According to Muslims, Obama is probably a Muslim

As y’all know, I think Obama is a man who does not believe in any God (except maybe himself), but who has frequently expressed a feeling of affinity with the Muslim world.  An increasing number of Americans, however, do believe that Obama is a Muslim.

Many reasons are given for this growing belief:  Americans are psychopaths, thunders Rev. Wright; they’re racists, shriek the usual suspects; they’re having troubles labeling his apparent alienation from core American values (as evidenced by his manifest disdain for those bitter Americans who cling to guns and God), and therefore append to him an “other” type religion.

But here’s an easy one:  Obama is a Muslim because Muslim law says he’s a Muslim.

Muslim law is pretty clear:  you can’t leave the faith.  Oh, sure you can try.  But even if you’re not killed, you’re still a Muslim, just a really, really bad Muslim.

It’s sort of the violent Muslim version of the Jewish thing, where Jews say of someone, “Oh, he’s Jewish,” even though the last practicing Jew in his family lineage was his great grandfather, back in Russia.  Nobody says that about Christians.   I’ve never heard, “Well, he’s Baptist,” said of someone whose great grandfather converted 100 years ago.  Sure, if the person is famous enough, that fact might show up in his biography, but it’s not going to be used to tag him with a long-forgotten religious affiliation.

But Jews are different and so are Muslims.  No matter what you believe, if you were born into or raised in the faith, it follows you around.

And here’s the deal with Obama:  He was born into the faith via his father and, for a period of years, he was raised in the faith.  Much as the Left likes to tell us that his school in Indonesia was nondenominational, that’s just part of the story about Obama’s religious upbringing.  While it may not have been a religious school, students were still required to state their religion and take religious instruction.  Obama was therefore enrolled as a Muslim and received instruction in that religion.  In his own words, that experience left him truly loving the sound of the Muslim call to prayer.

Does any of the above make Obama, in his own mind, a Muslim?  Absolutely not.  I have no idea what goes on in his mind, but I believe him when he says he’s not a Muslim. After all, the whole Indonesian experience began and ended when he was a little boy.

(As an aside, regarding Obama’s professions to Christianity, well, on the facts, I’m a bit dubious.  As the saying goes, standing in a garage does not make you a car, and going to church, something he’s rather conspicuously failed to do since becoming President, does not make you a Christian.  There has to be some true commitment to and belief in the faith, and, despite 20 years with Rev. Wright, Obama gives scant evidence that Christianity resonates with him at any level, and that’s true despite the prayers send to his Blackberry.  Obama’s Christianity, though, is between Obama and God — assuming he believes in one other than himself — , and most definitely not between Obama and me.  And it’s not between Obama and you, either.  As Queen Elizabeth I famously said, she had “no desire to make windows into men’s souls.”)

But back to the Muslim thing.  I take Obama at his word that he’s not Muslim.  But, just as a Jew is always a Jew, Muslims understand that a Muslim is always a Muslim.  So Americans are probably wrong in assigning genuine religious fervor to a man whose true loves are Big Government and himself (preferably occupying the same chair), but they are technically right in saying, as I’m sure the world’s imams do, that he’ll be a Muslim in name for the rest of his life.