“But Pipes and others from America's lunar-right have been suggesting that Obama's nominally Muslim heritage will make him unelectable.”

What Pipes is suggesting is a reasonable reaction to the way Muslim-majority countries practise their Islamic-inspired politics based on persecuting non-Muslims. In Malaysia, many Hindu temples are demolished and non-Muslims can’t use the word “God” in the Malay language!

Radical Islam has become mainstream through the influence of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the rich Gulf-States. They advocate the random killing of non-Muslims like in south Thailand and cutting of their heads.

“And now the largest political party in Pakistan is led by a 19-year-old”

Tactics religious Muslims use is to de-stabilise a country through riot, rape and corruption. They then blame that secular governments won’t work and scheme to bring in Shariah law. These tactics are being used in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia.

That is why they bombed Ms. Bhutto in Pakistan and now call for pretend democracy to make way for shariah law. The leader of the other main party in the Pakistan scene is an Islamist party, Pakistan Muslim League, headed by Nawaz Sharif, a religious Muslim (Islamist).

He wanted to bring in shariah law when he was the PM of Pakistan

“On August 29, 1998 then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif proposed a law to create an Islamic order in Pakistan and establish a legal system based on the Koran. The intention of the 15th amendment, which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif presented to Parliament on August 28, 1998, was to make the Quran and Sunnah the supreme law of Pakistan.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nawaz_Sharif

It is quite clear that the writer of this article is a keen supporter of the Pakistan Muslim League.

What a depressing article. 'Emotional claptrap' doesn't begin to cover it. So you had to go to an American right-wing internet site to find someone to whine about, who wasn't kissing the ?

First, your 'only in America' comment would have been actually right not wrong, because you are quoting the American constitution as the applicable principle; it wouldn't apply elsewhere.

Second, investigating this question is relevant to Obama's election - because people can be fully informed about the candidate without having a legally exclusive test along the lines that 'no British monarch can be Catholic' or 'No non-Muslim may approach Mecca'. Congressman Keith Ellison has proven that a Muslim can be elected in America.

It is woolly-minded indeed to pretend that you can't TALK about a candidate's religion in America, where most candidates make a show of piety to ensure religious voters don't write them off!

As to the idea that there is much in common between cultural commentators in the west and Al-Quaeda, these things may be in common, but for your information Irfan, AQ kill civilian men, women and children, including Muslims, by bullet, by bomb, by disembowelling, by beheading. They do it deliberately, as an expression of their religion.

If you are not in self-deception, you have to admit that when such deaths occur at American hands they are almost always because AQ killers are hiding among the civilians; and many of the deaths we hear about are faked by journalists working for the killers.

Word misuse alert: the word JIHAD refers to Muslims killing for Islam, not Jews writing in newspapers.

So, Irfan, I recommend you go over your pice again, identifying the difference between people with a policy of murder, and people attempting to stop those murders; and identifying the difference between legitimately different opinion, and actual murder as policy.

Bad ideas kill, sometimes accidentally. Evil ideas kill as policy, and the evil done by Al Quaeda's stupid boys and paedophile leaders is great.

Apologies for the poor editing in my piece above; I clicked post instead of preview.

Irfan,
It must be hard for you. Doing your best to whitewash the insanity being perpetrated by fellow Muhammed lovers.

Until you and your co-religionists repudiate the divisiveness and violence toward non-muslims in Quran and Hadith, you will continue to look like a very confused person and be ridiculed for following the rantings of an insane caravan raiding bigot.

ChrisPer,
The author's misuse of "JIHAD", well spotted.

Irfan,

“Pipes spends his entire article exploring whether Obama was a Muslim who apostatised, even claiming that mainstream American Muslims would be angry at Obama for his alleged apostasy”

This is fair comment. Muslims would be very suspicious and aggrieved at a Muslim who apostatised. In some places, Obama’s life expectancy ...!?

I doubt if mainstream US Christians would vote for an avowed atheist. I recall that when John Kennedy was running for president, there were concerns about him being Catholic.

“Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bernard Henri-Levy speaks of:

... a beautiful woman. A visible, indeed a conspicuously, spectacularly visible woman ... with her face uncovered, unveiled. ...

Does he seriously believe that the most suitable woman to rule a Muslim- majority state is one who makes his imagination run wild?”

Irfan, you have completely misunderstood Henri-Levy’s comments. He wasn’t implying that “lust” be an arbitor for leadership. Henri-Levy is pointing out that
Benazir Bhutto was a modern woman - (undeniably beautiful in many ways - not only in looks, but grace and charm, and humanity), - completely visible, not given to concealing her face following some primitive practice. She also demonstrated her strength and pride in being a woman; also undeniable is the fact that Bhutto was an extremely courageous woman. She had many followers among Muslims; she would have made a wonderful role model for all young women - worldwide.

As far as Margaret Thatcher and “lust” is concerned, I recall Idi Amin making reference, not only to Thatcher’s “allure”, but also to her nickers ... Obviously some men (perhaps women also) found her "hot to trot".

“ ...the kind of Islamists chosen by Turkish voters. They aren't really Islamists at all , but rather cultural conservatives...”

Many devout Turkish Muslims would find this extremely insulting. Are you stating that it is impossible to be both modern and Muslim? If so, then the whole tener of your intended "argument" is turned on its head.

cont ...

“Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi was quoted as making this request of his hosts:

I want my tent to be erected near Elysee Palace. I want to meet 200 attractive French women there.

If this is the calibre of secular leadership the West expects the citizens of Muslim-majority states to put up with ...”

Somehow, Irfan, I don’t think this had anything to do with what the West “expects” of
any leaders. I suspect Gaddafi was expressing a personal observation; not complying to some requirement of Western political protocol.

To conflate, as Yusuf does, the so called cultural ‘warriors’ of the West with the religiously fanatic suicidal fanatics of al Qaeda, does not only abuse reality but also one’s intellectual integrity and honesty. Yusuf writes “the vast majority of people …are quite happy to live with people who don’t share their culture or religion”. Indeed they do, but only in the tolerant societies of the West. However, that does not mean that they are indifferent or apathetic about the achievements of their culture. No people can survive without breathing daily the achievements of their culture. And no people can be proud of these achievements if they are depicted by revisionist historians that they have been made by the “spilling of blood”.

In our case, Australia’s culture is the descendant of the great culture of Western civilization. But no culture, no matter how great, is a manifestation of Godly purity. However, the blemishes of Western culture are infinitesimal next to its “infinite” virtues, and hence this culture is ”closer” to the “realm of God”.

Yusuf wrote his piece on On Line…under the rubric of political philosophy. But with his moral equation between the “loud-mouthed cultural ‘warriors’ “and” the likes of al Qaida”, he bans himself from all philosophical discourse. As by such philosophical credentials no philosopher would ever allow him to enter his academy.

http://kotzabasis1australiaagainst.blogspot.com

This was an interesting article. Unlike most of those who have written in and abused Yusuf, I think that an analogy can be drawn between the extremists in the West and those in the Islamic world. Further I believe the US elite and its allies are a far greater danger to humanity than Al Qaeda. Conservative estimates are that 151,000 innocent civilians have died as a consequence of the Iraq invasion. A Lancet study put the figure at over 650,000.

The invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, but was an attempt by the economically declining US elite to use military force to reinforce its wolrd dominance and warn off Europe and China. It has been a complete disaster. Afghanistan is similar, and will be America's next Vietnam.

For a decade the world was a safer place after the US was defeated in Vietnam.

Passy,

Anyone knowing the history, traditional tribal networks and loyaties, important religious mores, and other disparate elements of this region would have predicted fairly accurately the outcome of any Western ( indeed other’s) intervention in that area.

The horrendous casualties that have resulted have not been due to US killing, but by the release of groups that had been "suppressed" by Saddam Hussein’s merciless regime.

To justify his position,Saddam Hussein had to prove his descendancy from the Prophet Mohammed. Saddam’s published “family tree”, showed him to be entitled to the honorific of sayyid (lord or prince) accorded to the male descendants of Prophet Mohammed. Millions of copies of these were distributed to emphasise Saddam’s religious credentials.

In late 2003, Al-Sherif Najeh Mohammed Hassan al-Faham al-Aaraji, the head of the union of Åshrafs, who protect the genealogical tree of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, admitted that Saddam had forced experts to falsify his family tree and that Saddam’s name had been removed from the list of descendants of Prophet Mohammed. Add this fact to the “mix” ...

Anyone who blindly accepts the conclusions of the Lancet study has obviously not taken the time to research the methodology that was used to reach those highly questionable conclusions, which are seriously at odds with the United Nations' own study on the same issue. If one simply takes the time to investigate numerous, and easily accessible, documented sources, it becomes manifestly clear that, in the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, many Baathist soldiers who were killed were stripped of their uniforms and proclaimed to be "innocent civilians". Al-Qaeda and other insurgents who have been killed have then been stripped of their weapons by their surviving comrades, and also displayed as "innocent civilians" to the media. True civilian witnesses, captured prisoners and former Baathists have all testified that these propaganda tactics take place. Insurgents have routinely taken over the houses of civilians, and used them to launch attacks on Americans, Brits, and the troops of the elected and U.N.-approved Iraqi government. When the troops fire back, they are accused of deliberate "atrocities" against civilians who, in fact, have often been used as human shields by insurgents.
When a suicide bomber slaughters an entire crowd of women, children and shopkeepers in a marketplace, it is NOT an accident, it is NOT "collateral damage", it is NOT a "mistake" committed in the fog and chaos of war. It is PREMEDITATED. It is DELIBERATE. Those true innocents WERE the target.
For the record, as an American, I can say with certainty that the U.S. Constitution prohibits anyone from being DENIED the right to run for, or to hold, political office, or be in government employment, on religious grounds. However, it should be self-evident that such a prohibition against an official religious test does not mean that individual voters cannot follow their own instinct, judgement and intuition when they are deciding if a particular candidate's theological dogma will influence that candidate's agenda if he or she is elected to office.

sonofeire

Kudos, this is a "perfect" answer in an imperfect world.

http://kotzabasis1australiaagainst.blogspot.com