Is Obama an apostate?

Hermann Goering said if you repeat a lie often enough, eventually enough people will believe it so it becomes universal truth. In the age of the Internet; and when most of the networks are controlled by right-wing interests, routinely stamp on editorial independence, and fail to disclose conflicts of interest (especially at Fox News) -- the lies spread even faster and are more enduring.

This partly explains Barack Obama's difficulties in rallying rural white voters to his camp. While most will be brought over come fall (I and many others hope), one out of seven Americans still believe that Obama is a Muslim. Even though the facts demonstrate this is patently false -- he is a practicing evangelical Christian, a modern day champion of what we call the Social Gospel or liberation theology (albeit with a high degree of self-reliance, à la Bill Cosby) -- once people's beliefs are fixed they are usually fixed for life. Prejudices are learned and often very hard to unlearn.

But the concerns may not be so misplaced after all. It may not matter what Christians think but rather what Muslims think, especially in the developing world.

An op-ed piece in today's NYT points out that because Obama's father was a Muslim at the time of the future Senator's birth, he automatically became a Muslim. It didn't matter that his mother was a Christian because Islam does not allow for "half-Muslims." Nor does it matter that Obama had any say in the matter, or any self-defined religion until about twenty years ago. Moreover, when Obama was baptized into Christianity, he became an apostate and under sharia, the penalty for irtidad ... is death, preferably by stoning.

The implications? People in the Third World seem genuinely enthusiastic that a son of Africa could be the next US President. When they (at least in Muslim parts of the world) find out he's a Christian, they're going to go nuts. The notion that John McCain has put forward that he's the favourite candidate amongst "Islamic" terrorist groups must be tossed out, based on the thesis put forward by the op-ed writer.

It gets worse:

Because no government is likely to allow the prosecution of a President Obama — not even those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the only two countries where Islamic religious courts dominate over secular law — 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.

At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards. More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House. This would compromise the ability of governments in Muslim nations to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism, as well as American efforts to export democracy and human rights abroad.

Obama's Secret Service code name is "Renegade." In more ways than one apparently, in some people's minds.

Overall, Obama is still the better candidate because growing up with Muslim influences he would be a better bridge to the other side of the world than Hillary Clinton would. But, he'd really better watch his back now.

On the other hand, he could use his influence and office to point out that the Arab oil-rich states' reliance on sovereign wealth funds does not qualify for the Islamic injunction to quarter tithe -- exposing the "Islamic" governments for how un-Muslim they are; and that as a result the foreign aid is being cut off until further notice.

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