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Apostate Obama?

By Jack M. Balkin

It has recently been suggested, in the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor, that Barack Obama would have profound difficulties in dealing with the Islamic world if he is elected president because he was born to a Muslim father and then raised as a Christian, making him an apostate. This, the stories claimed, make him eligible for the death penalty or assassination under Islamic law.

The spectacular ignorance of Islam in these stories has now been documented and refuted here by Abdullahi Ahmed an?Naim, one of the smartest Moslem intellectuals working today. He notes:

?Those who think Muslims will respond negatively to Sen. Obama based on his presumed religion have an overly simplistic view of what it means to be Muslim today. More than 20 percent of the world?s population embraces Islam at present. And while there is a history to the religion, as there is to all religions, beliefs vary from nation to nation and often within countries as well. Islam may be large and growing, but it is not monolithic. The notion that Muslims would wish Sen. Obama harm because he left Islam (though he never embraced Islam and was raised Christian) is purely speculative and based on a misread of Shari?a and the history of Islam. These conclusions do nothing but further stereotype a religion that is poorly understood in the West?particularly in the United States.?

I have nothing to add to Dr. an?Naim?s excellent post, except to note that it will be read by far fewer people than have read the simplisitic speculations in the Times and the Monitor. I?m using my Balkinization privileges today to try to make that select group ? congratulations, you?ve just been admitted! ? a little bigger.

Full post as published by Balkinization on June 01, 2008 (boomark / email).