Obama’s cryptic Easter Message

Were the events of the past three weeks, including Osama bin Laden’s politically correct burial at sea, the real Easter Message of the uber sensitive to all things Islamic President Barack Obama?

...”We are reminded that there is something about the resurrection...of our savior, Jesus Christ that puts everything else in perspective”: President Barack Obama, Tuesday, April 19, 2011.

Something about the Resurrection that puts everything else in perspective?

There was no 2011 Easter message from the White House, only these words, a curious and even bizarre comment by any president of the United States of America.

The comment left dangling in stale DC air was made during Holy Week, the week leading to Easter Sunday.

It was 12 days later when Obama announced to the world in a surprise, dramatic late-night televised message that terrorist Osama bin Laden had been killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Here in the words of a senior defense official is the account of the funeral of bin Laden in an Islamic ceremony performed aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.

“The religious ceremony, performed by a military officer and translated into Arabic by a native speaker, occurred between 1:10 a.m. and 2:a.m. EDT in the North Arabian Sea.” (Politico, May 2, 2011). “Afterward, bin Laden’s body, wrapped in a weighted shroud slid off a board into the water.”

No hurried words or protocol on-the-fly over a bin Laden corpse, pictures of which will never be seen, but a full 40-minute religious ceremony.

Obama’s conspicuously missing 2011 Easter Message notwithstanding, the Resurrection of our Saviour Jesus Christ was celebrated in churches the world over as usual just one week before.

(Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.) -- John:20

In words that never changed in over 2000 years, Jesus was wrapped in a white shroud found in the tomb after Resurrection on the first Easter Sunday.

The burial rituals in the Islamic faith are laid out in Sharia, or the Islamic religious law: Once the body has been washed, Sharia calls for it to be enshrouded with a Kafan (shroud of white cloth).

From Reliance of the Traveller--A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law: “It is recommended that war gear be removed from the body (O: (excerpt from the commentary of Sheikh ‘Umar Barakat) such as a breastplate and the like), and it is best to bury the martyr in the rest of his bloodstained clothes (O since it is the effect of worship), though the responsible family member may nevertheless remove the garments and shroud [from] the body before burial.”

For certain neither the unidentified military officer nor the native speaker, who dutifully translated the ceremony into Arabic, were bin Laden family members.

Surely the Holy Week President Obama statement “something about the Resurrection that puts everything into perspective’ was merely the expression of a bizarre, but random, thought.

Or was Obama putting something in perspective with the politically correct religious ceremony conducted over the corpse of Obama bin Laden?