Can We Come Right Out and Say It?
Probably not, but Mark Steyn steps right up to the line...
Along about 2006-2007, I was chatting with some acquaintances at garden party outside Paris and the subject of who would finally replace the abominable US president GWB came up, as it was wont to do in those days. Wearied after years of feeling obliged to defend a president that I wasn't all that keen on myself (although my reasons were generally the polar opposite of those of the gentle folk, and neither did my expression of said reasons match their stridency and bile), I remained aloof until the cheering mention of Obama spilled from their wine soaked and brie encrusted lips.
"No", I replied "America is not going to elect a Muslim president", which retort was roundly taken as a joke. I get that a lot. And I was proved wrong. Twice. About the electing part, anyway; faith can be harder to pin down, although "by their fruits you shall know them", and all that jazz.
But, you say, he's a Christian! He says so himself. Well, there's that. And yet throughout the Muslim world they do consider him as a one of their own, born of a Muslim father, raised by another Muslim step-father, educated in a madrassa, his Arabic is reportedly pretty good...of course they do.
"Back in America, the coastal sophisticates joke at those knuckle-dragging rubes who believe Obama is some kind of "secret Muslim". But really Occam's razor would favor such an explanation, wouldn't it? That a post-American Middle East divided between bad-cop nuclear Shia and worse-cop head-hacking Sunni was the plan all along. "
Along about 2006-2007, I was chatting with some acquaintances at garden party outside Paris and the subject of who would finally replace the abominable US president GWB came up, as it was wont to do in those days. Wearied after years of feeling obliged to defend a president that I wasn't all that keen on myself (although my reasons were generally the polar opposite of those of the gentle folk, and neither did my expression of said reasons match their stridency and bile), I remained aloof until the cheering mention of Obama spilled from their wine soaked and brie encrusted lips."No", I replied "America is not going to elect a Muslim president", which retort was roundly taken as a joke. I get that a lot. And I was proved wrong. Twice. About the electing part, anyway; faith can be harder to pin down, although "by their fruits you shall know them", and all that jazz.
But, you say, he's a Christian! He says so himself. Well, there's that. And yet throughout the Muslim world they do consider him as a one of their own, born of a Muslim father, raised by another Muslim step-father, educated in a madrassa, his Arabic is reportedly pretty good...of course they do.
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