It’s kind of funny when those that Salon condescendingly quotes seem to be more knowledgeable than the author of the Salon piece.
Roosh “Make Rape Legal” V. likes Trump. Not an endorsement, but, “Donald Trump comes the closest to what I think is true.”
I predict this costs Trump no votes – not in the primary campaign, anyway.
Not funny the way you seem to think, it ain’t. It’s this Rooney who’s the point-and-laugh material.
Maybe for those who know nothing about Islam, and think pointing and laughing adds credibility to nonsense.
Look, does any Muslim in the world think Obama should be put to death for apostasy, because his father was a Muslim and he ain’t?
A much more pertinent question would be if any Muslims consider children to be Muslim due to their father being Muslim. Which, yes they do, as anyone the slightest bit familiar with the world at large will know. A slight bit of familiarity with the world around them is a threshold that some Trump supporters sometimes reach, and one that some Salon writers and message board posters sometimes do not, apparently.
Why is that significant? Obama never considered himself Islamic. If anything, that makes him a target of Islamist terrorists for apostasy.
Salon quoted a Trump supporter as if it was quoting an ignorant statement, when it was a basic fact, and it was the Salon author’s ignorance that was all that was shown. That’s what I am pointing out. I don’t personally think the degree that Obama could be said to be “born Muslim” is terribly relevant to much, except for public relations and propaganda purposes.
But Rooney showed his ignorance in assuming its relevance. It has none, to anything. He’s just reaching, desperate to find some disqualifying factor in Obama’s personal history. Not that a Muslim is disqualified from the presidency, but one is to this lot.
His personal history is relevant to some degree. The relevance of this part of it isn’t a settled fact, it is an opinion.
And don’t forget his middle name: Barack HUSSAIN Obama. That is relevant to about the same degree.
It is settled fact that Obama’s father (who, I believe, became an atheist himself later in life) separated from his mother before Barack was a year old and played no part in his son’s life after that. It is settled fact that Obama, though exposed to Muslim culture by a Muslim stepfather and by living for a time in Indonesia, was not raised in that faith and has never embraced it. What relevance has his father’s faith to any of that?
His background and his parents background are part of his story, part of what makes him who he is. That’s relevant.
So explain how it’s been relevant.
But the fact, if it is a fact, that Muslims consider any Muslim father’s son to be a Muslim is not relevant.
It’s relevant in how he is perceived, which has both positive and negative potential consequences. Has it made him more or less sympathetic to the plight of Muslims? Hard to know for sure. He has been more willing to interface with Islamist/Muslim Brotherhood connected groups than some of the GOP candidates advocate (but about the same as Bush JR), but I explain that more as a result of pragmatism than anything duplicitous. Not everyone sees it that way though, and it’s not a question with a settled, factual answer.
Not relevant to you. It’s meaningful to many people, for a myriad of reasons.
Such as?
I don’t think it’s relevant to Muslims; they’ve never tried to claim him. To whom is it relevant, and why?
Of course it’s relevant. Which it’s why it’s in his book.
People’s backgrounds are relevant to who they are, that’s the way the world works.