During the 2008 campaign, Democrats were indignant when a talk show host referred to the Senator from Illinois by his full name.  In the parlance of the left, this was “demagoging” their candidate.  We should celebrate diversity, but not too much.

John McCain promptly requested supporters not to mention his opponent’s middle name.

The original Hussein (or Husayn) was a grandson of Mohammed and, he and his supporters claimed, the Prophet’s rightful heir.  The assassination of Hussein’s father Ali marks the beginning of the Shi’ite-Sunni split, and when Hussein was killed during a battle at Karbala, this ended the reign of Mohammed’s direct descendants.

Most voters could not be expected to know this.  The problem for Obamaphiles and their enablers was that the name inevitably recalled the late Iraqi dictator, and, apart from this, had an unwelcome Middle Eastern flavor.

What about Barack?

That, too, is an Arabic name.  Barak means “blessed” and is related to the Hebrew “baruch.”  It also means, in Arabic, to kneel down, to stoop, or to cower.  Coincidentally, the name Obama, popular with the Luo tribe of Kenya, is also derived from a word (“obam”) which means to lean or bend.

Mubarak is another version of the Arabic name, but that didn’t prevent the President from giving his blessing to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the Islamic world, the direct descendants of Mohammed, sayyids, are considered specially blessed by Allah.  They are said to have his “baraka.”  Some holy men are believed to be able to pass this blessing along to their followers.

One such luminary was the sharif of Ouezzane, a picturesque town at the base of the Rif Mountains in Morocco.  European travellers imagined he was something like his country’s Pope.  In The Conquest of Morocco (by the French between 1903 and 1914), the military historian Douglas Porch writes:

So revered was the sharif of Ouezzane’s baraka in Morocco that his appearance anywhere touched off scenes of hysterical devotion.  Only with great difficulty could the hundred or so guards keep back the crowds which fought to touch him, prod him with sticks, even to pelt him with stones in the hope that some of the baraka would rub off on the rock, which would be kept as an amulet.  With such an adoring public, the sharif’s progress through the country was necessarily slow.

Morocco, 1908; the U.S., 2008.  Plus ça change.