Madonna backs ‘Muslim’ Obama

As a rule of thumb, celebrities are not renowned for their intellectual abilities, and fewer celebrities are better known than Madonna. Many enjoy her music, but as for her intellectual faculties, it is best left to the reader to judge how acute they may be. Like it or not, such public figures wield a surprising degree of influence over the impressionable minds of their fans, and she possesses a considerable number of the latter. What she says therefore, irrespective of the merits of the words that she speaks, can be adjudged to be, to some extent, of note.

Earlier this year, Madonna courted controversy by performing in Israel against a back-projection showing Marine Le Pen with a swastika superimposed upon her forehead. This, not unnaturally, caused a degree of justifiable irritation on the part of Madame Le Pen, given its baseless and defamatory nature. Now Madonna has chosen to make another political statement, but this time pertaining to electoral politics in the USA where she last night publicly declared in favour of Obama’s presidential candidature. Before an audience of whooping and adoring fans she described Obama as “a black Muslim in the White House”, and stated that they had “better vote for fucking Obama, OK?” More whoops ensued, and nobody raised any objection to her description of the President as “a black Muslim”, although he himself has averred that he is a Christian. She later tried to wriggle out of this apparent gaffe by stating: 

I was being ironic on stage. Yes, I know Obama is not a Muslim – though I know that plenty of people in this country think he is. And what if he were?

If you would to hear her ‘eloquence’ in action before her fans, then watch the video below. Alternatively, if you are not inclined to waste the best part of three minutes, do not bother.

Obama: preparing to attack Syria?

There are ominous signs that the US is preparing for military intervention against Syria. As in Iraq, it is of course the pretext of WMD - this time the potential movement of Syrian chemical and biological weopons - that is being deployed to rationalise US aggression. The New York Times quotes Obama as saying:

We cannot have a situation in which chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.

In other words, the US President is implying that such weapons could fall into the hands of Islamist militants including Al-Qaeda. This comes a day after Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennadii Gatilov claimed that:

Yet more facts have appeared, including those in the mass media, about the massive scale of the supply of weaponry manufactured in the West to the Syrian opposition through third countries.

Today, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with Chinese State Councillor Dai Bingguo as well as a Syrian government delegation, and issued a statement reiterating their opposition to foreign intervention in Syria, emphasising "the need to strictly adhere to the norms of international law and the principles contained in the UN Charter, and not to allow their violation". No country or group of nations, in their opinion, should pursue a policy of imposing "democracy by bombs". The message from Moscow and Beijing to Obama is clear: stay out of Syria. The question is, will the world's sole military hyperpower take heed of these words, or instead pursue the reckless policy of destabilising and destroying another Arab state with no clear vision of what is likely to come next? Some within America's Christian fundamentalist eschatological fringe may rave with enthusiasm at such a potential portent of the coming of the 'end times', but rational beings everywhere will instead shudder at the likely mass bloodletting which will ensue.

It is widely known that Islamist militants, including some holding UK passports, have entered Syria in order to destabilise the Assad regime, and that regional powers such as Saudi Arabia appear to have been funding the uprising. Whatever should happen, Syria's internal problems are not our problems, and the UK should not interfere in Syrian affairs. However, just as in Libya, there has been a clamour for intervention within our foreign policy establishment that has been paralleled by the BBC's emotive tenor favouring direct intervention. We should not succomb to such propaganda. Atrocities are being committed in Syria, and they are being committed by both sides. However, the so-called "activists" of the "Opposition" are not, on the whole, humane Western-style democrats. Islamism looks set to come to Syria aided, no matter how unwittingly, by the US and the UK. Life under Assad may have been bad for some people, but for others, particularly Christians and Alawites, many may find that they have no lives at all once his regime is gone. If Syria fragments, what happens to her neighbouring states? What impact, in particular, will this have on Turkey? Ethnic and confessional groups straddle borders, and hundreds of thousands of refugees threaten to add an additional destabilising influence to the mix.

Is Barack Obama a Muslim? Video Evidence

Hat tip to Pastorius of Infidel Blogger's Alliance for posting the following compilation of Obama's many favourable words spoken in praise of Islam. So, the question is: is he or isn't he a Muslim?

Barack Obama: First Muslim President of the USA

Don’t believe me? Here are just a couple of pieces of evidence. There are many others, but they’ll have to wait until another day. Now, in the first clip he makes a reference to his faith. Note what he says it is. How often do people make a mistake when stating their faith or lack of it? It’s rather like forgetting your own name. In the second, you will witness his deference to the Saudi Monarch. On the same day, he did not bow to Queen Elizabeth II.