New Information Reveals Obama May Be First Muslim President
By Robert Spencer
The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday that Barack Obama’s campaign seems to be modifying its earlier affirmation that “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.”
In a statement to The Times on Wednesday, the campaign offered slightly different wording, saying: “Obama has never been a practicing Muslim.” The statement added that as a child, Obama had spent time in the neighborhood’s Islamic center.
His former Roman Catholic and Muslim teachers, along with two people who were identified by Obama’s grade-school teacher as childhood friends, say Obama was registered by his family as a Muslim at both of the schools he attended.
Speaking about speculation over his religious affirmation, Obama himself has said: “If your name is Barack Hussein Obama, you can expect it, some of that. I think the majority of voters know that I’m a member of the United Church of Christ, and that I take my faith seriously.”
If it is true that Obama was registered in school as a Muslim when he was a child, he could possibly be charged with being an apostate from Islam. This could give him a unique chance to speak out about the freedom of conscience and the human rights of those who leave Islam -- for Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, ordered that apostates from Islam be put to death. Although this is frequently denied, his statement “Whoever changes his religion, kill him” appears in numerous authoritative Islamic sources, including Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi, Abu Dawud, Ibn Majah, An-Nasai, the Muwatta of Imam Malik, Tayalisi, Ibn Hanbal, Ibn Hibban, the Sunan al-Kubraa, Bayhaqi, Abu Ya‘laa, Humaidi, Abd al-Razzaq, and Ibn Abi Shaybah.
Western Muslims who claim that this is not Islamic law are often hailed as moderates and reformers. This, however, ignores the fundamental difference between denial and reform. If the Protestant Reformers had simply begun indignantly denying that the Catholic Church taught Transubstantiation and the sacramental priesthood, instead of arguing that such doctrines should be discarded, they would not have been reformers, but obfuscators. A genuine Islamic reformer today would acknowledge that the death penalty for apostasy is mainstream Islamic teaching, affirmed by all the madhahib, or schools of jurisprudence, and then explain why this should be set aside. But that is not the same thing as claiming that Islam doesn't teach this in the first place.
So is Obama under a death sentence? Probably not – particularly if he left Islam while still a child. This is a crucial point, for according to Islamic law an apostate male is not to be put to death if he has not reached puberty (cf. ‘Umdat al-Salik o8.2; Hidayah vol. II p. 246). Some, however, hold that he should be imprisoned until he is of age and then “invited” to accept Islam, but officially the death penalty for youthful apostates is ruled out.
Nevertheless, if he was ever considered a Muslim at all and is now a Christian, he could still seize this opportunity to speak out for the plight of people like Abdul Rahman and other Muslim apostates who have been threatened with death for exercising their freedom of conscience. However, I think that Obama’s candidacy and religious history are more likely to work to the advantage of the Left and the jihadists, even if he flames out a la Howard Dean in 2004. For if the Islamic death penalty for apostasy is even allowed to come up in the mainstream media, smiling Islamic spokesmen will deny that Islam teaches this. They can even be honest and simply affirm that it doesn't apply to Obama at all, since he left Islam while still very young.
It is most likely that the media and Obama’s campaign will ignore the apostasy law altogether, and tar anyone who brings it up as a “bigot.” The propagandists of CAIR, MPAC et al are quite savvy at portraying themselves as victims in response to presentations of uncomfortable aspects of Islam. And it is virtually inconceivable that there will be protests in the Islamic world over his apostasy, or calls for his execution. The Cartoon Rage and Pope Rage riots were orchestrated from above. The people who orchestrated them know enough not to shoot themselves in the foot. They (as well as Obama’s campaign) have a chance here to portray Obama as someone who was raised as a Muslim and thus has a keen understanding of the Islamic world and the Islamic mind -- rather like the positioning of Bill Clinton as our “first black President.” Muslim leaders worldwide will not be saying, “He was raised a Muslim. Isn’t that terrible?” They’re more likely to say, “He was raised a Muslim. Isn’t that wonderful? At last, someone who can see our point of view.” Given Obama’s politics, it will not be hard to present him internationally as someone who understands Islam and Muslims, and thus will be able to smooth over the hostility between the Islamic world and the West – our first Muslim President.
Obama’s Muslim upbringing could become the linchpin of an attempt to present him as the only candidate who can end the war on terror. We can only hope that, if he does become President, he won’t propose to do this only by means of various varieties of appeasement.
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Barry Hussein Barack Obama's ties with the highly corrupt ACORN organization have been extensive over the years, a fact almost entirely unreported by the liberal mainstream news media . The Obama campaign, according to the "Times," paid ACORN $800,000 to register voters and do other work. Obama, when serving on the board of the Woods Fund in Chicago, gave ACORN money. "Investor's Business Daily" has called Barack Obama "ACORN's Senator." And the Obama administration got up to $2 billion of taxpayer funding in Obama's first 60 days for organizations such as ACORN.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009. Georgetown University says it covered over the monogram “IHS”--symbolizing the name of Jesus Christ—because it was inscribed on a pediment on the stage where President Obama spoke at the university on Tuesday and the White House had asked Georgetown to cover up all signs and symbols there.
Barry Hussein Obama's controlled Pentagon had three Navy SEALs who faced assault charges for capturing one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq. Why?
Barry Barack Hussein Soetoro Obama says America is one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. In an interview with France’s Canal Plus, Obama suggested that the United States might be a Muslim country. “And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. Obama said in Turkey that Americans “do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation”. Telegraph.co/UK says: UPDATE 2: a reputable survey by Pew that puts the number of Muslims in the US at 1.8 million. This would make it the 48th biggest Muslim country, after the above list plus France, Libya, Jordan, Israel, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Germany, Kuwait, Oman, Eritrea, Lebanon and Serbia and Montenegro – and just above Britain, which would be the 50th.
President Obama is hurting persecuted Christians worldwide by failing to speak up for them, says a well-known convert who lives under police protection in Europe. Pakistani Christians, pray during an Easter mass in a church at a Christian neighborhood of Islamabad, Pakistan, Sunday, April 4, 2010. Pakistani Christians account for about 3.8 million of Pakistan's 140 million people.While the U.S. president has consistently sought dialogue with the Muslim world, he has not put in the same effort to protect oppressed Christians, says Sabatina James, who has lived for the past nine years in fear of being murdered for leaving Islam.“You (President Obama) are saying these things about the prophet [Muhammad] but why don’t you protect [Christians]? You’re a Christian and have such influence,” James recalls herself asking while watching President Obama’s speech in Cairo last year. “A man of such an influence should definitely speak differently. He should have said that he feels for the people who are living in prison and who may somehow be listening to the speech,” James says. “Even if he said something like that it would be good. But he did not even mention it.”
in this one statement:"I think the majority of voters know that I’m a member of the United Church of Christ, and that I take my faith seriously.”
I agree with that, When he says,"God damn America!" He really means, "God damn America!"
What If Bush Did This?
by Jason Mattera 08/31/2010
Thought experiment, folks. What would the reaction be from the media and leftist agitator groups if the Bush Administration were buying thousands of copies of C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity and distributing them overseas? Moreover, how apoplectic would those usual suspects behave if they also learned that the Bush Administration was denying that Mere Christianity was in fact a religious-based book, while at the same time deeming it an acceptable diplomatic tool to engender tolerance and interfaith dialogue? I think we all know what reaction would be, don’t we?
A blitzkrieg of front-page stories from the New York Times accusing President Bush of embarking on a modern-day Crusade. The ACLU would fire off press release after press release screeching about the 1st Amendment being under an unprecedented assault. Blowhard Ed Schulz at MSNBC would yell unintelligibly for an hour, then cry afterward because no one watched MSNBC to see him yell unintelligibly for an hour. And Al Sharpton would find a way to blame everything on Glenn Beck.
Now, the truth. The State Department did buy bulk copies of a religious book, but it wasn’t Mere Christianity. Nope. It was the Ground Zero Imam’s, What's Right with Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West. Can you guess how many copies were bought? That would be none other than 2,000! The State Department also accepted another 1,000 at no cost, for a total dispersion of 3,000 copies of What’s Right with Islam. Behold, your tax dollars at work! But it gets worse.
The State Department doesn’t see any problem handing out Rauf’s Islamic book because they don’t consider it religious material. Seriously. A State official told HUMAN EVENTS that “We don't characterize them as religious books per se. I know it's an issue of semantics. But we would consider a religious book to be something like the Koran and the Bible. We look at these as books on religion or books about religion. It's certainly not limited to any one religion.”
In fact, the spokesperson likened Rauf’s work to that of other literary works which the State Dept. distributes, including Cold Mountain—a book about the Civil War—and a book on the Wright brothers. No Christian material, however.
Members of the media don’t see anything wrong with the government acting like Rauf’s personal Barnes & Noble either. The New York Times casually mentioned how the State Dept. buys What’s Right with Islam, but that particular mention was buried at the bottom of an article and, subsequently, there were no follow-up questions on why taxpayers should be on the hook for Rauf's screed to begin with.
Like I said, just imagine the uproar and fury if a government official defended the state-sponsored circulation of Mere Christianity.
In total, the government unloaded $16,000 on Rauf’s junket to the Middle East and another $10,000 on his book.
The reckless spending of tax dollars aside, the Obama White House was elated to give its blessing to an imam who won’t condemn Hamas, argues that the U.S. is worse than al-Qaeda, and encourages the implementation of Sharia law right here in America.
A State spokeswoman told HUMAN EVENTS that Feisal is “an American Muslim voice to the Middle East.”
It's not hard to figure out why some people are confused about Obama's religious affiliation.
Barry Hussein Obama claims to be a Christian, but doesn't act like one. He claims not to be Islamic, but he does act like one.
In other words, Beilin, pretty much forgotten on today’s Israeli political scene, is a propagandist who believes in what I call “lying for peace.” In this case he is also promoting himself by putting his picture on billboards.
Indeed, this is a public relations campaign for the Geneva Initiative group, financed by the United States. Even assuming that the U.S. government wanted to do this kind of thing, they went about it in a very stupid manner.
Those on the billboards from the Palestinian side include Saeb Erekat, Jibril Rajoub, Yasser Abed Rabbo, and Riad Malki. These are not the most hardline people in the PA. But they’ve said, not so long ago, some very extreme things about Israel — and Israelis know it. Malki, to cite one example, was for years the West Bank leader of the PFLP at the height of its terrorism. Abed Rabbo was a hardliner during the Oslo process.
Jibril Rajoub’s record is mixed, and he can be called a relative moderate. Still, when an Israeli hotel near Sinai was attacked by terrorists in 2004, Rajoub blamed Israel for the bombing, calling Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a terrorist who was engaged in “continuous and unprecedented aggression against the Palestinian people.” In 2009 he criticized a speech by PA leader Mahmoud Abbas as too moderate toward Israel. He extolled the unity efforts between Hamas and Fatah while cheering Fatah’s decision to adhere to its original program, which called for Israel’s destruction and explicitly stated that Fatah still retained the option of armed struggle.
They also have something else in common: none of them is a mainstream Fatah person, though Rajoub comes closest to being so. They don’t have much real power. Israelis know that.
Yet aside from all of this, there is something very revealing in this project regarding official and mass media attitudes in the United States. They think that the lack of peace is based on some misunderstanding, or on inexplicable Israeli suspicion. What they refuse to face is that the barrier to peace is Palestinian intransigence due to the PA’s weakness, the radicalism of Fatah, the effect of continual incitement on Palestinian public opinion, and other problems I’ve discussed in detail.
This project radiates naiveté, a characteristic Israelis find most repugnant when it comes to securing their future and survival. Aside from wasting taxpayer money at a time of economic crisis, this public relations scheme will have the exact opposite effect from what was intended.
U.S. Taxpayers Foot Bill for Ludicrous Palestinian Authority Propaganda Campaign
A campaign designed to put the onus for peace on Israeli citizens is getting deservedly ridiculed.
September 10, 2010
Over and over, the Obama administration shows its capacity for misunderstanding Israel and decreasing its own popularity there. Even while bilateral relations are good, it reminds Israelis of why they shouldn’t fundamentally trust this government and that Washington doesn’t understand them at all.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) — which is supposed to help countries raise their living standards — gave a $250,000 grant to the H.L. Peace Education Program of the Geneva Initiative. (I wonder if the U.S. Congress considers this to be within AID’s mandate!) The money isn’t paying for potable water, health clinics, or small factories. It’s paying for billboards and videos in Israel, featuring the faces of Palestinian and Israeli officials asking:
We are partners — what about you?
Typical, isn’t it? The implication of the signs and film clips is that the Palestinians are ready for peace, the question is only whether Israel wants it. Should be very effective with Israelis, right? If you have any doubts on that point, read the article about what went on behind the scenes during production from Israel’s leading newspaper, Yediot Ahronot. Even the Israeli film crew members were making sarcastic cracks about what the “partners” were saying off-camera.
I should mention that there is also a series of billboards aimed at Palestinians with Israelis featured. Not a single heart or mind will be changed by this waste of money. One of the main Israelis featured is Yossi Beilin, plus others in the opposition in Israel but who were involved in some cases with the sponsoring group. In a sense, the campaign is an advertisement for themselves, not for peace, since these people aren’t in the government.
When writing a biography of Yasir Arafat, I had a long interview list of Palestinians, Israelis, and Americans. One of the few who simply would not respond to my requests was Beilin. One day, a friend said he was next going to meet Beilin, so I asked him to pass along my interview request.
An hour later I spoke again to the friend and asked him what happened. He responded:
Beilin told me that he won’t do it because if he gives an interview he will have to speak well of Arafat, and he told me he doesn’t want to say nice things about that SOB. (Continued)
Oh, wait. I know why? They have been watching Pravda MSNBC?
Barry Barak Hussein Obama's Muslim Childhood
Obama's Kenyan birth father: In Islam, religion passes from the father to the child. Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936–1982) was a Muslim who named his boy Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Only Muslim children are named "Hussein". Obama's Indonesian family: His stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was also a Muslim. In fact, as Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng explained to Jodi Kantor of the New York Times: "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim." An Indonesian publication, the Banjarmasin Post reports a former classmate, Rony Amir, recalling that "All the relatives of Barry's father were very devout Muslims."
Asisi, Obama's Catholic School in Jakarta
The Catholic school: Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press reports that "documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim" while at a Catholic school during first through third grades. Kim Barker of the Chicago Tribune confirms that Obama was "listed as a Muslim on the registration form for the Catholic school." A blogger who goes by "An American Expat in Southeast Asia" found that "Barack Hussein Obama was registered under the name 'Barry Soetoro' serial number 203 and entered the Franciscan Asisi Primary School on 1 January 1968 and sat in class 1B. … Barry's religion was listed as Islam." The public school: Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times learned from Indonesians familiar with Obama when he lived in Jakarta that he "was registered by his family as a Muslim at both schools he attended." Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star visited Besuki, the Jakarta public school Obama attended, and found that "Three of his teachers have said he was enrolled as a Muslim." Although Siddiqui cautions that "With the school records missing, eaten by bugs, one has to rely on people's shifting memories," he cites only one retired teacher, Tine Hahiyari, retracting her earlier certainty about Obama's being registered as a Muslim.
Koran class: In his autobiography, Dreams of My Father, Obama relates how he got into trouble for making faces during Koranic studies, thereby revealing he was a Muslim, for Indonesian students in his day attended religious classes according to their faith. Indeed, Obama still retains knowledge from that class: Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times, reports that Obama "recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them [to Kristof] with a first-rate accent."
Mosque attendance: Obama's half-sister recalled that the family attended the mosque "for big communal events." Watson learned from childhood friends that "Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the local mosque." Barker found that "Obama occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers." One Indonesia friend, Zulfin Adi, states that Obama "was Muslim. He went to the mosque. I remember him wearing a sarong" (a garment associated with Muslims).
Piety: Obama himself says that while living in Indonesia, a Muslim country, he "didn't practice [Islam]," implicitly acknowledging a Muslim identity. Indonesians differ in their memories of him. One, Rony Amir, describes Obama as "previously quite religious in Islam."
Obama's having been born and raised a Muslim and having left the faith to become a Christian make him neither more nor less qualified to become president of the United States. But if he was born and raised a Muslim and is now hiding that fact, this points to a major deceit, a fundamental misrepresentation about himself that has profound implications about his character and his suitability as president.