Balkinization: Apostate Obama?

Comments:

I'm relieved to be informed that "Apostasy is only a crime in the penal codes of four or five out of the 40 Muslim-majority countries today."

With all due respect to Dr. an’Naim, many westerners, including those of the Muslim faith, might be a bit uncomfortable if, for example, ten percent of the United States were to criminalize, and punish, a person's religious preference, or lack thereof.

Perhaps this "misunderstanding" is a two way street? I'll blink if you will.

# posted by

spd rdr : 5:18 PM

if, for example, ten percent of the United States were to criminalize, and punish, a person's religious preference, or lack thereof.

Or, just as bad, if a substantial number of Americans were to rely on dogmatic religion-based assumptions to oppose gay marriage, or to mandate the teaching of creationism in public schools.

Fortunately, in our secular, tolerant society, such things simply don't happen. Take THAT, Islam!

# posted by

Anderson : 6:48 PM

I like the argument that Obama's ancestry is Kenyan, so he's okay. Evidently if the apostate child of a Muslim immigrant from Sudan or Yemen were running for president, Dr. an'Naim and the average Yale law professor would find killing him to be totally legitimate.

How wonderful it would be if there were Muslim intellectuals or American professors who actually defended religious freedom across the board, without special pleading. Who said that the notion of killing anyone, ever, for his religious beliefs is an abomination. Who said that they would not sit in the same room with someone who contemplated the legitimacy of such actions. Who said that people who contemplate the legitimacy of such actions should be denied tenure. Sadly, there don't seem to be.

# posted by

sean : 6:54 PM

Anderson, are you truly unable to see the difference between killing someone for his or her religious beliefs versus regulating his or her marriage options? How pathetic.

# posted by

sean : 7:59 PM

Me thinks sean isn't from New Hampshire.

# posted by

JTM : 8:09 PM

Marty Lederman has pointed out to me that the New York Times, via its public editor, did acknowledge the problems with Luttwak's account of Islam. See http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/opinion/01pubed.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=apostasy&st=nyt&oref=slogin.

# posted by

Andrew Koppelman : 9:01 PM

A quick google search indicates that Abdullahi Ahmed an’Naim wrote on November 11, 2001, that “I see no moral difference between the attacks of September 11 and the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan from October 7.”

Is he really "one of the smartest Moslem intellectuals working today"?

# posted by

mls : 10:09 PM

As a British Muslim, born and raised in the UK, a liberal, a secularist and committed to the rule of law may I make one or two observations.

Very many Muslims live in countries which in terms of development have not progressed very much since the 16th Century. Many customs which Westerners and indeed the inhabitants themselves think are Islamic are actually tribal and societal rather than religious.

Think how Christians behaved in the 16th Century – women as chattels. Until the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act in the reign of Queen Victoria, married women in every country applying Islamic law principles actually had more rights than their sisters in Christian lands. And it is not always appreciated that a marriage contract under Islamic law principles involves the husband agreeing the terms of the divorce settlement before the marriage takes place. If one sees the modern negotiating of just how much the alimony will be in the event of divorce, what inflation index will apply to it, etc, etc, Christians might appreciate the advantages of a system where such things are worked out while the husband still wants to get married!

Secondly, none of us are perfect. I actually went to a Roman Catholic boarding school where in my youth the belief was protestant men all had eyebrows which met in the middle. Christians have their sects within the broad nomenclature of “Christians”, and some of them (perhaps especially in the USA) are pretty weird in anyone’s eyes. Islam has fewer sects, but some divisions – Sunni-Shia, the schools of thought within Sunni Islam, Sufism, and some sects most would consider heretical. We have our wrongdoers too!

Islam expressly recognises and honours its predecessor religions, Judaism and Christiany whom we recognise as “Peoples of the Book” worshipping the same Almighty God. The Catholic Cardinal Patriarch of Baghdad conducts services in Aramaic, the language of Jesus and prays to “Allah” just as we do.

But we can go further. Correctly understood, the expression “Muslim” is one who seeks to do Almighty God’s will in accordance with the Divine Revelation he/she has received. It follows logically that anyone who seeks to follow Almighty God’s will in accordance with the particular form of revelation received is a Muslim brother or sister, including the believing and practising Catholic and – since the Almighty is perfectly just and merciful, why not also the Animist who sees the Deity in a crocodile ?

Correctly understood, Islam commands us to respect our bothers and sisters in other faiths. I live in a very mixed community in London where churches, mosques and synagogues are to be found as neighbours. Not very far away there is a building which started life as a Huguenot chapel for Protestant refugees from France, mostly weavers. When they got rich and moved out of the district, it became a Jewish synagogue where the refugees from the pogroms came in the early part of the last century and the district became London’s Jewish garment district. Today the former synagogue is a mosque serving the largely Bangladeshi community of the district who today provide most of the machinists and pressers for the rag trade.

We have a school system in England where from primary school onwards all children learn about the principal beliefs of all the main religions. The same coloured lights go up in our shopping centres for the different festivals.

There are occasionally tensions and difficulties – for example over cross-faith marriages, especially among 1st generation families - but that was as true for the Irish and the Italians who came here.

I rejoice that I have cousins who are called “Yahya” (John), “Yusuf” (Joseph), “Ibrahim” (Abraham), or “Moussa” (Moses.

Senator Obama has some good Jewish/Christian/Muslim names – because they are used by all 3 faiths in the Middle East where all 3 religions originated.

And BTW, a recent YouGov Poll made Senator Obama the hands down favourite choice for US President in six European countries. If, pray God, he be elected this November, I confidently predict he will instantly restore a great deal of the prestige the USA has lost under the Bush Administration, not just in Europe but around the world.

A person of mixed race and a Christian with an understanding of Judaism and Islam, a constitutional lawyer who will respect the Constitution and uphold it as opposed to subverting it - who better to lead the free world ?

# posted by

Mourad : 8:18 AM

Just as within capitalism and other economic systems, there is competition between and among the various religious groups, both inter- and intra-. Then there are the secular groups, wherein there are competing interests, again both inter- and intra-. Competing religious groups may ally with one another to challenge such secular groups because of the fear that the latter may raise questions of faith as opposed to reason. Secular groups do not seem to have a proselytizing history and have not combined (as have the religious groups) to challenge religions other than on a limited defensive basis (although there has been more of this in recent years).

Hopefully Obama, with his background in Constitutional law, will continue to recognize the importance, both to religions and to securalists, of the First Amendment's establishment and free exercise clauses.

# posted by

Shag from Brookline : 8:47 AM

Mahathir Mohammed, the former PM of Malaysia, recently had a press conference here in Tokyo where I live (and am a member of the working press). I asked him directly about the plausibility of Luttwak's article, including about whether Obama's security would be compromised more than usual when vitising Muslim countries. His reply was that the article was clearly a falsehood propagated by someone who was trying to smear Obama. Among other things, he pointed out that Carlos Menem, former president of Argentina, was also an apostate, but was able to visit Syria without any difficulty. (Obviously the President of the US would be a more significant target than the President of Argentina, but it seems likely that's unrelated to his religion.)

# posted by

ajsutter : 10:22 AM

ajsutter's reference to "Carlos Menem, former president of Argentina, was also an apostate" might suggest that Obama is an apostate. I don't know if that was ajsutter's intention. Perhaps Mahathir Mohammed, the former PM of Malaysia, meant that Carlos Menem was not an apostate just as in the case of Luttwak's falsehood about Obama. Clarification?

# posted by

Shag from Brookline : 11:35 AM

Just to be clear, the issue here is not whether Obama is or is not an apostate. The question is whether a significant element of the Muslim world would view him as an apostate and whether this would be a useful propaganda point for Islamic extremists.

Having read Luttwak's piece and the response in the NYT, I agree that he has not adequately supported his contention that Obama's status would be a significant problem for relations with the Muslim world. This is not to say that Luttwak is necessarily wrong, just that he did not provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate that he is right. (I, for one, don't find it a stretch that the people who were outraged by the Danish cartoons would feel similarly about Obama's "apostasy," particularly if extremist clerics decided to make it an issue).

# posted by

mls : 12:26 PM