Who You Calling "Muslim"?

The issue of Barack Obama's religion flared up before the 2008 presidential election and seems likely to do so again in anticipation of the one in November 2012. This weblog entry keeps an eye on the discussion, in reverse chronological order:

Rev. Franklin Graham 

Muslims see Obama's as a Muslim. In an exchange with the Rev. Franklin Graham, asked whether he believes Barack Obama is a Christian, replied: "You have to ask that of President Obama."

Graham then noted that Obama has shown strong empathy toward Muslims, and that the president has an Islamic background. "Under Islamic law, under Shariah law, Islam sees him as a son of Islam, because his father was a Muslim, his grandfather was a Muslim, his great-grandfather was a Muslim. So under Islamic law, the Muslim world sees President Obama as a Muslim, as a son of Islam. That's just the way it works. That's the way they see him."

Raymond Ibrahim 

Asked whether he believes Obama is "categorically not a Muslim," Graham said, "I can't say categorically because Islam has gotten a free a pass under Obama." He also argued that Obama's Middle East policies help Islamists while hurting Christian minorities. Raymond Ibrahim assesses the validity of Graham's statement at "Obama: 'Son of Islam'?" and concludes that it is "absolutely right."

Santorum press secretary accuses Obama of "radical Islamic policies": Alice Stewart appeared on an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Feb. 20 during which she criticized what she called Obama's "radical environmentalist policies." One time, however, she referred to "the radical Islamic policies the president has."

Stewart quickly called her to clarify that she had misspoken. Stewart called only moments later—while the show was on the air—to say she regretted the slip of the tongue, and to please note that she had misspoken and did not realize until it was pointed out to her that she had used the word "Islamic" by mistake.

So Barack,  Please, tell us one more time in your own words 

Obama is not religiously Muslim. Culturally, though...well, that's a different matter altogether. In reality, calling Obama a "Muslim" gives him too much credit. We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end." The truth, however, is that few people have thought thoroughly and to a definite end. And Obama is no exception. He hasn't even thought matters through enough to understand the folly of statism. Even more to the point, he is a moral relativist, a position the antithesis of any absolutist faith. Inherent in Islam is that belief that Allah, not man, has authored right and wrong and that, consequently, it isn't a matter of opinion. Thus, Obama cannot truly believe in Islam -- or in Christianity or Judaism, for that matter.

How do I know Obama is a relativist? It's simple: Virtually all leftists are, as the denial of moral reality that is relativism lies at the heart of liberalism.

Adolf Hitler 

Speaking of relativists, this matter of Obama's "faith" much reminds me of Adolf Hitler and paganism. Like Obama, Hitler sometimes feigned a belief in Christianity, but in reality he held the religion in contempt. He believed it was "the greatest trick the Jews ever played on Western civilization" and lamented that it was not a warrior creed like Islam or the ancient Germanic paganism with which the Nazis wanted to replace Christianity, Yet while Hitler's second in command, Heinrich Himmler, certainly believed in the ancient pagan myths -- going so far as to launch expeditions to the Far East to prove them, it's silly to think that the leader himself viewed them as anything but a utilitarian device. He wasn't quite that romantic.

Heinrich Himmler 

But what about culturally? For sure, Hitler preferred seeing Swastikas and runes (respectively, pagan symbols and letters) to crosses and crèches, rebuilt Germanic pagan temples to churches. That was where his passions lay. (If some are upset at a comparison between Hitler and Obama, know that I haven't called the president a National Socialist, yet. He's an international socialist. 

Obama also has passions, and there is no question as to where they lie. Our President continues to openly praise Islam; he bows to Muslim leaders; he claims that the Muslim call to prayer is "the most beautiful sound in the world;" he regularly quotes from the Koran and cites it for directing his life; ...

In the past year alone he made a big deal out of hosting a celebratory dinner to open the month of Ramadan -- held in the state dining room; he refused to attend the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts (an avowed Christian organization), and, refused to attend the National Day of Prayer because he claimed to do so would be offensive to non-Christians.

Obama's Boyhood school

He spent some of his formative years in the world's most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, where he was registered as a Muslim in both schools he attended and sometimes prayed on Fridays in a mosque. Moreover, there is another factor, one most people don't consider.

As many know, there once was a great boxer named Cassius Clay. He converted to Islam in 1964, seemingly bothered that Jesus was portrayed as "a white with blond hair and blue eyes," as he put it, and took the name "Muhammad Ali." Of course, the irony of this is that despite being intensely aware of his slave roots, Ali rejected the name of an abolitionist (Clay) and took the name of a slave-owner (Muhammad). It also perhaps eluded him that Christians were the first ones to outlaw slavery, while Muslims give black Africans rope and chains to this day.

But I mention this because Ali's path is a common one in the black community; it is why we've long had the Black Muslims and why Islamic names are so common among American blacks. Many blacks have bought the bill of goods that Christianity is the white man's religion, the faith of oppressors. And they embrace Islam as part of a rejection of "white" society.

Obviously, being part of this milieu could only have reinforced Obama's affinity for things Muslim and antipathy for things authentically Christian -- of which Western civilization is one. And if Americans hadn't been brainwashed with political correctness, they would understand this. With foreign and domestic Muslim influence; attendance at a Black Liberation Theology, pseudo-Christian church; and alliances with ex-terrorists and declared communists, Obama perfectly fits the profile of an America-hater. The wolf never really wore sheep's clothing; it's just that Americans had wool pulled over their eyes.

As for Obama's eyes, they cannot look heavenward when they're so busy looking down on little people who "cling to guns and religion." I sense that Obama is a certain kind of person, one much like Hitler -- who wanted to create a new German pagan religion with himself at its center -- in a particular sense. This type of person essentially says the following to God: "The universe just isn't big enough for the two of us." And his little world certainly isn't, filled to all corners as it is with his bloated, power-hungry ego. This, by the way, has been acknowledged by more honest secularists. For example, Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century poster boy for atheism who is rumored to have been a philosopher (in reality, he is someone who helped discredit the field), once said through his version of Zarathustra, "If there were gods, how could I endure it to be no God? Therefore there can be no gods." I have a feeling that Obama cannot endure it to be no god.

It is, again, unwise to give Obama too much credit. Good faith is defined as "an act of the will informed by the intellect," and any kind of faith requires submission to something higher than yourself. Obama is neither that intellectual nor that humble. But all humans have passions, and his aren't hard to discern. He is anti-American, anti-Western, anti-Christian (the traditional variety), anti-white, and anti-life. He is more comfortable dining with Bill Ayers than with the Queen of England, more internationalist than nationalist, and perhaps more at home in Dar al-Islam than Dar al-Harb. He has lived abroad and traveled much, but he is a lover of nations like a Casanova is a lover of women: He has known many but loves, and is faithful to, none -- not even the one to which he should be married. He is a cultural traitor, and as Cicero said two thousand years ago, "A murderer is less to be feared."