Washington Post Op-Ed: If People Think Obama’s A Muslim, It’s Obama’s Fault
This article by Ronald Rychlak, a law professor and adviser to the Vatican, is quite simply appalling. As well as being ignorant, it reflects the ‘blame the victim’ attitude sadly prevalent on the right these days. There were two paragraphs that particularly disgusted me:
The president, whose middle name is “Hussein,” was born in Hawaii and moved to Indonesia at age 6 to live with his mother and stepfather, who was Muslim. While there, he attended Catholic school and Muslim school. He also attended Muslim prayer services with his Indonesian stepfather. According to an interview he did in 2007 with the New York Times, he said that the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”
Note the quote marks around Hussein - I suppose Obama’s to blame for his parents’ choice of name too - as if that automatically means he must be Muslim, and emphasises the name as being unusual for an American. This is thinly-veiled bigotry. And who knew praising a typical aspect of a religion - the call to prayer - was equivalent to aligning yourself with it?
In office, President Obama has spent a great deal of time reaching out to the Muslim world. In 2009 he declared: “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.” Earlier he had said: “I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. So let there be no doubt: Islam is a part of America.” His support for the Ground Zero Mosque also positioned him on the side of Islam.
Actually no, it puts him on the side of the 1st Amendment, as anyone who has actually read the US Constitution will tell you. And in quoting Obama, Rychlak dishonestly edits what Obama actually said: “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, or a Jewish nation, or a Muslim nation”, which of course, gives an entirely different meaning to his words. All in all, a despicable article.
I’m not sure what worries me more: the fact this appeared in the WaPo or that Ronald Rychlak is currently teaching at a university.
