In today’s New York Times, Edward N. Luttwak has written a solid, non-hysterical op-ed about the complications that could arise from the Muslim world’s perception of Barack Obama as an apostate.

Because no government is likely to allow the prosecution of a President Obama – not even those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the only two countries where Islamic religious courts dominate over secular law – another provision of Muslim law is perhaps more relevant: it prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing.

At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards. More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known – as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House. This would 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.

So: Islamists feel obliged to kill apostates. But many Islamists are inclined to kill all infidels, anyway. The larger challenge subsumes the ramifications of Obama’s religious journey. There are people with whom you can cooperate and people with whom you cannot. Obama’s apostate status just serves to clarify this point.

If Obama were a different kind of candidate, he’d point to his particular Muslim predicament realistically. He’d be honest about what it means: that he typifies the kind of freedom that offends our enemies. From that credible position, he could begin to outline a plan of working with allies and besting antagonists. Instead, he buys into and advances every last pipe-dream of amelioration that Luttwak (incorrectly) claims has been “projected” onto him.