There was a particularly ignorant and shamefully inflammatory op-ed published by the New York Times on May 12, 2008. The piece, by Edward N. Luttwak, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, provides a good example of what can go wrong when people who have no specialized training in religion (Luttwak is a historian most known for writing about military history) try to draw wooden, deductive conclusions from selected pieces of ancient religious traditions and apply them willy nilly to the contemporary scene.

Luttwak writes:

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings.... [Muslim law also] prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing.

At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards. More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House. This would compromise the ability of governments in Muslim nations to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism, as well as American efforts to export democracy and human rights abroad.

Eboo Patel has provided a thoughtful, sane response to this inexcusable mistreatment of the broader Muslim tradition.

In "Obama and the Muslims," Eboo writes on his blog, The Faith Divide:

For a minute, I thought I was reading the script for a late-night cable B movie. Aliens abduct a brilliant, charismatic American president, saying that he was once one of theirs before he treasonously defected to the other side. Despite heroic negotiation efforts by both his wife and his former opponent for the Presidency (gotta give Hillary a role somewhere), they successfully behead him in a giant stadium (think Gladiator), to the wild applause of their fellow blood-thirsty aliens.

When I realized that the aliens in the script were referred to as ‘Muslims’, I figured that perhaps this was an article on some right-wing, Muslim-hating blog. What those guys lack in credibility, they certainly make up for in imagination, I thought to myself. If their funding ever dries up, and they don’t mind doing a nude scene or two, they could work for Cinemax.

What I didn’t want to admit was that this article was in the national paper of record, supposedly the most prestigious platform for news and views in the world, the paper I’ve counted on to bring me intelligent perspectives on global affairs since I was twenty years old.

Suddenly, I became a late-night cable B movie script writer. I started wondering who kidnapped the editors of The New York Times OpEd page, and replaced them with Muslim-hating lookalikes. (If you’re interested in that plot line, Cinemax, we should talk. But you should know up front, no nude scenes.).

Or maybe, I wondered, the conspiracy theorists were right. Maybe the gatekeepers of opinion in America do hate Muslims. I mean, think of how often Ayaan Hirsi Ali gets to spew her Islamophobic poison in those pages.

Thankfully, the OpEd in question – an absurd piece of trash claiming that Islamic law requires Muslims to view Obama as an apostate because his father was born a Muslim, leading to Obama being assassinated with the tacit support of Muslim states – generated a set of intelligent responses by people who actually know something about Islam, which The New York Times OpEd page printed (apparently, the aliens returned the original editors).

Ingrid Mattson, the President of the Islamic Society of North America, wrote, “Islam is not an ethnic affiliation, nor is it passed through the gene pool … Islam does not consider Barack Obama ever to have been part of the Muslim community. Apostasy has no relevance here.”

Zaid Shakir, a respected Muslim scholar and teacher at the Zaytuna Institute wrote, “People in Muslim countries are aware that Senator Barack Obama is not a Muslim, and yet he enjoys wide support in those countries. That support has nothing to do with Mr. Obama’s being a full, half or non-Muslim; it is rooted in the fact that he promises to change the kind of policies that have led to such a negative view of America by people in other countries, both Muslims and members of other faith communities.”

The whole incident got me thinking about American Muslims and Obama....

You can read the rest of Eboo's thoughtful response here.

Eboo Patel is one of the inspiring religious leaders featured in my forthcoming book, Progressive & Religious: How Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist Leaders are Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life.

Labels: obama, progressive muslims, terrorism