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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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 Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 8:46 am Post subject: |
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That was exactly my point. It won't be normal, sane muslims that target him. And it is those muslims (the normal ones) who would agree with you that you should not kill a guy for leaving a religion.
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I'm sure that there are abnormal, insane Muslims all over the world who would like to put a bullet into Obama for leaving the fold. Then again, there are abnormal, insane people of all sorts of ideological stripes who would probably like to put a bullet into an American president. That's why presidents ave security guards.
It seems to me that, apart from the lunatics, there are two groups of people we could wonder about, ie. Muslims leaders, and the Muslim "street".
I wouldn't worry at all about the leaders of Muslim countries. If a country thinks that it's to their advantage to have some sort of amicable relationship with the USA, I don't think the leadership is gonna toss realpolitik to the wind and declare jihad against the president just because of what religion the president's father was. The only country I could see doing something like that would be Iran, but then off-the-wall rhetoric is their stock in trade anyway, so declaring Obama the Great Apostate would pretty much just be another day at the office for those guys.
As for Muslim public opinion, I've never been to a Muslim country, and I don't want to underestimate the conservatism that prevails in those places. But I would have to assume that your average Joe Blow Muslim has, at least on a practical level, come to terms with the fact that the entire world isn't following the Muhammedan playbook. I don't think you're gonna see mass rioting in the streets because someone who was born to a Muslim father is president of the USA.
I agree that, contra Salon and maybe Sullivan, you're not going to see an automatic Muslim-USA love-in resulting from Obama's election. But then I don't think you would have seen that even if Obama were an actual Muslim, because there is no law saying that all Muslims love all countries with a Muslim leader(otherwise there would be no conflict between Muslim countries). Actually, I think Obama's "multicultural" impact would be greatest among educated secular elites in the west, the kind of people whose pseudo-left faction are given to denouncing America as "the land of white supremacist bigotry and racist aggression", because that kind of rhetoric is not gonna stick against someone who looks like Obama. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 2:36 pm Post subject: Re: Obama and Muslims |
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| Milwaukiedave wrote: |
| bucheon bum wrote: |
His father was Muslim, so therefore he was Muslim when he was born. |
My mom was a Catholic when I was born, so does that mean I'm Catholic?
Sorry I just don't buy that. |
In the eyes of Islamic law/sharia, your religion is that of your father. Therefore, if your father is Muslim, so are you. Just like in Judaism, you are your mom's religion. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 10:41 am Post subject: |
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Juan Cole has a critique of Luttwak's reasoning...
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The argument is that Obama's father was a Muslim and therefore Obama would be considered a Muslim apostate by fundamentalists, even though Obama's mother was a Christian; even though his father abandoned them and Obama did not really know him; even though Obama never practiced Islam; and even though his father was himself a secularist who was known to like a stiff drink. Luttwak even alleges that the law of apostasy is in the Qur'an (Wael Hallaq has argued convincingly that it is not).
So here is what the academic literature has to say about Islamic law on this issue (Rudolph Peters and Gert J. J. De Vries
Die Welt des Islams, New Series, Vol. 17, Issue 1/4 (1976 - 1977), pp. 1-25 ):
"Not only the act of apostasy is subject to certain conditions in order to be legally valid, but also with regard to the perpetrator (murtadd) specific qualifications have been laid down. He can perform a legally effective act of riddah [apostasy] only out of free will (ikhtiyar) at an adult age (bulugh), being compos mentis (`aqil [of sound mind]), and, as emphasized by the Malikite school, after his unambiguous and explicit adoption of Islam." [- p. 3][P. 2, n. 3: "It is equally stated that this Islam needs to be evident in both qawl [speech] and `amal [deed]; a person who embraced the faith by merely pronouncing the shahadah [profession of faith] would not be considered qulified to perform a legally valid act of apostasy-- Cf. Mawwaq in the margin of Hattab, Mawahib al-Jalil, VI, pp. 279-80]"
Barack Obama never accepted or practiced Islam as an adult (which would be age 15 in Islamic law) and therefore according to classical Islamic jurisprudence cannot be an apostate. Peters and DeVries are Arabists and are among the foremost scholars on Islamic law, unlike Luttwak, who does not have the slightest idea what he is talking about.
Luttwak has no doubt been misled by some Salafi, modernist-fundamentalist fatwa, which departs from the great Islamic legal traditions, and he has mistakenly taken it to be representative of Islamic law. Or, I don't know, maybe some minor jurist in the minority Hanbali tradition dissents. But to characterize these minority traditions or idiosyncratic views as representative of Islam as a whole would be like declaring Pat Robertson's interpretation of Christianity more legitimate than that of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
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I don't claim to know enough to comment on Cole's argument either way. But there it is. Dated May 15th.
http://www.juancole.com/ |
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