This one should go over well with the American people…
It is important to note that “if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world”.
So says President Barack Obama. Or I should say: Barack Hussein Obama.
That’s right: Barack Hussein Obama. Say it proud. Say it out loud. The middle moniker that dared not speak its name during the election campaign is now front and centre of the US president’s attempt to woo the Muslim world, the theme of his visits to Riyadh on Wednesday and Cairo on Thursday.
Petrified of the potential political fallout of being branded a Muslim, Candidate Obama – a practicing Christian - never used the name “Hussein” and its use was frowned upon as a forbidden code for the nutty accusation that he was some kind of Islamic Manchurian candidate.
No more. To say Barack Hussein Obama - BHO for short – now appears to be the height of political correctness.
As I argue in this analysis for the Telegraph dead tree edition, Obama is seeking to return to a Middle East policy based on realism - buttressed by the bona fides of his own multi-cultural (including Muslim) background.
In Strasbourg two months ago, the president tried out his full name. Days later in Ankara, he was introduced to the Turkish parliament by his full name.
As ABC’s Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller astutely outline here, the Obama administration is embracing the new president’s inner Muslim, as it were. Deputy national security adviser stated that Obama had “experienced Islam on three continents…growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father — obviously Muslim Americans [are] a key part of Illinois and Chicago”.
So that’s once, twice, three times a Muslim?
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