"Bush, Bush, Listen Yay, We are with Barack Hussein" versus Obama the Apostate: Islamic Reflections on the Presidency
The actual slogan, from the title above, chanted all over Iraq, is "Bush, Bush, listen well, we are with Barack Hussein", but that doesn't rhyme in English as it does in Arabic, as in بوش بوش اسمع زين نحن مع باراك حسين I am actually a little surprised it hasn't appeared on Olberman or the Huffington Post or something, as it must be tremendously embarrassing to the President that he's being taunted on Iraqi streets, the streets he was supposed to be liberating,not by pictures of Saddam ("dead enders") or Moqtada ("hired Iranian thugs") but by Barack Obama, who presumably has no hired thugs on Baghdad streets. To me it's quite damning.
But the interesting thing is the use of the term "Hussein" to describe Obama, shunned here as a smear, embraced there as a compliment. Part of this is that the slogan works better that way (and is an adaptation of an existing one), but there is more to it than that, as slogans can be remade and are all the time. The theory is this is our kind of guy, look at his name, he's a Hussein. Hussein, to be clear, is NOT a name associated primarily with Saddam at all (any more than than "Bill" is with President Clinton), but with Mohammad's grandson, a deeply revered figure particularly among the Shi'a. And so the name is comfort, even to Saddam's greatest enemies, the Shi'a, who frequently name their children Hussein.
What is interesting about this is that, as Western press points out, there is at least an argument that can be made that Obama is an apostate and therefore, under shari'a liable for execution. It's actually not clear in his case, because he was abandoned by his father and raised by a Christian mother and in such abandonment cases, the inestimable Sherman Jackson has pointed out even in classical shari'a some have argued that this is not apostasy, because the child was never Muslim.
At the same time, the counterargument, that he was because his father was, is certainly possible and in such respectable papers as the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor it's out there, the latter even printing a piece that this is going to be a great recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.
The problem for this sort of hysteria is the same as the problem with the study of Islamic law in American legal academies. That is, it focusses on medieval books rather than what people today are saying, doing and writing. Anyone on this blog who can read Arabic and English, here's the quick experiment. Run a google search with the words "Obama apostate" and the hysteria of how his election is a wonderful tool for Al Qaeda because he is an apostate pops up. Now I'm not saying Western press is uniform on this at all, I read Andrew Sullivan's eloquent piece in the Atlantic arguing, correctly, precisely the opposite, but there is a strong current out there that because Obama might be considered an apostate, and because apostasy is a capital crime, Muslims are going to want to see him dead.
Then, my bilingual reader, run the same search with the Arabic translation of "Obama apostate" (اوباما مرتد) and see what pops up. Lots of hits, but not much on this subject. Yes a Kuwaiti paper uses the term, in the context of decrying his positions concerning Israel to AIPAC, but it was literally between parentheses, to explain how a man with the name Hussein could hold such allegedly ghastly positions. Al Quds uses it to tell people not to call him an apostate, and the Salafist usual culprits who make a habit of calling everyone they don't like an apostate are mostly silent. There might be some minimal chatter, but it's not the Satanic Verses we are talking about here and certainly I can't see any evidence that it's a recruiting tool, at all.
And that's not even mentioning the fact that 95% of Muslim Americans, who generally tilt red, voted for Obama in the poll I saw. Nader pulled in a distant second.
So what accounts for the vast Islamic support for Barack Obama,so that Iraqis actually get on the street and chant for the American president? I think any number of things.
First the case for apostasy is based on what we in the law business might call bad facts. It's a terrible case to have to make if you wanted to make it, which Muslim liberals like me never would as we want to change the shari'a not enforce things like this. But I'm an academic, who listens to me, let's go with the strict version for a moment. Yes apostasy is death in the orthodox versions of the shari'a, I am not going to pretend it isn't like some sad apologist, but usually the cases that get people riled up are Salman Rushdie or Hirsi Ali, both of whom have said or done something at least perceived to be against Islam and both of whom have a closer connection to Islam, in that both were raised for some time Muslim. Obama hasn't really done much comparable, the man's a politician after all, and his connection to Islam is considerably more distant given the abandonment. As noted, even in the classical world it's not clear how his case would come out.
Second, there is the deep antipathy to Bush and the Muslim desire for something else. Most of that centers on the disaster Iraq has become, but there is also Guantanamo Bay and the post 9/11 detentions and Abu Ghraib--suffice it to say, run an actual donkey against Bush, and I'm not sure who Muslims would support. Under those conditions, it was easier for Obama.
But most importantly, Obama in his name, in his look, in his travels, is the kind of person your average Muslim tends to be comfortable with, whether an American Muslim or abroad. The name Hussein, the dark skin, the childhood in Indonesia, the same very things used against him drew him to Muslims in incredibly large numbers.
A wonderful editorial (in Arabic) appeared in the newspaper Al-Dustur that has begun a genuine debate in the Muslim world on citizenship status in Muslim nations. In it, the editor in chief, Ibrahim Issa, imagines that Barack Obama had a half brother born in Egypt, Mabruk Obama, and what would happen to him. I won't go through it, other than to say it has caught the Arab literary world on fire, everyone I know has read it, but in the end, Barack Obama gets to become president while Mabruk is still at the Egyptian office of Naturalization, trying to convince them to give him, a man Egyptian born, Egyptian citizenship even if his father is Kenyan. The import is clear--how come the Americans treat people who look like us, who have names like ours, born in their country better than we do when born in ours? It was a direct shot at the Egyptian government, but Ibrahim Issa does that all the time, an Arab hero if there ever was one, sitting in Cairo writing such brave material. Mabruk and Barack, really brilliant piece.
And so add it all up, and you end up with nothing looking like much of a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. Rather, the fact is that there is so much more to the Muslim world than classical Islamic law and so in this case, with its set of facts and circumstances,the classical rules really aren't important at all.
HAH
But the interesting thing is the use of the term "Hussein" to describe Obama, shunned here as a smear, embraced there as a compliment. Part of this is that the slogan works better that way (and is an adaptation of an existing one), but there is more to it than that, as slogans can be remade and are all the time. The theory is this is our kind of guy, look at his name, he's a Hussein. Hussein, to be clear, is NOT a name associated primarily with Saddam at all (any more than than "Bill" is with President Clinton), but with Mohammad's grandson, a deeply revered figure particularly among the Shi'a. And so the name is comfort, even to Saddam's greatest enemies, the Shi'a, who frequently name their children Hussein.
What is interesting about this is that, as Western press points out, there is at least an argument that can be made that Obama is an apostate and therefore, under shari'a liable for execution. It's actually not clear in his case, because he was abandoned by his father and raised by a Christian mother and in such abandonment cases, the inestimable Sherman Jackson has pointed out even in classical shari'a some have argued that this is not apostasy, because the child was never Muslim.
At the same time, the counterargument, that he was because his father was, is certainly possible and in such respectable papers as the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor it's out there, the latter even printing a piece that this is going to be a great recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.
The problem for this sort of hysteria is the same as the problem with the study of Islamic law in American legal academies. That is, it focusses on medieval books rather than what people today are saying, doing and writing. Anyone on this blog who can read Arabic and English, here's the quick experiment. Run a google search with the words "Obama apostate" and the hysteria of how his election is a wonderful tool for Al Qaeda because he is an apostate pops up. Now I'm not saying Western press is uniform on this at all, I read Andrew Sullivan's eloquent piece in the Atlantic arguing, correctly, precisely the opposite, but there is a strong current out there that because Obama might be considered an apostate, and because apostasy is a capital crime, Muslims are going to want to see him dead.
Then, my bilingual reader, run the same search with the Arabic translation of "Obama apostate" (اوباما مرتد) and see what pops up. Lots of hits, but not much on this subject. Yes a Kuwaiti paper uses the term, in the context of decrying his positions concerning Israel to AIPAC, but it was literally between parentheses, to explain how a man with the name Hussein could hold such allegedly ghastly positions. Al Quds uses it to tell people not to call him an apostate, and the Salafist usual culprits who make a habit of calling everyone they don't like an apostate are mostly silent. There might be some minimal chatter, but it's not the Satanic Verses we are talking about here and certainly I can't see any evidence that it's a recruiting tool, at all.
And that's not even mentioning the fact that 95% of Muslim Americans, who generally tilt red, voted for Obama in the poll I saw. Nader pulled in a distant second.
So what accounts for the vast Islamic support for Barack Obama,so that Iraqis actually get on the street and chant for the American president? I think any number of things.
First the case for apostasy is based on what we in the law business might call bad facts. It's a terrible case to have to make if you wanted to make it, which Muslim liberals like me never would as we want to change the shari'a not enforce things like this. But I'm an academic, who listens to me, let's go with the strict version for a moment. Yes apostasy is death in the orthodox versions of the shari'a, I am not going to pretend it isn't like some sad apologist, but usually the cases that get people riled up are Salman Rushdie or Hirsi Ali, both of whom have said or done something at least perceived to be against Islam and both of whom have a closer connection to Islam, in that both were raised for some time Muslim. Obama hasn't really done much comparable, the man's a politician after all, and his connection to Islam is considerably more distant given the abandonment. As noted, even in the classical world it's not clear how his case would come out.
Second, there is the deep antipathy to Bush and the Muslim desire for something else. Most of that centers on the disaster Iraq has become, but there is also Guantanamo Bay and the post 9/11 detentions and Abu Ghraib--suffice it to say, run an actual donkey against Bush, and I'm not sure who Muslims would support. Under those conditions, it was easier for Obama.
But most importantly, Obama in his name, in his look, in his travels, is the kind of person your average Muslim tends to be comfortable with, whether an American Muslim or abroad. The name Hussein, the dark skin, the childhood in Indonesia, the same very things used against him drew him to Muslims in incredibly large numbers.
A wonderful editorial (in Arabic) appeared in the newspaper Al-Dustur that has begun a genuine debate in the Muslim world on citizenship status in Muslim nations. In it, the editor in chief, Ibrahim Issa, imagines that Barack Obama had a half brother born in Egypt, Mabruk Obama, and what would happen to him. I won't go through it, other than to say it has caught the Arab literary world on fire, everyone I know has read it, but in the end, Barack Obama gets to become president while Mabruk is still at the Egyptian office of Naturalization, trying to convince them to give him, a man Egyptian born, Egyptian citizenship even if his father is Kenyan. The import is clear--how come the Americans treat people who look like us, who have names like ours, born in their country better than we do when born in ours? It was a direct shot at the Egyptian government, but Ibrahim Issa does that all the time, an Arab hero if there ever was one, sitting in Cairo writing such brave material. Mabruk and Barack, really brilliant piece.
And so add it all up, and you end up with nothing looking like much of a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. Rather, the fact is that there is so much more to the Muslim world than classical Islamic law and so in this case, with its set of facts and circumstances,the classical rules really aren't important at all.
HAH
Beautiful Posting!
I think people here in Iraq feel somewhat hopeful that Obama is a "change" and a "hope" other than the same old politics that McCain would have brought, akthough Palin might have brought a difference, you see she might have "accidentally" put a 51st star on the US flag representing Iraq!
More seriously though, welcoming Obama is not that wide-spread. It is more of an SMS message exchanged between young people with big smileys after it, and the pool is available for that because it's just easy to put Barack's name instead of Saddam's name in olden times' songs or chants
But to be honest, "Obama Hussein" deserves to be sung for, definitely more than Saddam Hussein! And waaaay more than Mooki/Qaddu (= Muqtada) or Bush-bush (Georgie)!!!
Reply to this