An Imaginary Country

Think of Kipling and Mundy and consider an imaginary nation somewhere in remote Central Asia north of the Khyber Pass and beyond the Hindu Kush Mountains.  Its government is a representative democracy with a popularly elected president. The population consists mainly of Muslims, most of whom, while generally tolerant, would be loath to vote for a politician who was not a follower of the Prophet.  There are number of  Jews and a small and politically insignificant number of Christians, the latter mainly recent immigrants or the children of immigrants. For the last couple of decades the country has been plagued by acts of terroristic violence committed by Christian fanatics, both foreign and domestic, who oppose the nation’s government, leaving Christianity unpopular with many of the citizens.

 The president is a self-proclaimed Muslim, but many in the country doubt him. They point out that since politicians are unscrupulous opportunists who will  lie about just about  everything, this  one could be lying about his religion for political advantage. They consider the fact that the great majority of people who have a religion stick to one version or another of the one they grew up  in.   They note that he was raised in a Christian home in a strongly Christian nation and speaks sincerely and nostalgically of  the glorious church music and beautiful, haunting  chants of his youth with emotion he never displays when speaking  of Islam.  They observe  that  while he is always  quick to criticize Muslims and Islam in harsh terms for both present day shortcomings and for failures and brutalities going back centuries, he always speaks fondly and warmly of Christianity and reminds  people that it  is a religion exclusively of love and peace and that the terrorists are apostates perverting true Christianity.  Some see significance in the fact that the unconventional or even heretical Imam who led him to profess adherence to Islam said that he did so by presenting the faith to him in a way that was compatible with his Christian background.  Many cite the famous occasion  when the president publically spoke of his Christian faith before being corrected by a friendly interviewer and note that they have never heard anyone else make a slip of the tongue in which accidentally said he followed a religion different from his actual creed.  The president’s most devoted followers try to dismiss the doubters as fools and ignorant peasants, but every time the president speaks about religion, he gives them a little more evidence for their case.

Of course no such country exists, and none of this could happen in a real nation. In real countries all politicians are honest and straightforward about their beliefs, and no one would ever think of their pretending to believe anything they didn’t  for political reasons. 

I don’t  have a definite opinion about Obama’s religious sentiments. (I also don’t care. If he turned out to be lying about his religion, it might make him out  a little more of a scoundrel, but it would be pretty insignificant compared to all the other things.)    However  I can see that the skeptics have reasons for their skepticism.  In fact if a  completely neutral  and apolitical  observer  were a contestant on a quiz show and asked to guess Obama’s  actual religion to win a $25,000 prize, and if he based his answer on evidence rather than protestations,  he’d probably  bet with the doubters.