Obama's 50 Lies which are 'lies'.
Claim: E-mail lists fifty lies told by Barack Obama.

Status: Multiple Allegations — see below.

Examples of the 50 Lies which are themselves 'lies'
the Snopes Refutations follow :

1.) Selma Got Me Born - LIAR, your parents felt safe enough to have you in 1961 - Selma had no effect on your birth, as Selma was in 1965.

2.) Father Was A Goat Herder - LIAR, he was a privileged, well educated youth, who went on to work with the Kenyan Government.

3.) Father Was A Proud Freedom Fighter - L IAR, he was part of one of the most corrupt and violent governments Kenya has ever had.

4.) My Family Has Strong Ties To African Freedom - LIAR, your cousin Raila Odinga has created mass violence in attempting to overturn a legitimate election in 2007, in Kenya. It is the first widespread violence in decades.

5.) My Grandmother Has Always Been A Christian - LIAR, she does her daily Salat prayers at 5am according to her own interviews. According to the New York Times: "I am a strong believer of the Islamic faith," Ms. Obama, 85, said in a recent interview in Kenya.' Not to mention, Christianity wouldn't allow her to have been one of 14 wives to 1 man.

6.) My Name is African Swahili - LIAR, your name is Arabic and 'Baraka' (from which Barack came) means 'blessed' in that language. Hussein is also Arabic and so is Obama.

7.) I Never Practiced Islam - LIAR, you practiced it daily at school, where you were registered as a Muslim and kept that faith for 31 years,until your wife made you change, so you could run for office.

8.) My School In Indonesia Was Christian - LIAR, you were registered as Muslim there and got in trouble in Koranic Studies for making faces (check your own book).

9.) I Was Fluent In Indonesian - LIAR, not one teacher says you could speak the language.

10.) Because I Lived In Indonesia, I Have More Foreign Experience - LIAR, you were there from the ages of 6 to 10, and couldn't even spea k the language. What did you learn, how to study the Koran and watch cartoons.

11.) I Am Stronger On Foreign Affairs - LIAR, except for Africa (surprise) and the Middle East (bigger surprise), you have never been anywhere else on the planet and thus have NO experience with our closest allies. You seek to disarm America while our avowed enemy, Iran, will not subject itself to a nuclear ban. Top Hamas politica l adviser Ahmed Yousef said the Hamas terrorist group 'supports Obama's foreign policy vision'.

12.) I Blame My Early Drug Use On Ethnic Confusion - LIAR, you were quite content in high school to be Barry Obama, no mention of Kenya and no mention of struggle to identify - your classmates said you were just fine.

13.) An Ebony Article Moved Me To Run For Office - LIAR, Ebony has yet to find the article you mention in your book. It doesn't, and never did, exist.

14.) A Life Magazine Article Changed My Outlook On Life - LIAR, Life has yet to find the article you mention in your book. It doesn't, and never did, exist.

15.) I Won't Run On A National Ticket In '08 - LIAR, here you are, despite saying, live on TV, that you would not have enough experience by then, and you are all about having experience first.

16.) Present Votes Are Common In Illinois - LIAR, they are common for YOU, but not many others have 130 NO VOTES.

17.) Oops, I Misvoted - LIAR, only when caught by church groups and Democrats, did you beg to change your misvote.

18.) I Was A Professor Of Law - LIAR, you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE.

19.) I Was A Constitutional Lawyer - LIAR, you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE.

20.) Without Me, There Would Be No Ethics Bill - LIAR, you didn't write it,introduce it, change it, or create it.

21.) The Ethics Bill Was Hard To Pass - LIAR, it took just 14 days from start to finish.

22.) I Wrote
A Tough Nuclear Bill - LIAR, your bill was rejected by your own party for its pandering and lack of all regulation - mainly because of your Nuclear Donor, Exelon, from which David Axelrod came.

23.) I Have Released My State Records - LIAR, as of March, 2008, state bills you sponsored or voted for have yet to be released, exposing all the special interests pork hidden within.

24.) I Took On The Asbestos Altgeld Gardens Mess - LIAR, you were part of a large group of people who remedied Altgeld Gardens. You failed to mention anyone else but yourself, in your books.

25.) My Economics Bill Will Help America - LIAR, your 111 economic policies were just combined into a proposal which lost 99-0, and even YOU voted against your own bill.

26.) I Have Been A Bold Leader In Illinois - LIAR, even your own supporters claim to have not seen BOLD action on your part.

27.) I Passed 26 Of My Own Bills In One Year - LIAR, they were not YOUR bills, but rather handed to you, after their creation by a fellow Senator, to assist you in a future bid for higher office.

28.) No One Contacted Canada About NAFTA - LIAR, the Candian Government issued the names and a memo of the conversation your campaign had with them.

29.) I Am Tough On Terrorism - LIAR, you missed the Iran Resolution vote on terrorism and your good friend Ali Abunimah supports the destruction of Israel. You state you will open friendly communication with the Leader of Iran who is attempting to develop nuclear weapons to destroy us, but refuse to speak to FOX news. You are against provisions of the Patriot act which would all wiretapping of the phones of suspected terrorists in the USA.

30.) I Am Not Acting As President Yet - LIAR, after the NAFTA Memo, a dead terrorist in the FARC, in Colombia, was found with a letter stating how you and he were working together on getting FARC recognized officially.

31.) I Didn't Run Ads In Florida - LIAR, you allowed national ads to run 8-12 times per day for two weeks - and you still lost.

32.) I Won Michigan - LIAR, no you didn't.

33.) I won Nevada - LIAR, no you did not.

34.) I Want All Votes To Count - LIAR, you said let the delegates decide.

35.) I Want Americans To Decide - LIAR, you prefer caucuses that limit the vote, confuse the voters, force a public vote, and only operate during small windows of time.

36.) I passed 900 Bills in the State Senate - LIAR, you passed 26, most of which you didn't write yourself.

37.) My Campaign Was Extorted By A Friend - LIAR, that friend is threatening to sue if you do not stop saying this. Obama has stopped saying this.

38.) I Believe In Fairness, Not Tactics - LIAR, you used tactics to eliminate Alice Palmer from running against you.

39.) I Don't Take PAC Money - LIAR, you take loads of it.

40.) I don't Have Lobbysists - LIAR, you have over 47 lobbyists, and counting.

41.) My Campaign Had Nothing To Do With The 1984 Ad - LIAR, your own campaign worker made the ad on his Apple in one afternoon.

42.) My Campaign Never Took Over MySpace - LIAR, Tom, who started MySpace issued a warning about this advertising to MySpace clients.

43.) I Inspire People With My Words - LIAR, you inspire people with other people's words.

44.) I Have Passed Bills In The U.S. Senate - LIAR, you have passed A BILL in the U.S. Senate - for Africa, which shows YOUR priorities.

45.) I Have Always Been Against Iraq - LIAR, you weren't in office to vote against it AND you have voted to fund it every single time, unlike Kucinich, who seems to be out gutting you Obama. You also seem to be stepping back from your departure date - AGAIN.

46.) I Have Always Supported Universal Health Care - LIAR, your plan leaves us all to pay the 15,000,000 who don't have to buy it.

47.) I Only Found Out About My Investment Conflicts Via Mail - LIAR, both companies you site as having sent you letters about this conflict have no record of any such letter ever being created or sent.

48.) I Am As Patriotic As Anyone - LIAR, you won't wear a flag pin and you don't put your hand over your heart during the Anthem. There is a Cuban Flag with Che Guevara Displayed at Barack Obama Campaign Office which you allow to be displayed. You voted against making english the official language of the United States. You voted to give illegal aliens social security benefits, which would bankrupt the social security system for Americans legally paying into it.

49.) My Wife Didn't Mean What She Said About Pride In Country - LIAR, your wife's words follow lock-step in the vain of Rev. Wright and Louis Farrahkan, in relation to their contempt and hatred of America.

50.) Wal-Mart Is A Company I Wouldn't Support - LIAR, your wife has received nearly a quarter of a million dollars through Treehouse, which is connected to Wal-Mart.


Origins and Refutations of the 50 so called "Lies".
Perhaps America really is a racist nation and is not ready for a black (or Jewish) President? True Christians should be more disposed to be defenders than aggressors.

Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do you.
Colossians 3:13

And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
Ephesians 4:32

And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses
Colossians 2:13


Snopes sets the record straight.

Selma Got Me Born - LIAR, your parents felt safe enough to have you in 1961 - Selma had no effect on your birth, as Selma was in 1965.

This criticism is based on an overly-literal interpretation of Barack Obama's 2007 speech in Selma, Alabama, which we covered in a separate article.

Father Was A Goat Herder - LIAR, he was a privileged, well educated youth, who went on to work with the Kenyan Government.

These attributes are not mutually exclusive: Barack Obama's (biological) father was all of these things at different times in his life, as Obama described in his book, Dreams from My Father: [My father] was as African, I would learn, a Kenyan of the Luo tribe, born on the shores of Lake Victoria in a place called Alego. The village was poor, but his father — my other grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama — had been a prominent farmer, an elder of the tribe, a medicine man with healing powers. My father grew up herding his father's goats and attending the local school, set up by the British colonial administration, where he had shown great promise. He eventually won a scholarship to study in Nairobi; and then, on the eve of Kenyan independence, he had been selected by Kenyan leaders and American sponsors to attend a university in the United States.


Father Was A Proud Freedom Fighter - LIAR, he was part of one of the most corrupt and violent governments Kenya has ever had.

We are unaware of Barack Obama's ever having claimed his father was a "proud freedom fighter." Obama has written (and spoken) at length about his father's returning to Africa from America to work for the Kenyan government, with that country's political turmoil eventually leaving him a "bitter drunk" and "a defeated, lonely bureaucrat."

My Family Has Strong Ties To African Freedom - LIAR, your cousin Raila Odinga has created mass violence in attempting to overturn a legitimate election in 2007, in Kenya. It is the first widespread violence in decades.

As we discussed in a separate article, Kenyan politician Raila Odinga has recently claimed to be Barack Obama's cousin, but there is no substantive evidence documenting his claim, and the two men share no meaningful familial connection.


My Grandmother Has Always Been A Christian - LIAR, she does her daily Salat prayers at 5am according to her own interviews. According to the New York Times: "I am a strong believer of the Islamic faith," Ms. Obama, 85, said in a recent interview in Kenya.' Not to mention, Christianity wouldn't allow her to have been one of 14 wives to 1 man.

The author seems to be unaware that Barack Obama, like most people, has two sets of grandparents. Obama was speaking of his maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, not his paternal grandmother.



My Name is African Swahili - LIAR, your name is Arabic and 'Baraka' (from which Barack came) means 'blessed' in that language. Hussein is also Arabic and so is Obama.


The author seems to be unaware that many Swahili words and names are of Arabic origin (just as many English words originated with other languages). "Barack" is a Swahili name that entered the language via historical trade and cultural ties with Arabia.

I Never Practiced Islam - LIAR, you practiced it daily at school, where you were registered as a Muslim and kept that faith for 31 years, until your wife made you change, so you could run for office.

The topic is already covered in our separate article about the (false) claims that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

My School In Indonesia Was Christian - LIAR, you were registered as Muslim there and got in trouble in Koranic Studies for making faces (check your own book).

The author seems to be unaware that Barack Obama attended more than one school in Indonesia, one of which was a public school that included Islamic religious instruction among its curriculum, and one of which was a private Catholic school.

I Was Fluent In Indonesian - LIAR, not one teacher says you could speak the language.

We are unaware of Barack Obama's ever having claimed he was "fluent" in any Indonesian language (beyond the level of competence that could reasonably be expected of the non-native child speaker he was at the time he lived in that country). He did acquire (and apparently still has) a passable command of Bahasa, as Time magazine noted in a 2007 article: When prominent Indonesians visit the U.S., the first person they want to meet is Obama, says Parnohadiningrat Sudjadnan, the Indonesian ambassador to the U.S. "Back home people think of him as one of us, or at least one who understands us," he says, adding that they are delighted to find that Obama speaks passable Bahasa, the language spoken in Indonesia and Malaysia.


Because I Lived In Indonesia, I Have More Foreign Experience - LIAR, you were there from the ages of 6 to 10, and couldn't even speak the language.

Barack Obama did live in Indonesia for four years as a child, and he could in fact speak the local language passably well. Whether his time in that country provided him more "foreign experience" is argumentative, but Obama himself is far from the only person to suggest that it might: Some would argue that his childhood experiences, as well as his mixed heritage (his father was Kenyan, his mother from Kansas), gives him a better inner compass on foreign policy than most Americans. They cite the pioneering work of Ruth Hill Useem, the late sociologist of Michigan State University, who spent her career studying what she called Third Culture Kids — the millions of U.S. children (an estimated 20 million since the advent of mass air travel) who have been carted abroad by their missionary, diplomatic, corporate or military parents. These frequent-flier kids don't spend enough time in their adopted countries to become fully bicultural, but they take pieces and add it to their home values and traditions — creating millions of "Third Cultures." Studies have shows that kids who have spent time abroad are more likely to go to college, to relate to one another despite the influences of vastly differing cultures, and to latch on to one aspect of their culture — in Obama's case African Americanism.

I Am Stronger On Foreign Affairs - LIAR, except for Africa (surprise) and the Middle East (bigger surprise), you have never been anywhere else on the planet and thus have NO experience with our closest allies.

Barack Obama has lived in, traveled to, or otherwise spent time in countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Whether his experiences make him "stronger on foreign affairs" is argumentative, but again, Obama himself is far from the only person to suggest that it might: "Living abroad does give you a wider view of the world," says Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser under Jimmy Carter, and a Polish-American who spent four years as a child living in Germany with his diplomat father. Obama is "a person with genuine sensitivity of world affairs," says Brzenzinski, who is supporting Obama. "It's not the conventional mouthing of culture sensitivities." Brzezinski points to Obama's greater willingness to meet leaders of hostile nations and his early resistance to the war in Iraq as examples of his superior intuition on foreign policy.


Life Magazine Article Changed My Outlook On Life - LIAR, Life has yet to find the article you mention in your book. It doesn't, and never did, exist. In Dreams from My Father,

Barack Obama writes of a childhood experience occurring on a day when his mother dropped him off at a library on her way to work, and he began thumbing through issues of LIFE magazine: Eventually I came across a photograph of an older man in dark glasses and a raincoat walking down an empty road. I couldn't guess what this picture was about; there seemed nothing unusual about the subject. On the next page was another photograph, this one a close-up of the same man's hands. They had a strange, unnatural pallor, as if blood had been drawn from the flesh. Turning back to the first picture, I now saw that the man's crinkly hair, his heavy lips and broad fleshy nose, all had this same uneven, ghostly hue.

He must be terrible sick, I thought. A radiation victim, maybem or an albino — I had seen one of those on the street a few days before, and my mother had explained about such things. Except when I read the words that went with the picture, that wasn't it at all. The man had received a chemical treatment, the article explained, to lighten his complexion. He had paid for it with his own money. He expressed some regret about trying to pass himself off as a white man, was sorry about how badly things had turned out. But the results were irreversible. There were thousands of people like him, black men and women back in America who'd undergone the same treatment in response to advertisements that promised happiness as a white person.

I felt my face and neck get hot. My stomach knotted; the type began to blur on the page. Did my mother know about this? What about her boss — why was he so calm, reading through his reports a few feet down the hall? I had a desperate urge to jump out of my seat, to show them what I had learned, to demand some explanation or assurance. But something held me back. As in a dream, I had no voice for my newfound fear. By the time my mother came to take me home, my face wore a smile and the magazines were back in their proper place. The room, the air, was quiet as before. That no matching article may yet have been found in the pages of LIFE magazine does not mean that Obama saw no such article; it may simply mean that, writing decades after the fact, he misremembered the title of the magazine he was viewing.

I Won't Run On A National Ticket In '08 - LIAR, here you are, despite saying, live on TV, that you would not have enough experience by then, and you are all about having experience first.

Senator Obama never stated categorically that he would not run on a national ticket in 2008. He at one time said that he had "no plans" to run for national office in 2008, the standard response virtually all politicians give to press inquiries when they have not yet formulated (or do not wish to reveal) their plans for upcoming elections.

I Was A Professor Of Law - LIAR, you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE.

Barack Obama was indeed a professor at the University of Chicago's Law School, a fact verified by that institution itself: The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer."

From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers has high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.

I Was A Constitutional Lawyer - LIAR, you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE.

Between 1993 and 2002, Barack Obama worked as a civil rights lawyer with the Chicago law firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland.

I Have Always Been Against Iraq - LIAR, you weren't in office to vote against it AND you have voted to fund it every single time, unlike Kucinich, who seems to be out gutting you Obama. You also seem to be stepping back from your departure date - AGAIN.

Senator Obama expressed opposition to the war in Iraq well before he gained a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2004. (The vote that authorized U.S. military action in Iraq was held in 2002.) He has since voted in the Senate to authorize funding for that war, for reasons he defended in a February 2008 Democratic debate: The two Democrats exchanged pointed words over each other's records on the war in Iraq, which contrast sharply even as economic and domestic concerns become dominant in the race. Clinton voted in 2002 to authorize the invasion, which Obama opposed from the start. After Obama again touted a high-profile antiwar speech he gave in Chicago before the war, Clinton pointed out that he, like her, had subsequently voted for war funding, and that their records on Iraq were similar since he came to the Senate in 2005.

"When it wasn't just a speech, but it was actually action, where is the difference?" she said. "Where is the comparison that would in some way give a real credibility to the speech that he gave against the war?"

Obama shot back: "Once we had driven the bus into the ditch, there were only so many ways we could get out."




http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/50lies.asp

Who Is Barack Obama?

Claim: Illinois senator Barack Obama is a "radical Muslim" who "will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance."

Status: False.

Example: [Collected via e-mail, January 2008]

If you do not ever forward anything else, please forward this to all your contacts...this is very scary to think of what lies ahead of us here in our own United States...better heed this and pray about it and share it.

Who is Barack Obama?

Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black MUSLIM from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white ATHEIST from Wichita, Kansas. Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii.

When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced. His father returned to Kenya . His
mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a RADICAL Muslim from Indonesia. When Obama was 6 years old, the family relocated to Indonesia . Obama attended a MUSLIM school in Jakarta . He also spent two years in a Catholic school.

Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school." Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that he is not a radical.

Obama's introduction to Islam came via his father, and this influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over his son's education.

Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta. Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world. Since it is politically expedient to be a CHRISTIAN when seeking major public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background. ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran.

Barack Hussein Obama will NOT recite the Pledge of Allegiance nor will he show any reverence for our flag. While others place their hands over their hearts, Obama turns his back to the flag and slouches.

Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential candidacy.

The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States , one of their own!!!!

Variations: One version of the e-mail in circulation claims "We were told this was checked out on 'snopes.com'. It is factual. Check for yourself." and includes a link to this web site.

It's our guess that whoever included that bit was counting on folks to not check, as our article says the opposite: that the polemic is not factual but rather is false.

Origins: Barack Obama, 45, served as an Illinois state senator for several years, and in 2004 he won a seat representing that state in the U.S. Senate. His keynote address before the Democratic National Convention in June 2004 brought him national prominence, and he is currently one of the leading contenders for the nomination to represent the Democratic Party in the 2008 presidential election.

Barack Obama has an unusual and interesting background, which the above-quoted piece draws on to paint him as a dangerous, camouflaged radical Muslim. Much of the information presented therein about his background is distorted and exaggerated, however, and no evidence supports a claim that Obama is currently, or ever has been, a Muslim (radical or otherwise).

Claim: Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black MUSLIM from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunh am, a white ATHEIST from Wichita, Kansas. Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii.

Barack Hussein Obama (Senator Obama's father) was born on the shores of Lake Victoria in Alego, Kenya. He met and married an American woman, Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas, while they were both attending the University of Hawaii. Their son, also named Barack Hussein Obama was born on 4 August 1961 at the Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Although the elder Obama was raised as a Muslim, no evidence supports the claim that he was ever a "radical Muslim," and Senator Obama's family histories note that his father was an atheist or agnostic (i.e., no longer a practicing Muslim) by the time he married the younger Obama's mother. Of his mother's religious views, Senator Obama wrote: For my mother, organized religion too often dressed up closed-mindedness in the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness.

This isn't to say that she provided me with no religious instruction. In her mind, a working knowledge of the world's great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education. In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my part. Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways — and not necessarily the best way — that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives.

In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist she would become; it was a phenomenon to be treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable detachment as well. Claim: When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced. His father returned to Kenya . His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a RADICAL Muslim from Indonesia. When Obama was 6 years old, the family relocated to Indonesia . Obama attended a MUSLIM school in Jakarta . He also spent two years in a Catholic school.

Barack Obama's parents separated when he was two years old, his father moving to Connecticut to continue his education before returning to Kenya. When the younger Obama was six years old, his mother married again, this time to Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian oil manager. Barack and his mother moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Obama spent 4-5 years attending both Muslim and Catholic schools before his mother sent him back to the United States to live with his maternal grandmother. The school Barack Obama attended in Indonesia was "Muslim" primarily in the sense that the preponderance of its student body was Muslim (because Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country), but both the Muslim and Catholic schools he attended in Indonesia offered a few hours of religious instruction each week.

In his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama elaborated on his early schooling, explaining that he attended both Catholic and Muslim schools in Indonesia — not out of any particular religious affiliation, but because his mother wanted him to obtain the best education possible under the circumstances: During the five years that we would live with my stepfather in Indonesia, I was sent first to a neighborhood Catholic school and then to a predominantly Muslim school; in both cases, my mother was less concerned with me learning the catechism or puzzling out the meaning of the muezzin's call to evening prayer than she was with whether I was properly learning my multiplication tables.


Claim: Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school." Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that he is not a radical.

Barack Obama never stated that he "was once a Muslim" (radical or otherwise), so his "handlers" have nothing to "conceal." Obama communications director Robert Gibbs noted that "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim. As a six-year-old in Catholic school, he studied the catechism." Barack Obama has been associated with the United Church of Christ since the mid-1980s, describes himself as a Christian, and says that he is "rooted in the Christian tradition."

Claim: Obama's introduction to Islam came via his father, and this influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over his son's education.

As noted above, Barack Obama's parents divorced when he was only two years old, and his father then moved thousands of miles away, from Hawaii to Connecticut, so he couldn't have received much of an "introduction to Islam" from his (biological) father: My father was almost entirely absent from my childhood, having been divorced from my mother when I was two years old.

At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me, both more and less than a man. He had left Hawaii back in 1963, when I was only two years old, so that as a child I knew him only through the stories that my mother and grandparents told. (Barack's only other childhood contact with his father occurred when he was eleven years old, and his father came to visit Hawaii for a month at Christmastime. The elder Obama died when Barack Jr. was twenty-one years old.)

Claim: Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta. Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world.

The claim that Obama attended a radical Wahabbist school in Indonesia in the mid-1960s is exceedingly far-fetched, given that: The large Indonesian community resident in Mecca was a medium through which knowledge about Wahhabism reached Indonesia, but the community itself appears to have remained virtually immune to Wahhabi influences. In reality there was little direct influence of Wahhabism on Indonesian reformist thought until the 1970s. Insight magazine claimed in a January 2007 article that Barack Obama spent at least four years attending what is variously described as a "madrassa," a "radical Muslim religious school," or a "Muslim seminary" in Indonesia, but CNN has more recently reported that its own investigation found those claims to be false: [R]eporting by CNN in Jakarta, Indonesia and Washington, D.C., shows the allegations that Obama attended a madrassa to be false. CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.

He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.

"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."

Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.

"I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the 'Situation Room.' "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."

Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils. Insight reported that Obama's political opponents believed the school promoted Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam, "and are seeking to prove it."

"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school." The Associated Press reported similarly: A spokesman for Indonesia's Ministry of Religious Affairs said claims that Obama studied at an Islamic school are groundless.

"SDN Menteng 1 is a public primary school that is open to people of all faiths," said the spokesman, Sutopo, who goes by only one name. "Moreover, he studied earlier at Fransiskus Assisi, which is clearly a Catholic school."

Obama later transferred to SDN Menteng 1 the elite, secular elementary school at the center of the controversy. The school is public but is very competitive and has exceptionally high standards. It is located in one of the most affluent parts of Jakarta and attracts mostly middle- to upper-class students, among them several of former dictator Suharto's grandchildren.

Indonesia is home to several of the most radical Islamic schools in Southeast Asia, some with alleged terrorist links. But Akmad Solichin [the vice principal at SDN Menteng 1], who proudly pointed to a photo of a young Barry Obama, as he was known, said his school is not one of them. Moreover, a statement released by the Obama campaign affirmed that: In the past week, many of you have read a now thoroughly-debunked story by Insight Magazine, owned by the Washington Times, which cites unnamed sources close to a political campaign that claim Senator Obama was enrolled for "at least four years" in an Indonesian "Madrassa". The article says the "sources" believe the Madrassa was "espousing Wahhabism," a form of radical Islam.

All of the claims about Senator Obama's faith and education raised in the Insight Magazine story and repeated on Fox News are false. Senator Obama was raised in a secular household in Indonesia by his stepfather and mother. Obama's stepfather worked for a U.S. oil company, and sent his stepson to two years of Catholic school, as well as two years of public school.

To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago. Furthermore, the Indonesian school Obama attended in Jakarta is a public school that is not and never has been a Madrassa.


Claim: Since it is politically expedient to be a CHRISTIAN when seeking major public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background.

As noted above, Barack Obama describes himself as "a Christian," says that he is "rooted in the Christian tradition," and his association with the United Church of Christ began over twenty years ago, long before he contemplated a political career. (Obama was first elected to the Illinois state senate in 1996, but he has been involved with the United Church of Christ since the mid-1980s.) The beginnings of Obama's relationship with the church were described in an April 2004 Chicago Sun-Times article: Obama is unapologetic in saying he has a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." As a sign of that relationship, he says, he walked down the aisle of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ in response to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's altar call one Sunday morning about 16 years ago.

The politician could have ended his spiritual tale right there, at the point some people might assume his life changed, when he got "saved," transformed, washed in the blood. But Obama wants to clarify what truly happened.

"It wasn't an epiphany," he says of that public profession of faith. "It was much more of a gradual process for me. I know there are some people who fall out. Which is wonderful. God bless them ... I think it was just a moment to certify or publicly affirm a growing faith in me."

These days, he says, he attends the 11 a.m. Sunday service at Trinity in the Brainerd neighborhood every week — or at least as many weeks as he is able. His pastor, Wright, has become a close confidant.

So how did he become a churchgoer?

It began in 1985, when he came to Chicago as a $13,000-a-year community organizer, working with a number of African-American churches in the Roseland, West Pullman and Altgeld Gardens neighborhoods that were trying to deal with the devastation caused by shuttered steel plants.

"I started working with both the ministers and the lay people in these churches on issues like creating job-training programs, or after-school programs for youth, or making sure that city services were fairly allocated to underserved communities," he says. "And it was in those places where I think what had been more of an intellectual view of religion deepened.

"I became much more familiar with the ongoing tradition of the historic black church and its importance in the community. And the power of that culture to give people strength in very difficult circumstances, and the power of that church to give people courage against great odds. And it moved me deeply."


Claim: ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran.

This statement is completely false. It is a mistaken reference to a different politician, Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison, not Barack Obama.

Claim: Barack Hussein Obama will NOT recite the Pledge of Allegiance nor will he show any reverence for our flag. While others place their hands over their hearts, Obama turns his back to the flag and slouches.

Senator Obama drew some criticism over a photograph that showed him standing without his hand over his heart during the playing of the U.S. national anthem, but the claim that he "will NOT recite the Pledge of Allegiance" is false.

During the Democratic candidates' debate on 15 January 2008, Senator Obama directly refuted the three primary rumors about him that are circulating via e-mail: that he is a Muslim, that he was sworn in to Congress on the Quran, and that he refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance:

http://www.youtube.com/v/KWX3ar6d02A The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp

http://www.christian-forum.net/index.php?s...st&p=247024

IS OBAMA THE REAL PRO-LIFE CANDIDATE?

Obama is-pro choice. So how in the world can he be the pro- life candidate in the American election? Easy. Most of the data now show that the pro-choice approach is more effective at achieving what the American public views as pro-life goals: reducing the number of abortions, preventing late term abortion, than the pro-life approach,

In some ways the key problem here is not killing developing babies but preventing unwanted pregnancies. The pro-choice movement and pro-choice politicians like Obama are the ones who champion wider access to birth control, and birth control is one of the only ways to reduce unintended pregnancy and abortion. (The Catholic church forbids all use of artificial birth control).

Obama will remind the voters that it's the pro-choice movement and pro-choice elected officials who have fought for health insurance coverage for contraception as well as to bring new and more effective contraceptives to market.

So what about abstinence pushed by the pro-life forces? In a word, it doesn't work. Obama supports the comprehensive sex-ed programs that have been proven to work. McCain supports no sex-until-marriage-programs which ave been proven to fail. (Cardinal Martini is one of the few Catholic leaders who wants the Church to recognize the fact that the majority of younger people are sleeping together, many with the consent of their parents.)

Obama could remind the voters that only 11 per cent of sexually active women don't use contraception and from this 11 per cent comes 50 per cent of the nation's abortions. It is in that context that pro-life groups have been spearheading campaigns to prevent Americans from accessing birth control.

The right to life approach, which McCain has pushed for decades, is actually at the root of the problem: leading to more abortions.

Obama supports policies that will reduce abortions. McCain supports policies that will increase them.

Is there any doubt about who is the real pro-life candidate in this election?

http://neilmckenty.wordpress.com/2008/06/2...life-candidate/

OBAMA is a crook.



Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
By Orson Scott Card

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457to] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.

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QUOTE

As noted above, Barack Obama describes himself as "a Christian," says that he is "rooted in the Christian tradition," and his association with the United Church of Christ began over twenty years ago, long before he contemplated a political career.

The above bolded portion is a blatant lie. It is well-known that Barack Obama expressed his dream to be President of the U.S.A. consistently, and from the early age of 9 years old. I submit that by the age of around 25 or 26, which is when he would have begun attending Trinity UCC, he would have been quite capable of using religion politically.

QUOTE

(Obama was first elected to the Illinois state senate in 1996, but he has been involved with the United Church of Christ since the mid-1980s.) The beginnings of Obama's relationship with the church were described in an April 2004 Chicago Sun-Times article: Obama is unapologetic in saying he has a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." As a sign of that relationship, he says, he walked down the aisle of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ in response to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's altar call one Sunday morning about 16 years ago.

The politician could have ended his spiritual tale right there, at the point some people might assume his life changed, when he got "saved," transformed, washed in the blood. But Obama wants to clarify what truly happened.

"It wasn't an epiphany," he says of that public profession of faith. "It was much more of a gradual process for me. I know there are some people who fall out. Which is wonderful. God bless them ... I think it was just a moment to certify or publicly affirm a growing faith in me."

These days, he says, he attends the 11 a.m. Sunday service at Trinity in the Brainerd neighborhood every week — or at least as many weeks as he is able. His pastor, Wright, has become a close confidant.

So how did he become a churchgoer?

It began in 1985, when he came to Chicago as a $13,000-a-year community organizer, working with a number of African-American churches in the Roseland, West Pullman and Altgeld Gardens neighborhoods that were trying to deal with the devastation caused by shuttered steel plants.

"I started working with both the ministers and the lay people in these churches on issues like creating job-training programs, or after-school programs for youth, or making sure that city services were fairly allocated to underserved communities," he says. "And it was in those places where I think what had been more of an intellectual view of religion deepened.

"I became much more familiar with the ongoing tradition of the historic black church and its importance in the community. And the power of that culture to give people strength in very difficult circumstances, and the power of that church to give people courage against great odds. And it moved me deeply."

See the thread in this section titled, "Why Barack Obama Is Not A Christian", for proof that Obama is not a real Christian. For one quick example, Obama has said that he thinks there are "many paths" to God - no TRUE Christian would ever say or think such a thing, for it directly contradicts Jesus' Own words, and the Gospel itself.

Obama 'Lying' About Muslim Past, Expert Says




Sen. Barack Obama "is lying" when he insists that he has never prayed in a mosque and was never a Muslim, a prominent Middle East expert and journalist says.

Daniel Pipes, founder of the Middle East Forum think tank, says he fully accepts that Obama is a Christian now. But there is strong evidence that Obama received a Muslim upbringing during his years in Indonesia, Pipes said.

"It's fine with me that he was a Muslim and a convert to Christianity," Pipes told Newsmax. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal "is a convert from Hinduism. I have no problem with his conversion. What I have a problem with is that he's lying" when he says he was never a Muslim.

Newsmax asked whether Pipes is alleging outright that Obama has lied about having a Muslim upbringing.

Pipes' response: "The evidence suggests to me that he is lying, yes."

Pipes told Newsmax, "It would start with the fact that his father was a Muslim — granted, not a practicing Muslim, but in the Muslim world, if your father is a Muslim, you're a Muslim. His father named him Hussein, which is a name only given to Muslim babies. He went with his stepfather to a mosque. They celebrated certain Muslim holidays at the mosque together. He had knowledge of the Koran. He had knowledge of Muslim prayers. You put all this together, he was a Muslim."

Pipes contends that a Nov. 12 post on Obama's Web site headlined, "Barack Obama Is Not and Has Never Been a Muslim," stated: "Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."

Today, that post bears the same headline, but does not include an assertion that Obama "never prayed in a mosque" and "has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim."

The page now bears a quote Obama made during the Jan. 15 debate on MSNBC: "In the Internet age, there are going to be lies that are spread all over the place. I have been victimized by these lies. Fortunately, the American people are, I think, smarter than folks give them credit for."

The current post, which includes links intended to debunk any Muslim connection, is headlined-

"Obama Has Never Been A Muslim, And Is a Committed Christian".


Several media outlets, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, have reported on Obama's schooling in Indonesia, where he lived from 1967 to 1971, which included Muslim religious studies.

It is known, for example, that Obama's designation as a Muslim while attending a Catholic school may have simply reflected the fact that his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was Muslim.

Still, Obama was grouped with Muslim students at the school and engaged in weekly religious studies, including studying the Koran and learning Muslim prayers.

In 1970, Obama's family moved and he was enrolled in a public school where children such as Obama who were identified as Muslim spent two hours a week studying Islam. [Editor's Note: Read the Los Angeles Times report on Obama's Muslim upbringing -

Click Here Now

A March 2007 Chicago Tribune article by Kim Barker, which stated several accounts had "distorted the reality" of Obama's years in Indonesia, reported that he did irregularly attend Muslim prayer services at the local mosque.

Obama's third-grade teacher at the Catholic school, Fermina Katarina Sinaga, told Barker that Obama accompanied his stepfather to pray at the mosque, doing so "rarely."

Pipes said Barker's story bolsters his position that Obama was raised as a Muslim while he lived in Indonesia. His accounts of Obama's upbringing have received a "very severe reaction from the left" and threats from some Muslims, he said.

"The Islamists murmur and threaten," Pipes said, declining to specify the threats he has received.

Pipes sees a whopping double standard in how the mainstream media has reported on Obama's past.

"It's been quite fascinating to watch the careful picking over of Sarah Palin's record, down to her library policies as mayor of Wasilla, and her possible false pregnancies, and so forth, an analysis that involved excruciating details in her case."

He contrasts that to the "the general pass" the media has given Obama, whether over his career in the Illinois Senate, the Annenberg library papers, or his upbringing in Jakarta. Pipes said his reports have "simply been dismissed as untrue without any facts to counter it."

The McCain campaign "has been very cautious about looking into Barack Obama at all," said Pipes, adding that the GOP has demonstrated a general reluctance to raise questions about Obama's past.

Pipes has posted four articles on his Web site, "DanielPipes.org", defending his view that Obama was a Muslim. The articles include the assertion that "for some years (Obama) had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of his Indonesian stepfather."

As a measure of the interest in Obama's background, Pipes' articles have attracted close to half a million hits. One point of contention they raise: When someone is born of a Muslim father, do Muslims automatically consider him a Muslim?

A group of more than 50 scholars recently posted a statement on tabsir.net, a Web site dedicated to fostering an understanding of Islam, that seeks to refute that assertion. The statement maintains that distortions about Obama's past are "part of an Islamophobic hate campaign that fuels prejudice against Americans who practice their Islamic faith and Muslims worldwide."

Their statement says, "The vast majority of Muslims accept the Qur'anic message that there is no compulsion in Islam. Since Senator Obama was not raised as a Muslim, he cannot be held accountable for the religious status of his father."

That assertion sounds logical to Western ears, but Pipes' rejects it flatly.

"There is no doubt: It is a fact in Islam that the religion passes on through the father," he told Newsmax. "And yet it's denied as a falsehood by people who know better. They know better. It's Islam 101."

Supporting Pipes on that point is Shireen K. Burki, an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington. Burki, who spent her childhood studying Islam at a school in Islamabad, Pakistan, has first-hand experience as the daughter of a Muslim father and a Christian mother.

"According to Islamic jurisprudence," she wrote in a May article in the Christian Science Monitor, "children of a Muslim father — even an apparently nonpracticing one, such as Obama's father, and irrespective of the mother's faith — are automatically Muslims. Most Muslims around the world agree: A child of a Muslim father is a Muslim. Period."

Given that Obama's profession of Christianity is essentially uncontested, one might wonder whether it really matters whether Obama once was Muslim.

To many of the world's approximately 1.4 billion Muslims, it apparently would matter a great deal. Experts on Islam generally agree that someone who is born a Muslim (in effect, someone who had a Muslim father), who later renounces Islam, is considered an apostate.

Burki writes, "Should Obama become U.S. commander in chief, there is a strong likelihood that al-Qaida's media arm, As-Sahab, will exploit his background to argue that an apostate is leading the global war on terror (read: attacks against fellow Muslims). This perception would be leveraged to galvanize sympathizers into action."

She suggests the apostate tag would be a powerful propaganda weapon that al-Qaida could wield to marginalize America's Middle East allies, causing "enormous difficulties" in the war against terror.
------------------------------------------

Obama was born to a Muslim father. His mother remarried to an Indonesian man, also a Muslim.

In Indonesia, Obama was registered in two schools as a Muslim student. As such, he prayed with Muslim students and studied the Koran.

The Times downplays Obama's ties to Islam in its account: "Mr. Obama was raised mostly by his white mother, an atheist, and his grandparents, who were Protestant, in Hawaii. He hardly knew his father, a Kenyan from a Muslim family who variously considered himself atheist or agnostic, Mr. Obama wrote. For a few childhood years, Mr. Obama lived in Indonesia with a stepfather he described as loosely following a liberal Islam."

As Pipes notes, several reports like the Times' have only confirmed that not only was Obama raised partially as a Muslim, but that he studied the Koran and attended mosque, albeit infrequently.

On Pipe's blog he links to a Los Angeles story that details Obama's Muslim upbringing. [See the Los Angeles Times story: Islam an Unknown Factor in Obama Bid]

Major media outlets that have done in-depth reporting on Sarah Palin's religious past and faith seem dismissive of any question about Obama's childhood faith and the fact that evidence directly contradicts claims today made by Obama and his campaign.


http://www.amcoptic.com/n2008/is-obama-muslim.htm