First of all, what are these “Muslim eyes?” Do all Muslims hold the same opinion? Luttwak’s description of Islam’s stance on apostasy requires a uniformity and simplicity that does not exist. While most classical Muslim jurists did stipulate execution for the apostate from Islam, they offered critical distinctions between men and women, children and adults, the sane and insane, born Muslims and converts to Islam. As the legal schools disagreed on how various provisions were properly applied to these respective categories, jurists never achieved universal consensus on the proper legal implications of apostasy.

More significantly, innumerable contemporary Muslim jurists understand the issue of apostasy differently from their predecessors. This includes even prominent conservative scholars like Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, rector of the world’s most important Islamic university, Al-Azhar. They contend that the injunctions upon Muslims to fight apostates always occurred within the context of the latter’s active rebellion against the Muslim community, not the changing of religion alone. Whereas in the past, rejecting Islam constituted a political act of treason and a serious threat to the state, today’s circumstances have fundamentally changed. Consequently, these scholars are revisiting Islam’s primary sources to offer cogent interpretations of this contentious issue.

They point to the Qur’an’s ubiquitous injunctions to respect freedom of conscience and belief and the fact that it never demands a temporal penalty for apostasy. Furthermore, they reference the leniency exhibited during the life of the Prophet. For example, the terms of the famous 628 Treaty of al-Hudaybiyah, which established a 10-year truce between the Medinan Muslims and the polytheist Meccan Qurayshis, stipulated that converts to Islam who had escaped to Medina without their guardian’s consent be returned to Mecca; meanwhile, Muslim apostates who had fled Medina were permitted to remain in Mecca. As a result, these scholars either reject capital punishment for apostates or restrict its application to very specific circumstances. In short, they offer exactly what is missing from Luttwak’s piece: context and nuance.

His reference to “Muslim law” as if it were a historical and uncontested object is both inaccurate and insulting. Simply because certain Muslims may offer distorted interpretations and present them as the “true Islam,” we are not compelled to accept these readings as representing all Muslims or Islam itself. By doing just this, Luttwak naively affirms their perspective and undermines the vast majority of Muslims who reject violent interpretations of the religion. We do not accept the Religious Right as the exclusive embodiment of Christianity or the Kahanes as defining Judaism for all Jews, so why must we do so with Islam? Luttwak’s reductive understanding only serves to strike up fear, and it certainly benefits those extremists who claim to represent Islam.

In addition, Luttwak's attempt to argue that Obama’s “apostasy” will become a political problem in the Islamic world is absurd. He guarantees that though Muslims are now unaware of Obama’s background, “once it became widely known,” this will “compromise the ability of governments in Muslim nations to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism, as well as American efforts to export democracy and human rights abroad.” First of all, does he really believe that most Muslims are not already familiar with Obama’s family history? The lack of attention this issue has received in the Islamic world cannot be attributed to Muslim ignorance, but rather, it indicates the issue’s inconsequence therein.

Moreover, Luttwak wrongly assumes that Muslims’ irrationally and characteristic inability to recognize the freedom of others will trump their desire to better relations with the U.S. On the contrary, if Obama’s policies are sensitive and fair, our relationship with the Islamic world will improve and American security will be enhanced. His religion is an afterthought, at best.

While Luttwak is correct to question the projection of others’ hopes on Obama, including among some Muslims, his alarmist attitude towards Islam and political engagement with Muslims must be rejected as naive and ultimately, destructive. Rather, the first step to enhancing relations with the Islamic world is to recognize the diversity of thought within Muslim communities around the globe and to commit to engagement with Muslim nations as full partners, not irrational actors driven exclusively by their religion.