Below The Fold

The idea that the Fourth Estate looks out for anything other than corporate bottom lines gets more and more laughable by the day. From glossing over McCain “gaffes” as “grandpa forgot to take his pills again” moments, as opposed to being a balding Bush clone (no wonder McCain called the media his base in 2000), to today’s drive-by in the New York Times commenting on hostility toward Obama in the Muslim world for being a heretic. The argument rests of a faulty premise that anyone who made it past the third grade would understand the error in. To leave a religion, you would need to have first been a member of it. It is claimed that since Obama’s father was a Muslim, he is therefore also a Muslim. Small problem: the Qur’an never states such a thing. Well, unless you count this:

And when your Lord brought forth from the children of Adam, from their backs, their descendants, and made them bear witness against their own souls: Am I not your Lord? They said: Yes! we bear witness. Lest you should say on the day of resurrection: Surely we were heedless of this.

As explained upon in the oral traditions:

Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle said, “No child is born but has the Islamic Faith, but its parents turn it into a Jew or a Christian. It is as you help the animals give birth. Do you find among their offspring a mutilated one before you mutilate them yourself?” The people said, “O Allah’s Apostle! What do you think about those (of them) who die young?” The Prophet said, “Allah knows what they would have done (were they to live).”

So either Sen. Obama is in the clear, or Sens. Clinton and McCain also need to worry about being labeled as heretics. After all, we’re all Muslims. Or, perhaps, we should go with the more obvious answer: people are members of the faiths to which they are active adherents. Believe in Jesus as your savior: Christian. Recite the Torah: Jewish. Could go on, but the picture is very clear at this point.

The whole underlying issue is a form of cultural acceptable bigotry. If someone had approached the Times wanting to run an editorial critical of Lieberman’s Judaism in 2000, they would have been laughed out of the room. If Richardson had won the nomination this year, ditto with blasting his Hispanic heritage. Many on the right would love to deploy direct racial appeals (this is what the Wright controversy really was), but instead must settle for shameless, and clearly false, claims about Sen. Obama’s faith.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 1:24 AM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.