Dear Shaykh ul Islam President Barack Hussein ibn Obama.

All praises belong to Allah! Today is a great day for Islam. The President of the United States of America is a Muslim! The greatest nation is now ruled by the greatest religion. I congratulate you, Brother Barack, for pulling the wool over the eyes of the infidel, and I encourage you, now, to go ahead and tell them (y)our little secret.

I remember when we first met. It was at the 1429th annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Islamic Conquests! (S.A.I.C!) and you came by with your lovely second wife, Maryam bint Masud - did you tell Michelle about her yet? - and told all of us that you had gotten yourself elected to the U.S. Senate by pretending to be a Christian, and were now setting your sights on the American Presidency. You came to tell us that if we prayed for you, and more importantly, gave you $ 600 million dollars in donations at your website, you had a chance of being elected President of the United States. I don't remember what day it was but I remember we had just gotten done watching Little Mosque on the Prairie and I was imagining Sitara Hewitt converting to Islam so I could take my parents to propose to her parents for her hand in marriage.

Anyway, let me be the first to apologize for the way we treated you then. I can't believe we didn't take you seriously and instead ending up giving our money to Ron Paul (because he is a medical doctor and we like medical doctors more than we like lawyers). See, I thought you were, as black people say, "just playin." I mean, you have to understand that we're Muslims, and we aren't used to winning at anything, so when you were talking about how you had a "legitimate shot" at the Presidency, I won't lie, I thought you were talking about something else.

So what do you say? Let bygones be bygones? I know we, as the kids say, "chumped you" - see I'm trying to ingratiate myself to your style - but there is no reason for there to be, as they say, "beef" between us.

I mean, don't you think you already got enough revenge against us? Consider:

- You just refused to say, "There is nothing wrong with being a Muslim." (I mean we had to wait till Marty Peretz and Colin Powell for someone to say it out loud).

- As the New York Times reported you stopped hanging out with Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison.

- Your people told those Michigan Muslim girls wearing headscarves to get the hell out of the picture. (Thanks for apologizing though, "bro").

- You went to visit churches and synagogues but never a mosque.

- You let your first Muslim outreach advisor resign just because he had served, for a little while, on some board, with some shady character.

- The only imam you met was the one that President Bush hangs out with. There are more imams in the world!

- And, finally, what was up with returning the laddoos I sent you? Those little yellow balls of sweetmeat were expensive! You know I went all the way to Jackson Heights to get them?  Man they even had the little aluminum foil hats on them!

Damn right I was bitter, but you know what, we ignored you and you threw us under the bus, so we're all even.

Now you are the man and we just want to cuddle up to you. Seriously, Brother Barack, you have no idea how popular you became in the Global Islamic Conspiracy. You might not believe me but we were nervous for you the whole time. We really thought that people were going to figure out that you were Malcolm X's son. I bet my brother seven dinars that (Shaykh) Spike Lee was going to spill the beans on that one! Phew. We also got scared there for a little while when the pundits started saying that you'd be treated like an apostate in the Muslim world. I was eating hummus with the wives when I heard about that and I totally flipped. I couldn't go to any of them for a week. They were about to riot. Thank God that turned out to be a false alarm.

So, Brother Barack, now you are President of America, the most powerful man in the world, ruling - despite all contrary evidence - in the name of Islam, I have one simple request that you need to fulfill. Mind you, it isn't really a request, but a demand, because if you don't oblige, I'm going to go to the ayatollahs and get them to declare you a non-Muslim. It is this: immediately annex South America and appoint me governor of Brazil. I really wish to bring Islam to those people (no, this has nothing to do with my desire for super models). I await your response.

Jazakallah,

Your Fellow Believer in al-Islaam 

Related: Muslamism May Spell the Death of the West; Muslim! Now Available in Insult Form

V.S. Naipaul: saw the evangelical train a'coming Evangelical influence in the Unites states is not a secret. Intellectuals like Naipaul identified its ascent in the mid 80's. Of the four living presidents, two are avowedly evangelical. The public sphere is full of leading evangelical personalities, both on the left and right. Evangelical books are some of the biggest sellers in American publishing. Evangelicals have so thoroughly dominated the US that they have now set themselves up for a worldwide expansion and are exporting churches and the myth of intelligent design with considerable gusto (even to Muslims).

Just last week, pastor Rick Warren of California, author of the Purpose Driven Life, and head of the 22,000 strong Saddlebrook Church, held a conversation about religion and values with the two presidential candidates. The event was covered by every major news station. Among pundits and bloggers it was critiqued and evaluated as if it was a proper presidential debate. Barack Obama and John McCain talked about Jesus Christ and abortion and homosexuality; partly in neutral terms, and partly within the context of Christian theology.

Rick Warren, Barack Obama, and John McCain: seek a purpose driven life through jesus We are religiously permissive in the United States and over the last decade the general view has been to let religious people bring religion into the public sphere. For example, Bush introduced the Faith Based Initiative in 2000 without much opposition and Obama recently suggested that he'd be willing to continue it albeit with a overhaul (probably since most of the money in the Bush initiative behaved very racially), and was again met with little opposition.

Having said that, it seems that the days of such permissiveness towards bringing religion into the public sphere might be coming to an end. The Rick Warren debate, in other words, might be a farewell party for American Christianity in the political sphere. To substantiate this assertion I direct your attention to the Pew Forum which recently concluded a survey about Americans' views about religion in politics.

Thomas Jefferson: once said something about keeping religion and government separate It shows that in 1996, 43% of Americans felt that Churches should stay out of politics; today, that number is at 52% and its trending upward. In other words, the more religion gets introduced into the public sphere, the more Americans want it out (the survey notes that conservatives are the ones most changing their views about this, now at levels similar to moderates and liberals).

It seems that religious Americans are remembering again Jefferson's idea that the wall of separation between religion and state exists in order to protect religion. What happens when religion stuffs itself into the political sphere too long? You may want to ask a theocratic state like Iran. Only 1.4% of the population attends the Friday prayer in the Islamic Oligarchy. (This number is actually lower than the Church attendance number in those purportedly hedonistic European nations).

If You're Not a Terrorist: then who is? The British spy agency MI5 has a behavioral science unit which was apparently asked to draw up a profile of a violent extremist. While noting that these days the extremists resorting to violence do so 'in defence of Islam' they went on to conclude that they couldn't offer any specific pointers that would be useful in profiling who is more or less likely to become a terrorist. The Guardian has obtained the internal MI5 document.

Its findings show that an extremist can come from among British nationals, both born and naturalized, or from among asylum seekers, or illegal immigrants. An extremist can come from a non-practicing milieu, or can be a religious novice or he can be a zealous convert. They can be Pakistani, Caucasian, or Middle Eastern; male or female; younger or older; single or married with children. In other words terrorists "are a diverse collection of individuals, fitting no single demographic profile, nor do they all follow a typical pathway to violent extremism."

In essence, then, the MI5 doesn't know what external markers identify a person who has become obsessed with killing in the name of Islam, just that there are these days some people who kill in the name of Islam.

Thanks MI5.

JFK Went to Germany: obama should go to pakistanOne of the most interesting things about the Obama-McCain showdown is that for the most part, most of the world, including the Americans, have already begun treating Obama as President. The sort of coverage he gets, and more importantly, the kind of international reverberation and impact his actions create, are Presidential in every way. One need only follow the way that Obama was received in Kuwait or the kind of noise his appearance in Germany has been creating.

Obama's plan in Germany, to hold a JFK-style rally in front of the historic Brandenburg Gate has come under attack from Germany's leader, Angela Merkel, as well as a host of critics who suggest that perhaps the Senator should wait before he's elected to make such a bold statement.

Yet, the interesting question to me is whether holding such a rally is anything but a great PR move. It certainly doesn't evoke any substantive benefit, to the world, or to America.

Tony Campbell at the excellent The Moderate Voice blog makes this point rather clearly when he suggests that rather than Berlin, Obama should go to Mecca.

"My suggestion to Obama: forget Berlin, go to Mecca. If you really want to be seen in a Kennedy / Reagan light in the diplomatic arena, you should use your popularity and your unique heritage to address the Christian and Muslim worlds. A thoughtful speech that focuses on our similarities, rather than our differences, is clearly needed between both communities of faith. Kennedy and Reagan in their speeches addressed the major foreign policy concerns of our country. Obama has the opportunity to do something similar if he takes up this challenge. However, the issue is much trickier and more dangerous than either Kennedy or Reagan had to face. Instead of disarming conventional and nuclear weapons, Obama has to disarm fear and prejudice on both sides, Christian and Muslim." 

Putting aside the various security and bigotry related reasons (Saudis don't allow non-Muslims in Mecca) that this can't happen, Campbell is, on the whole, right. When JFK went to Germany, it was the country at the heart of the conflict between Communism and the West. Today, Germany plays no role in the greater conflict enveloping the world -- that of West versus Islam. In other words, if Obama wants to make something as historic as JFK's speech, he needs to tackle the perception that there is a war between Islam and Christendom, and he needs to make such a speech in a Muslim country.

Where I disagree with Campbell is that Obama needs to go to Mecca (or to Tehran). JFK didn't go to Moscow or Beijing. Obama needs to find a place near to Mecca, with a sufficiently Islamic flavor, where the principles he wants to espouse -- those of open government and freedom of conscience and trust-building -- are present in sufficient qualities among the people. The recent (secular) democratic mini-revolution in Pakistan suggests that it is one such place. Pakistan has the benefit, unlike Egypt and Jordan and other Muslim countries where the democratic spirit is also high, of actually having a democratic government by virtue of having removed their tyrant. Security would be the only issue but there is no reason that it can't be surmounted. I also recommend Pakistan because Obama went there in college, has friends from Pakistan and his mother worked for Pakistani development in the World Bank, so that he has serious connections to the country. He can say that he witnessed Pakistan under Islamist Tyranny under General Zia ul Haq, and begin from there.

Pakistan, incidentally, also happens to be the place where the so-called confrontation between Mecca and Washington is the most blatant.

Obama should consider it. But wait till he's elected.

In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte of France, head of the largest army in the world, began the worst military campaign in history. His ill-fated and tragic invasion of Russia led to nearly two thirds of the French army getting killed. The effects of the doomed maneuver were so long-standing that France never again recovered its military potency. Senator Barack Obama recently stated that if he's elected president the US will engage in a military maneuver just as foolish.

Within Senator Obama's recent pronouncements on Iraq is an ominous and troubling prescription about the small land-locked country of Afghanistan. The proposal involves sending "at least" two additional combat brigades to support the 50,000 NATO troops already present in Afghanistan. He goes on to ask for more helicopters, more nonmilitary assistance, and more intelligence gathering.

All of this, in Senator Obama's eyes, is supposed to suggest his greater military aptitude; his attempt to show that he will finish the job -- capturing Bin Laden and defeating the Taliban -- that his Republican predecessor was unable to finish. It is also a lot of politics, because increasing troop presence in Afghanistan allows Obama to say that he supports troop withdrawal from Iraq without appearing like the "surrender monkey" that the Republican opposition will inevitably try to paint him as around election time.

Yet Senator Obama's proposal is one of the worst military ideas in recent history. Here is why:

Afghanistan is considered the "graveyard of empires." Shortly after 9/11, in his 2001 Foreign Affairs essay, Milton Bearden, the CIA station chief in Pakistan in the 1980's, stated that unless the US proceeded with caution it would end up "on the ash heap of Afghan history."

The list of emperors and nations that have tried to hold Afghanistan is long and there is not a single success story. The Soviet Union spent ten years there, with helicopter gunships and tactical nuclear weapons, and failed. The British Empire spent nearly a hundred years trying to alternatively invade and control Afghanistan and veritably failed at both. The Ottoman Empire, which considered itself the inheritor of Roman power, never bothered with Afghanistan. In fact, they were actually dealt crippling blows by invaders from Afghanistan. In the seventh century, even the heaving Arab armies that had been able to take over then world power Persia in a mere five years after the death of Muhammad were unable to take Afghanistan. For Afghanistan to become Muslim more than a hundred years later it took a local ruler from within, and even then power was not centralized in one man. In other words, Senator Obama is setting the US up for failure of world-historical proportions.

Unfortunately most American policy makers don't quite understand the difficulty associated with holding Afghanistan because they think that successful invasion is tantamount to a successful occupation. That, of course, is the same tragedy that befell everyone from the Soviets to the armies of Muhammad. Afghanistan allows itself to be invaded. It doesn't allow itself to be held. Testament of this lies in the fact that it has now been seven years since the US military entered Afghanistan and yet just the other day an American base was actually infiltrated and 9 marines were killed. It will only get worse.

The reasons that Afghanistan is impossible to hold have to do with geography. Because of its centralized and landlocked location insurgents can disappear into any number of neighboring countries and use them as a base to launch attacks on the occupier. These days the base of insurgent operation are the tribal areas of Pakistan. Even if, miraculously, the US is able to clean out the tribal areas - an operation to which no sane Pakistani politician or military dictator would agree - it would simply mean that the Taliban would move to another one of the neighboring countries. It could be Turkmenistan or Tajikistan or most likely, Uzbekistan, which is now, as the noted journalist Ahmed Rashid pointed out in his aptly titled book Descent Into Chaos, producing militants at an alarming rate.

It would perhaps behoove Senator Obama to look at some of the ways the current Afghan insurgency uses the Afghan geography to its advantage:

- Recently US and UK forces captured one stash of Taliban heroin worth nearly two billion dollars going out from an Iranian port.

- Before that, an investigation by the Independent UK discovered that the Taliban are going to the northern border to purchase weapons directly from the Russians.

- Simultaneously an investigation by the NYTimes revealed that the Taliban have taken control of the marble mines in Pakistan's tribal areas.

All this doesn't even include any mention of the vast number of foreign fighters that come to Afghanistan from across the world, using the countless entry points into the country.

Historically, issues of geography have perhaps been at forefront of any military planning with respect to Afghanistan, but with Senator Obama, they barely register.

For someone who previously disparaged the Iraq war as a "dumb war" and a "rash war" his suggestions about increasing troop presence in Afghanistan is a mistake. It is the sort of thing that led Napolean Bonaparte to destroy France.

But perhaps the only thing worse than Senator Obama's ideas are those of Senator McCain. No doubt dueling with his opponent, he recently announced that under his plan the US will commit even more troops to Afghanistan than it would under Senator Obama's plan. Such breathless scheming taking place by the leading presidential contenders will lead to disaster.

Getting bogged down in Afghanistan would be infinitely worse for the national interest than any Iraq.