Over at The American Thinker my friend Andrew Bostom has a helpful, wide-ranging and exhaustively researched look at Obama and Islam:
Ibn Warraq's formal childhood experience of Islam mirrored Barack Obama's -- it was no more extensive. Yet despite copious evidence to the contrary, Barack Obama has gone to great lengths to deny even a nominal childhood Muslim upbringing. These repeated, often shrill and accusatory denials are accompanied by a disturbing, if predictable silence: not once has Senator Obama celebrated the remarkable freedom of conscience he had here in America to decide in his mid to late 20s that he would practice Christianity openly, and devotedly, absent any consideration of his childhood Muslim background.Mr. Obama has thus far squandered the unparalleled opportunity to highlight and extol a profoundly important virtue of this flawed, but still great country of ours, personified by his life story: America's singular, unwavering support for true freedom of conscience.
Surely if Obama is to live up to his followers (and his own) pretensions of being a "transformative" figure, then he should be ready to elucidate, frankly, the utter lack of freedom of conscience in the Muslim world, relative to the US; why his own life trajectory demonstrates this difference; and how the fight against global jihadism is, at its core, about the protection of this most profoundly important Western ideal. Let us hope that Obama's involvement with the 7th annual commemoration of September 11, 2001 will give him pause to reflect upon these matters, and discuss them, becoming a true "agent of change." And should Senator Obama need any further inspiration, I suggest he have a long conversation with Ibn Warraq.
Read it all.
I know that others here feel differently, and have said so, which is what Free Speech is all about. Bravo.
That said, I have never believed, and esp. after the recent slip of "my Muslim faith," that Hussein is a Christian.
Ibn Warraq writes as a mature, intrepid secular Muslim "apostate," and scholar of Islam, which affords him unique, important perspectives. Clearly, Warraq's writings and the apostate testimonials he has compiled are unsparing in their frank criticism of Islamic dogmas and jurisdictions. However, these passionate critiques also reveal the deep, unbroken affection Warraq and his fellow apostates maintain for the individual men and women in their former societies. These brave apostates should never be associated, disingenuously, with bigoted, non-Muslim xenophobes who have surfaced in the West.
Hmmm. I guess that would describe me.
I really do not feel like a bigot or xenophobe, I just have a very strong sense of self-preservation.
I have read the islamic texts and find them to be threatening to the western way of life.
I admit it is hard for me to separate moslems from islam...
>>I really do not feel like a bigot or xenophobe, I just have a very strong sense of self-preservation.
I have read the islamic texts and find them to be threatening to the western way of life. --interestinconundrum
Yes, I'm really kind of shocked that Bostom used the words "bigoted" and "xenophobe." Words beloved by the Muslims and their Apologists in order to silence people from speaking out against Islam.
So just what is 'puberty' in Islam?
If Obama left Islam before the age of puberty he is not an apostate.
So what is that?
Is it measured in years, months and days to an exactitude? Is it based on physical changes of voice or facial and pubic hair...an increased appreciation of girls?
And so we are led to believe that whatever he learned of Islam he has now just forgotten.
Does he remember that Allah is God? How could he forget that? Or that Mohammad was Allah's messenger? Surely he knows that.
If he believes those two things, he is still a muslim because he clings to the root of Islam...
duh_swami,
I think Islammic puberty, believe it, or not, is (or used to be) determined by the existence or not of pubic hair.
If memory serves, this was the criterion given by Muhammed with regard to whether or not to allow male captives to live. Those with no hair were allowed to live, while those males with hair were put to death.
I don't remember which of Muhammed's raids brought up the question. I have only a mind that absorbs only the weird stuff, but I'm sure Hugh, Marisol, Raymond, and Robert (naturally) could tell you.
I don't think Obama feels much of anything for either religion. He prays at the alter of convenient opportunity
xeno = foreigner, stranger
phobe = fear
I admit it. I've got this irrational fear of foreigners. Especially Canadian stand up comics and Hungarian chefs.
Abscedere:
The "raid" you are thinking of was the slaughter of the Banu Qurayza, during which - according to Ibn Ishaq - "those who had begun to grow hair (pubes) were killed, and those who had not were not killed."
Fact of the matter is that we DO NOT really know who obumma is, and this dude does not care who or what he stands for because he DOES NOT represent me in any way. He is a silver tongued snake who bows to the pillars of money. He will say what needs to be said at that moment and have no regrets about what happens afterward. The fact that he may be a muslim is troubling enough and that he stayed at a church where Jerimaih Wrght preached hate and bigotry was more than enough to
keep me from liking him AT ALL. I have a Dream and IT DOES NOT INCLUDE obumma or islam!
These brave apostates should never be associated, disingenuously, with bigoted, non-Muslim xenophobes who have surfaced in the West.
Given that Bostom didn't eleborate who these xenophobes are I suspect it code for ordinary Americans who are concerned with Muslim encroachment.
It wouldn't be the first time the Saudis and CAIR bought off someone.
So is Bostom trying to tell us that those non-Muslim Westerners who criticise Islam are a bunch of bigoted xenophobes. I'll have to say that if this is the case, he's certainly gone down in my estimation. Any Westerner, indeed anyone, Westerner or otherwise, who has had loved ones murdered or maimed at the hands of Islamic terrorists has every right to hate Islam and criticise it.
Hussein Obama would wilt in the presence of Ibn Warraq...