President Apostate

With the poll results out today that say 24% of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, many pundits are pointing to a May 2008 NY Times piece by Edward N. Luttwak.  Take a look:

BARACK OBAMA has emerged as a classic example of charismatic leadership — a figure upon whom others project their own hopes and desires. The resulting emotional intensity adds greatly to the more conventional strengths of the well-organized Obama campaign, and it has certainly sufficed to overcome the formidable initial advantages of Senator Hillary Clinton.

One danger of such charisma, however, is that it can evoke unrealistic hopes of what a candidate could actually accomplish in office regardless of his own personal abilities. Case in point is the oft-made claim that an Obama presidency would be welcomed by the Muslim world.

This idea often goes hand in hand with the altogether more plausible argument that Mr. Obama’s election would raise America’s esteem in Africa — indeed, he already arouses much enthusiasm in his father’s native Kenya and to a degree elsewhere on the continent.

But it is a mistake to conflate his African identity with his Muslim heritage. Senator Obama is half African by birth and Africans can understandably identify with him. In Islam, however, there is no such thing as a half-Muslim. Like all monotheistic religions, Islam is an exclusive faith.

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).

Read the rest of it here.

The White House felt they had to respond to today's poll results From Fox News Politics:

White House: "President Obama is a committed Christian, and his faith is an important part of his daily life. The president's strong Christian faith is what guides him through (the nation's) challenges but he doesn't wear it on his sleeve."

Jim Nolte adds this via Twitter:

Not good when the best evidence of your Christianity is 20 years spent in Reverend Wright's church.

I guess the real problem for Obama is the fact that he's been president for 19 months, in the public eye for years before that, written two autobiographies, and yet a tremendous number of Americans don't think they know who he really is.  I don't think George W. Bush ever had that problem.