A primary reason to vote for Barack Obama, we are told, is that he will change the face of America. Literally. Having a man with a culturally and racially diverse background will–on day one–reconnect us to a world allegedly alienated by the policies of George w. Bush. And the fact that Obama’s father was a (non-practicing) Muslim and that Barack lived for years as a child in Indonesia will help us improve, we’re informed, our extremely troubled relations with the Muslim world. But Seth Gitell of The New York Sun attended a panel discussion at Brandeis University on Monday entitled “The Obama Phenomenon,” where he discovered that the subject of Obama’s identity is more problematic than his supporters would like to believe.

Obama’s having a father raised as a Muslim doesn’t mean he is a panacea for America’s troubles with the Islamic world. Far from it. While George W. Bush may be an infidel, he is not the son of an apostate. The latter is worse: an apostate actively turns his back on the faith, as opposed to never having chosen it. Such simple observations that Obama has never identified as a Muslim nor was ever raised as one will not save him, either. As Brandeis professor Ibrahim Sundiata says, “I think that people paint a too rosy picture of Obama being the world, that in the Muslim world, being the son of an ex-Muslim is apostasy and it is a very serious crime.”