A Little Bit Contradictory

Submitted by Ron Thompson (United States), Dec 24, 2007 at 11:42

This is a useful article on a topic at once important and obscure. Among other elements, it emerges that Obama has been at least a tad disingenuous about his early relation to Islam.

But there's also a contradiction.

At one point, Pipes says Obama's early identification as a Muslim could raise the issue of any Muslim's right to change religion, which he rightly points out is an issue of world importance which should be moved forward from its "perpetual backburner". Any form of the Muslim doctrine of apostasy as a capital crime should be explicitly condemned.

But then at the end he says that the same issue - is Obama a murtadd (apostate)? - could "undermine his initiatives toward the Muslim World"

I don't think the issue can cut both ways. We can't see the same issue as both an opportunity, and something to be defensive about, at the same time.

Indeed, the second comment is a little like saying that anybody who says the Palestinians and other Muslim leaders are responsible for the failure to even begin ending the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is dooming the "peace process' by saying that (even though the Muslims have been getting away with saying the opposite for over 30 years).

Let's not, if it catches fire, surrender the initiative to Muslims on this issue too.

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