Wednesday, June 03, 2009

OBAMA AND THE MUSLIM WORLD

Since the election it has been interesting to watch how Obama has treated his Islamic roots. During the election critics who used his middle name, "Hussein," were treated as racists. Yet at the inauguration he used his full name. Recently in Turkey he said that America was not a Christian nation. Now he is calling America "one of the largest countries in the Muslim world" according to a columnist in the Telegraph.

Petrified of the potential political fallout of being branded a Muslim, Candidate Obama - a practicing Christian - never used the name "Hussein" and its use was frowned upon as a forbidden code for the nutty accusation that he was some kind of Islamic Manchurian candidate.
No more. To say Barack Hussein Obama - BHO for short - now appears to be the height of political correctness.


As ABC's Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller astutely outline here, the Obama administration is embracing the new president's inner Muslim, as it were, with deputy national security adviser that Obama had "experienced Islam on three continents...growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans [are] a key part of Illinois and Chicago".

Even LeMonde has weighed in on this.
Les Etats-Unis sont "l'un des plus grands pays musulmans de la planète", a souligné mardi 2 juin sur Canal+ le président américain, Barack Obama, qui doit prononcer jeudi au Caire un important discours de réconciliation en direction du monde musulman (voir l'interview de Barack Obama sur Canal+ ici).

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