During his White House years, William Jefferson Clinton - someone Sonya Sotomayor might call a "white male" - was dubbed by an admirer in the African-American community "America's first black president." Applying the standard of identity politics and pandering to a special interest that earned Mr. Clinton that distinction, Barack Hussein Obama would have to be considered America's first Muslim president. This is not to say, necessarily, that Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim, any more than Mr. Clinton actually is black. After five months in office and most especially after his just-concluded visit to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, however, a stunning conclusion seems increasingly plausible: The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name prominently featured has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Hitler duped Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich.
This is not to say, necessarily, that Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim, any more than Mr. Clinton actually is black. After five months in office and most especially after his just-concluded visit to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, however, a stunning conclusion seems increasingly plausible: The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name prominently featured has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Hitler duped Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich.
What little we know about Mr. Obama's youth certainly suggests that he not only had a Kenyan father who was Muslim, but that he spent his early, formative years as one in Indonesia. As the President likes to say "much has been made" - in this case by him and his campaign handlers - of the fact that he became a Christian as an adult in Chicago, under the now-notorious Pastor Jeremiah Wright.
With Mr. Obama's unbelievably-ballyhooed address in Cairo last Thursday to what he calls "the Muslim world" (hereafter known as "The Speech"), there is mounting evidence that the President not only identifies with Muslims, but may actually still be one himself. Consider the following indicators:
Mr. Obama referred four times in his speech to "the Holy Koran." Non-Muslims - even pandering ones -- generally don't use that Islamic formulation.
Mr. Obama established his first-hand knowledge of Islam (albeit without mentioning his reported upbringing in the faith) with the statement, "I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed." Again, "revealed" is a depiction Muslims use to reflect their conviction that the Koran is the word of God, as dictated to Mohammed.
Then, the President made a statement no believing Christian - certainly not one versed, as he professes to be, in the ways of Islam - would ever make. In the context of what he euphemistically called the "situation between Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs," Mr. Obama said he looked forward to the day "...when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer."
Now, the term "peace be upon them" is invoked by Muslims as a way of blessing deceased holy men. According to Islam, that is what all three were - dead prophets. Of course for Christians, Jesus is the living and immortal Son of God.
In the final analysis, it may be beside the point whether President Obama actually is a Muslim. In The Speech and elsewhere, he has aligned himself with adherents to what authoritative Islam calls Shariah - notably, the dangerous global movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood - to a degree that makes Bill Clinton's fabled affinity for blacks pale by comparison.
For example, President Obama has - from literally his inaugural address onwards - inflated the numbers and, in that way and others, exaggerated the contemporary and historical importance of Muslim-Americans in the United States. In The Speech, he used the Brotherhood's estimates of "nearly seven million Muslims" in this country, at least twice the estimates from other, more reputable sources. (Who knows? By the time Mr. Obama's friends among the radical "community organizers" of ACORN perpetrate their trademark books-cooking as deputy 2010 census-takers, the official count may well claim there are considerably more than 7 million Muslims living here.)
Even more troubling were the commitments the President made in Cairo to promote Islam in America. For instance, he declared: "I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear." He vowed to ensure that women can cover their heads, including, presumably, when having their photographs taken for passports, driver's licenses or other identification purposes. And he pledged to enable Muslims to engage in zakat, their faith's requirement for tithing, even though four of the eight types of charity called for by Shariah can be associated with terrorism. Not surprisingly, a number of Islamic "charities" in this country have been convicted of providing material support for terrorism.
Particularly worrying is the re-alignment Barack Hussein Obama has announced in U.S. policy towards Israel. While he pays lip-service to the "unbreakable" bond between America and the Jewish State, the President has unmistakably signaled that he intends to compel the Israelis to make territorial and other strategic concessions to Palestinians to achieve the hallowed "two-state solution." In doing so, he utterly ignores the inconvenient fact that both the Brotherhood's Hamas and Abu Mazen's Fatah remain determined to achieve a one-state solution, whereby the Jews will be "driven into the sea."
If possible, the Palestinians and other enemies of Israel will try to accomplish this end-state through yet another violent onslaught against Israel - an option Mr. Obama's policies may cause Israel's enemies to think is once again viable. Alternatively, the Palestinians and their friends can realistically anticipate it will inevitably result from a rigged "peace process," one that would more accurately be described as a destruction-of-Israel "piece-by-piece process."
Whether Barack Obama actually is a Muslim or simply plays one in the presidency may, in the end, be irrelevant. What is alarming is that, in aligning himself and his policies with those of Shariah-adherents like the Muslim Brotherhood, the President will greatly intensify the already-enormous pressure on peaceful, tolerant American Muslims to submit to such forces - and heighten expectations, here and abroad, that the rest of us will do so as well.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.
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