In today’s Jerusalem Post, Daniel Pipes does his best to explain to us what the Muslim world thinks of Barack X Hussein al Obama–and, of course, the Jerusalem Post is exactly where you want to find incisive insight into the Muslim world, and who better to provide it than Daniel Pipes, champion of soft numbers and other stuff he pulls out of his ass. Check it:
How do Muslims see Barack Obama? They have three choices: either as he presents himself, as one who has “never been a Muslim” and has “always been a Christian”; or as a fellow Muslim; or as an apostate from Islam.
That’s an awesome summary, but it seems to me there must, simply must, be a fourth choice: We Muslims view Barack Obama as the Presidential candidate least likely to kidnap us, send us to Gitmo, and rape us with a chemical light, as the Presidential candidate not so insane as to jump to war with Iran and Syria and murder further hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters in hopes of–what did we hope to achieve in Iraq again? well, whatever that was, but regrettably, as yet another Presidential candidate who will continue the Syriana policies of Ango American administrations since the turn of the last Century.
But let’s forgive that oversight. Digging deeper, we find that ZOMG!!11! HUSSEIN X OBAMA IS A TRAITORous apostate infidel, and that the Muslims are going to get explodey should he become the next president:
BUT THIS excitement also has a dark side – suspicions that Obama is a traitor to his birth religion, an apostate (murtadd) from Islam. Al-Qaida has prominently featured Obama’s statement “I am not a Muslim” and one analyst, Shireen K. Burki of the University of Mary Washington, sees Obama as “bin Laden’s dream candidate.” Should he become US commander-in-chief, she believes, Al-Qaida would likely “exploit his background to argue that an apostate is leading the global war on terror… to galvanize sympathizers into action.”
Of course, the thought that Al Qaida might also exploit John McCain’s current profile as a greedy warmongering a**hole apparently doesn’t seem to rate mention. Nor, indeed, does the Obama-is-Rushdie meme get much traction outside the neocon press, as Pipes himself notes:
Mainstream Muslims tend to tiptoe around this topic. An Egyptian supporter of Obama, Yasser Khalil, reports that many Muslims react “with bewilderment and curiosity” when Obama is described as a Muslim apostate; Josie Delap and Robert Lane Greene of the Economist even claim that the Obama-as-apostate theme “has been notably absent” among Arabic-language columnists and editorialists.
I guess it hasn’t occurred to Mr. Pipes that the claim is “notably absent” because most people in the Muslim world think it’s “incredibly stupid” and “really don’t care.” But, I’ll have to admit, I probably don’t have as firm a grasp on what Muslims want, hope, and believe as Daniel Pipes thinks he does.
