Willy saw this quote that came directly from the President a few hours before this writing.
"Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country. I know," ... "because I am one of them" - President Obama!
10-4 Willy
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Muslim Question Answered
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4 comments:
I can't remember if he was hesitant in branding himself a Muslim during his campaign.
You didn't know he grew up in a Muslim country, and had a Muslim father?
I'm not sure why Americans are so hysterical about the Muslim thing. We have had relationships with Muslim countries since the first few decades after the Revolution. Indeed, when this country was first being founded, Jefferson wrote that he could envision a time when "Hindoos" and "Mohammadans" could practice their faiths freely here as well. (I used to own a book about his writings, so this is not something I picked up off some liberal activist site.) In further matter of fact, he owned a copy of the Qur'an, which the one Muslim member of Congress swore upon when he took office a few years ago. (Keith Ellison of Michigan, I believe.) And the Treaty of Tripoli was struck with a Muslim country.
In fact, you could say this country was built to some degree by Muslims. Many of the African slaves we brought here were sold by Arab traders and it is very likely that many of them were Muslims themselves when they came here. But unlike African animists who could hide their religion behind Catholic images, as happened in Louisiana and Florida, Muslims can't use images of holy people or angels in their worship at all, so there was no way to hide what they were. They were driven deep underground in their religious practice or they stopped practicing it entirely.
This is why so many in the Black Power and related black liberation movements adopted Arab names. They were aware of their history, you see. To this day a sizable percentage of American Muslims, as in born-and-bred, always-been-here American Muslims, are African Americans descended from slaves and have now reclaimed what they see as their heritage.
And today we have a large Muslim immigrant population as well, as I'm sure you're aware. Some of them were born here, some of them were naturalized--not all of them, or even most of them, are illegal or inclined to terrorism. They deserve representation just as much as any other demographic group, or at least respect in our government for their beliefs and their concerns, within the boundaries of the Constitution, of course.
Speaking of which, the Constitution states there is to be no religious test for public office. So if Obama stood up today and announced that he was in fact Muslim, what would be your problem with that? Our own Constitution says he is allowed to serve as President. Are you for the Constitution or not?
That said, even if he were a closeted Muslim, I can't fathom he's serious enough about it to be any kind of threat to this country by way of some twisted version of the Muslim faith. The guys who tend to strap bombs to themselves also tend to expect the women in their lives to observe hijab. You know, I've seen quite a lot of Michelle Obama's legs since the campaign. How about you?
One other thing. Your initial reaction to my first paragraph in the previous comment might be something like, "DUH! They're TERRORISTS!" Why aren't we profiling white Christians, then? From the KKK to Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph and the militias and the "pro-life" (whose life?) movement, there are all kinds of terrorists in this country who are neither brown nor Muslim (not that there aren't white Muslims!), and they continue in their little campaigns with impunity even though they've committed more attacks on American soil than Muslims have. And the one big bad attack committed by "Muslims" (I dispute that they were good Muslims--no they were not) wouldn't have happened had our military not been asleep at the switch. I still don't understand what short-sighted policy of the FAA allowed for box cutters to be taken on airplanes, either.
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