Obama Now An Authority On What Is, Is Not Islam

New York, September 28 – Muslims around the world are shifting their religious allegiances on matters of doctrine, say experts, as a result of US President Barack Obama’s obvious expertise in their spiritual affairs, which he demonstrated last week by declaring that the Islamic State is not in fact Islamic.

The president pronounced last week in an address that IS does not represent the religion of Muhammad, in an attempt to distinguish between the brutality of that proto-state in Iraq and Syria and the comparatively moderate versions of the faith practiced almost everywhere else. In drawing that distinction, Obama evinced a grasp of Islam that exceeded that of the established leaders and scholars from Casablanca to Jakarta, sparking a wave of Muslims suddenly accepting him as the arbiter of what does and does not constitute legitimate Islamic thought and practice.

Imams in mosques throughout Indonesia and Malaysia have now found themselves summarily dismissed by the community, as their congregants are now sending questions of doctrine and practice to Obama instead of approaching them as they used to. “I’ve been reduced to a beadle,” laments Ali Hassan, who until yesterday was employed to give the weekly sermon at the Bakr Mosque in Kuala Lumpur. “I guess Mr. Obama knows more about Islam than any of us.”

The American president, who was born to a Muslim father but raised as a Protestant Christian, perceived a crucial point that had until now eluded the world’s nearly eight hundred million Muslims, say scholars. “It takes a special sharpness to be able to prove that the behaviors specifically endorsed in the Koran and Hadiths are not actually endorsed by the Koran and Hadiths,” says Eric Yoffe, who studies how religions change, or at least ought to. “Scholars of other religions have pursued similar paths to reform,” he noted.

Obama’s manifest expertise has even managed to transcend the Sunni-Shi’a rift that has persisted almost since the very birth of Islam. “We bow before brother Obama’s superior knowledge of Islamic texts, doctrine, custom, theology, and jurisprudence,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, one of the leading Shiite authorities, echoing an earlier statement by leading Sunni cleric Ayyam Ahdik of Tunisia. “Thank Allah, however, that the Great Satan has separation of religion and state, or we might actually have to reckon with Obama’s political pronouncements.”

Reaction in the US has been muted. “Well, his middle name is Hussein,” said Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly. “Shouldn’t that tell you everything you need to know?”