, Clinton cruised the palm tree-lined streets in towns around San Juan for hours past fruit vendors and fisherman who paused to point and smile.

Supporters honked car horns and waved banners while small children jumped up and down. One woman rushed up to Clinton and presented her with a giant bouquet of flowers.

“Si, si, si,” exclaimed Blanca Rivera, 69, standing by the side of the road in Guaynabo, when asked if she planned to vote for the New York senator in Sunday’s primary. “Si, si, si.”

Clinton is heavily favored to win Puerto Rico’s primary, although the result is not expected to make a significant dent in Obama’s lead among delegates to the party’s nominating convention.

Clinton remained well out of questioning range of reporters who might have asked her about the Democratic Party’s rules committee, meeting in Washington to decide the future of the primary results in Florida and Michigan. Clinton won both primaries, but the contests were held earlier than party rules allowed and the results were invalidated.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 political coverage.

Photo: REUTERS/Ana Martinez (Clinton appears at a rally in Puerto Rico)

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...

NEW YORK - There is a life after politics, Bill Clinton said on Friday, but he wasn’t talking to his wife.

While Hillary Clinton was taking her struggling bid for the Democratic presidential nomination down to the wire in Puerto Rico, the former U.S. president took a break from campaigning to help his old friend Tony Blair launch a new Faith Foundation.

The former British prime minister said he was inspired by the Clinton Global Initiative which aims to tackle poverty, AIDS and climate change.

Introducing Blair at the launch of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation in New York, Clinton said: “I’ve learned there’s not only life after politics, there’s good life after politics, if you find something that you really believe in. He’s found something he really believes in.”

PICTURE:REUTERS/Mike Segar (Clinton introduces former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to the podium at the official launch of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation in New York)

WASHINGTON - Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan, whose explosive new book brimming with withering criticism of his former bosses in Bush administration, said he is thinking about voting for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

In an interview Thursday night with MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” the former spokesman for President George W. Bush said he was “intrigued by what Sen. Obama has been running on about changing the way Washington works.” 

In his tell-all book, “What Happened — Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” presents himself as a one-time true Bush believer who mistakenly fell in line behind a propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq.

McClellan said he also has respect for Republican candidate John McCain “for the way he has worked across the aisle with Democrats.” He says he is still considering who to support.

“I’m going to take my time and think it through,” McClellan told Olbermann, a harsh critic of Bush and his conservative allies.

McClellan began a publicity tour for his book on Thursday and gave his first television interviews to NBC, which has come under fire from the White House for its handling of a recent interview with Bush and comments he made about Iran.

GREENDALE, Wis. - The question from the floor was clearly one that has been on veteran Republican John McCain’s mind as he campaigns to replace his party’s unpopular two-term President George W. Bush in the November election.
 
“My question is, since Republicans have had the mantle of control as long as they have had, how in the world are we going to re-energize a base of totally disillusioned Republicans?” the woman asked at a town hall meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
 
“While you are a Washington insider, how can you say it is going to be different for the next four years when we have been so bitterly disappointed?” she added.
 
“I thank you. That’s one of the questions that many Americans will be asking,” McCain replied, in front of a large crowd at the Martin Luther High School gymnasium, later conceding that he had “a lot of work to do.”
 
The Arizona senator will face either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, Democratic senators from Illinois and New York respectively, in the November election in which Bush’s handling of the Iraq war, a soft and jittery economy, and a weak housing market are key issues for voters.
 
In reply, McCain painted himself as an outsider inside the beltway with a record of battling special interests, and as a candidate who would stand up to scrutiny on key issues such as energy dependence and national security.
 
“I didn’t win Miss Congeniality in the United States Senate for a reason. Because I fought against the wasteful spending, I led investigations that ended up putting people in jail … So I have a record of reform and fighting against the special interests in Washington,” he said.
 
“I have to provide a vision for the future of this country and a plan of action to address our energy dependence issues, to address our housing crisis, to address our health-care needs, so that people … and to keep this nation secure. So that’s going to come when people examine the candidates.
 
McCain said he was happy with where his campaign was at present. 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo: Reuters/Rick Wilking - John McCain waves to supporters in Denver, Colorado on May 27.

BUCYRUS, Kan. - Ah, the power of the presidency on the campaign trail.

President George W. Bush swooped in on Thursday to help Kansas State Sen. Nick Jordan roughly double the amount of money he has raised for his campaign to knock off Democratic Rep. Dennis Moore.

Jordan has raised about $388,000 through the end of March according to Federal Election Commission records. That’s in contrast to the almost $1 million that four-term Moore has raised in an effort to keep his seat in a fairly moderate district that includes numerous suburbs of Kansas City.

Bush helped Jordan and the Kansas Republican Party raise at least $435,000, with the lion’s share of the money going to the candidate, according to his campaign manager Dustin Olson.

But in a sign that Bush’s low popularity ratings could be a drag on Republican candidates, the fundraiser was closed to reporters so no images of the Jordan and the president were shot. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/George Frey

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - As a Democratic presidential candidate, New York senator and former first lady, Hillary Clinton has had her share of media scrutiny. Still, she says the news media should become a more aggressive public watchdog.

“I really do. I really do,” Clinton told reporters when asked if she sincerely favors greater press scrutiny. 

“On the right things. On things that are important to the future of our country. On things that actually matter. I would love that,” said Clinton, long hounded by the press as one of the nation’s most popular yet polarizing figures.

Clinton made the remarks to reporters on her campaign plane on Wednesday night in wake of the new book by former White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who says the Bush administration manipulated information to lead the U.S. into the Iraq war.

“What I hope is that the press and the public and the political class will be much more vigorous and skeptical than everybody was,” Clinton said.

“Everyone, you know, in his or her own way, basically let the administration get away with it. And they got away with it. They got re-elected and here we are,” she said.

Referring to McClellan’s book as well as ones by other former administration officials, Clinton said, “Unfortunately, there were a lot of people in a position to know much more than most of us who went along.

“I find that very sad.”

PARK CITY, Utah - Republican White House hopeful John McCain wants help from President George W. Bush to raise money for his campaign, but has done plenty to downplay the unpopular president’s presence on the trail.
 
Bush headlined three closed-door fundraisers in Arizona and Utah on Tuesday and Wednesday, hauling in millions of dollars for McCain but there was only a brief public glimpse of the two men together, for less than a minute. Plus, McCain skipped two of the events.
 
Bush’s fundraiser in Arizona with McCain was originally scheduled to be open to  reporters, but McCain’s campaign keeps its fundraisers closed to the press so the event was moved to a private home to keep it out of the public eye.
 
McCain’s campaign also refused to release any details about how much Bush was helping raise at the three events, but the one with McCain present brought in roughly $2.5 million, according to sources close to the campaign who declined to be identified.
 
Details from the other two fundraisers were scarce, though the one Wednesday evening in the posh ski resort area of Park City, Utah, was hosted by Mitt Romney, a former investment banker who had been a McCain rival in the hunt for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
 
Democrats have tried to paint McCain as no different than the current White House occupant, arguing that the Arizona senator would represent a “third term” of Bush if elected to the White House in November, citing his steadfast support of Bush’s plan for the Iraq war and making tax cuts permanent.
 
In addition to limiting public exposure with Bush, McCain has differed with him on how to address climate change and said he would pursue nuclear arms reduction talks with Russia and China as part of a foreign policy that brings back “broad-minded internationalism and determined diplomacy.”
 
The growing distance between the two brings up the question of how McCain will handle Bush at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul in early September.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (McCain sees Bush off at the Phoenix airport after a private fundraiser.)

DENVER - Maybe it’s his background teaching constitutional law.

If elected president, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama said one of the first things he wants to do is ensure the constitutionality of all the laws and executive orders passed while Republican President George W. Bush has been in office.

Those that don’t pass muster will be overturned, he said.

During a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama — a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School — was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office.

“I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution,” said Obama

Other goals for his first 100 days: work out a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq; make progress on alternative energy plans and launch legislation to reform the health care system.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage

Photo credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking (Obama talks to students during a visit to a school in Thornton, CO) 

FLATHEAD INDIAN RESERVATION, Montana - Hillary Clinton took her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination to an Indian reservation where she received applause, thanks – and new footwear.

“You’ve gone a million miles for the Indian people — here are a pair of moccasins to help you on your journey,” Joe McDonald, president of Salish Kootenai College, said on Tuesday in presenting Clinton the gift.

A crowd of several hundred roared approval.

Drawing more applause, Clinton said, “We need a president next January who understands the obligation that the United States government has to the tribes that represent the first people of the United States.” 

As first lady, and now a U.S. senator from New York, Clinton has worked to upgrade health care, education and economic opportunities for native Americans, many of whom live in poverty.

In Montana, there are about 56,000 American Indians among seven tribes, making up  6.2 percent of the state’s population. 

Clinton recalled that when her husband was president, he held a meeting with more than 500 leaders of Indian tribes nationwide, marking the first such talks “in many, many years.”

Clinton vowed to reverse what she said was the rollback in relations between Washington and American Indians since President George W. Bush took office in January 2001. 

“I will stand with you,” she said in asking for their support in Montana’s Democratic presidential primary next week.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo REUTERS/Ana Martinez.  (Clinton, her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and their daughter Chelsea attend a Memorial Day event in San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 26, 2008)