Are we in the process of nominating, maybe even electing, America's first Muslim president? Are the memories of 9-11 that faded in our minds?
Daniel Pipes, the conservative blogger who runs the Middle East Forum, is not one for liberal p.c. pieties. To wit, Pipes' brave posting today, in which he asks, "Was Barack Obama a Muslim?" Which is to say, Pipes is my kinda guy! And that's probably the biggest single reason I like Fox News, too. As Brit Hume says, "Fair, Balanced, and Unafraid."
So I am not in the least surprised that Pipes and Fox--along with a very few others, such as The Washington Times and The New York Observer--have been the only media portals to explore the question of what religion Obama might have picked up from his Kenyan Muslim father, or his Indonesian Muslim stepfather, or from his childhood and schooling in mostly Muslim Indonesia.
Indeed, even the Associated Press, not exactly a bastion of conservative eager-beavers, found some compelling evidence, including this nugget, from a news story dated January 24, 2007:
Obama's mother, divorced from Obama's father, married a man from Indonesia named Lolo Soetoro, and the family relocated to the country from 1967-71. At first, Obama attended the Catholic school, Fransiskus Assisis, where documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim, the religion of his stepfather. The document required that each student choose one of five state-sanctioned religions when registering – Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic or Protestant.
Note the key phrase there, about young Obama: "documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim, the religion of his father and step-father." Is the AP making that up? Are the documents at hand forgeries? But if they are genuine, isn't that a smoking gun?
Now some, including Pipes, therefore suspect that Obama's campaign might be lying when it says that "Senator Obama was never a Muslim."
But for the most part, of course, the MSM has not been interested in pursuing this story further; the AP story was almost a year ago, with little follow up, other than the declaration that the story has been disproved.
And of course, Obama Democrats are militant "We will not be swift-boated," said the Obama campaign. Please note that "not being swift-boated" doesn't necessarily mean that you will knock down a false charge with the truth--all it means is that you will hit back hardm with the truth, with a lie, or any other blunt object. In other words, John Kerry should have hired James Carville. No doubt the Obama campaign has absorbed that message, and perhaps they've even succeeded in intimidating the rival presidential campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton--that's how powerful p.c. can be.
Because certainly MSM enforcers, such as the left-wing Think Progress, have been extraordinarily eager, and effective, in shutting down any discussion of Obama's religious background. Few dare, it seems, want to risk being accused of "Islamophobia." Evidently, today, abiding by the fatwa against the hex on saying anything bad about Islam is a stronger journalistic value than seeking out the truth.
And of course, CNN, always anxious to move with the liberal MSM herd, was thus anxious to agree with the trendy groupthink on Obama. And so a key question about the man who is poised to win the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary--and thus quite possibly the Democratic nomination and the White House--was tossed down the memory hole.
And here's that key question: What about the Shahada?
Specifically, did young Barack Hussein Obama ever publicly recite the Shahadah? All Muslims do it, since the Shahada is at the core of their faith. So it should be an easy enough question for Obama--yes or no? All we need is a gutsy reporter to put the question to the Illinois Senator, preferably on camera, so we can all gauge his reaction. He declares, we decide!
The Shahada, of course, is the Muslim profession of faith. In the original, it's lā ilāha illā-llāh, wa muḥammadan rasūlu-llāh , or, if you prefer, "I testify that there is no god but God, and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God." That's it. And if you're curious as to what the Shahadah looks like in Arabic, take a look at the graphic above--which is, of course, the flag of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The sword is just a little peacenik touch that the Saudis added on.
If someone wants to so profess, that's OK, but if someone does so profess, then, in the eyes of Islam, that person is a Muslim. For life. And it's fair for others to know the truth, too, so that they can decide who to vote for based on all the information. After all, there is a "clash of civilizations" going on, between the West and Islam.
So where does Obama stand? Is he a Christian who is against Islamic domination? Is he a Muslim who is against Muslim domination? Or is he, mindful of his own twinned heritage, going to try to straddle the two cultures? Because, as the Wikipedia entry explains, "A single honest recitation of the Shahadah in Arabic is all that is required for a person to become a Muslim according to most traditional schools."
Now, suppose for a moment that young Obama did recite the Shahada--he did, to repeat, have a Muslim father and also stepfather, and he did live in a Muslim country. If so, then what is the status of Obama's faith now? The official answer is that he is a Christian, and he just offered a sweet Christmas message. So that's Christian, right? But wait! If you watch the video, you will see that Obama himself doesn't say, "Merry Christmas," one of his daughters does. Interesting!
And what about Obama's church? He is a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a church with a strongly "Afrocentric" theology. And the minister at Trinity, Jeremiah Wright, has his own pro-Third World ideology; he once traveled to Libya as a guest of Muammar Qaddafi.
So let's have some more questions for Obama. If he is no longer a Muslim, that's fine with me. Although he might then be a liar. If he never was a Muslim, ever, then let him disprove the reports from Fox and elsewhere.
But I think that Muslims will care if he converted away from their religion. As Pipes points out, Muslims don't take kindly to apostates, or murtadd. Murtadd, one might say, is Arabic for "you're dead."
So maybe it's a Catch 22 for Obama: He might be lying to Americans, 85 percent of whom are Christians, or he might be lying to the Muslims, all billion or so of them around the world--and many of them, as we know, have guns and bombs. One shudders to think what might happen if Obama becomes the 44th President and then travels to some Muslim country where an Islamic purist is riled up at him. (Remember the hell that befell Salman Rushdie, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, both accused of various kinds of apostasy.
But in the meantime, inquiring minds want to know the real story about Obama and Shahadah. Seriously, we want to know.
Because the fate of our country is at stake in the next election.
A half-century ago, The Manchurian Candidate was fiction. Maybe today the Muslim Candidate is real.
In any case, let's have some more investigation. This isn't just a story of interest to Cable Gamers, this is a story of interest to all Americans.
Fox started it, Pipes picked it up, now let's see where Fox--or anyone else with some journalistic courage--can go next. Hopefully, such fearless inquiry will lead us to the truth! And who knows? Maybe the truth will be the best thing ever for Obama.
