Muslim Heretics Conference

Back once again to the perpetually ridiculous Ilana Mercer (yes, the same Ilana Mercer who once blathered on about the “Randian majesty of sex”) at the Worldnutdaily. This time she’s peddling the incredibly tired bullshit that Obama is a Muslim. And doing so with bizarre reasoning like this:

When Barack Obama looked Americans in the metaphoric eye and told them he was not and was never a Muslim, he had, admittedly, been worshipping at the Trinity United Church of Christ for 20-odd years. So we know for certain that he is not a Christian.

He’s attended a Christian church for 20 years, so we know for certain he’s not a Christian? Did she really write that with a straight face? Oh, I’m sure she meant that the UCC isn’t “real” Christianity, but that’s the kind of moronic bleatings we’re used to hearing from religious right ignorami, not from self-proclaimed “libertarians” like Mercer. Sadly, her reasoning doesn’t get any better:

You see, despite what the babes in nosebags say about Islam’s great deference to women, in Islam, the father’s faith determines that of the child. It’s the opposite in Judaism. In their sagacity, Jewish scholars had ruled that the mother’s faith would decide the child’s. The idea was “to link the child inseparably to the mother.”

For seriously investigating the Muslim matter, Daniel Pipes, a scholar of the Middle East and Islam, has endured many swipes. Nevertheless, Dr. Pipes’ points obtain. Obama’s patrilineal ties to Islam - Muslim father and grandfather - make him a Muslim by birth.

Any rational person knows that you cannot be any religion “by birth.” Religion is a belief and you do not come into the world with beliefs. No one is born a Christian or a Jew, a Republican or a Democrat. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a moron, plain and simple. Other Muslims may think he’s a Muslim merely because his father was; is Mercer endorsing that stupid idea? Funny how those who want so badly to paint Obama as a Muslim have to accept the absurd premises of the religion they are criticizing in order to do so.

And never mind, by the way, that Obama’s father, while raised Muslim, was actually an atheist by the time he met Obama’s mother. So why aren’t they claiming that he’s really an atheist? Because Muslims are scarier than atheists at the moment.

More material, from the fact that Obama has never been a practicing Muslim, it doesn’t follow that he was not a Muslim by birth. I can’t renounce my Judaism because I’m irreligious, now can I? For truth’s sake, Obama ought to have said this: “I was a Muslim by accident of birth. No more.”

Well yes, you can renounce your Judaism if you’re not religious. People do it all the time. Other Jews may still continue to think they’re Jewish because their mother was Jewish, but that doesn’t make it so.

Christian doctrine decrees that embracing Jesus Christ as personal savior is the only road to redemption. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Obama disagrees. He, the Holy Son, says: “There are many paths to the same place.” Is that Christianity? Apparently so in post-Christian America.

Guess what, Ilana? Most Christians agree with him, according to a recent survey. Yes, this IS a large subset of modern Christianity. The fact that you don’t like it doesn’t make it disappear.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Obama is a Muslim and Other Idiocies