IS BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA A MUSLIM?

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by Andy Martin
www.pr-inside.com

Obama's family history in the Muslim faith may be a large issue, as some believe, or it may be a very small issue, as others believe, or it may be a non-issue as liberals believe. But it is a legitimate topic of discussion and a bona fide area of scholarly research. The fact is, Obama has brutally attacked anyone who told the truth about his Muslim heritage, and relentlessly lied about his Islamic family.

I believe Obama has yet to face his own confused state of mind about his religious origins. Moreover, I believe that Americans are entitled to the truth, the full truth and nothing but the truth from Senator Obama; to date they have not received those disclosures. Issue? Non-issue? Each of us can draw our own conclusions once we have the undisputed facts. That is the way our society usually functions. Or as Dragnet's Sergeant Joe Friday would say, "Just the facts, ma'am."

Obama's mother married two, not one, Muslim men.

There does not appear to have been a mosque in Hawaii at the time when Obama's father lived there, so we do not know what he would have done had there been a Muslim facility.

We do know that Obama's stepfather occasionally took Obama and his sister to a mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia. We also know that Obama was registered as a Muslim at one of the schools he attended in Jakarta. There is no evidence—nor has Obama ever cited any-that his "atheistic" mother objected to his being classified as a Muslim while Barry (Barack) was living in Indonesia.

As I have stated before, there is nothing suspicious or unusual about parents choosing a religion for their children. Almost all parents choose the initial religion of their children, or no religion. My parents initially chose to have me baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church, which I attended and where I was a very devoted altar boy. Later as an adult I transferred my membership to the Episcopal Church of my father and grandfather. There is nothing secret about any of this, and I have nothing to hide. (One of my grandmothers was Roman Catholic.)

Some religions transfer their heritage through the mother. In Judaism, for example, the Jewish religious tradition is handed down through the mother. In the Muslim religion, however, which often tracks Judaism and Christianity, but not in this case, the father hands down the family's religion.

Thus, at birth, by virtue of Obama's Muslim father, Barack Obama, Junior received the same Islamic faith as his Kenyan father. The Kenyan wing of Obama's family is almost all Muslim. Even the woman Obama falsely calls his "granny" was quoted as stating she is a devoted Muslim. If everyone in your family is a Muslim, it is a fair conclusion that you began life as a Muslim. What is Mr. (Nicholas) Kristof's problem with the foregoing facts?

Is there widespread confusion about Obama's religion? Indeed there is. Why is that? First, the fact Obama's father was a Muslim raises the obvious point that as a result of the tenets of some Muslims his son also began life as a Muslim.

Some months ago there was a dispute in the New York Times when another writer made my points, and the Times promptly produced Muslim scholars to oppose the patrilineal passage of Islam from a father to his children. There was also a dispute about whether the Islamic faith has a "Once a Muslim, always Muslim" doctrine. Indeed, Islam is no more monolithic a religion than Christianity. Sects, denominations and even nations disagree about the "true" nature of Islam. But the fact that Christians disagree does not convert their disagreements into a negation of Christianity. Likewise, the fact that some Muslims disagree with the "Once a Muslim, Always a Muslim" doctrine does not mean that hundreds of millions of Muslims do not follow that belief. They do. It's a fact. People have recently been threatened with death for announcing a desire to leave the Muslim religion.

The first time Obama left home, when he attended college at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he gravitated to a circle of Muslim friends. While this Muslim circle is nothing sinister, it is another small piece of circumstantial evidence concerning Obama's religious state of mind. Boy leaves home and heads straight for the Muslim community on campus. Well.

And how about this? I take a contrarian point of view on the Middle East where my columns have defended Islam and challenged American policy. As a result, I have many readers throughout the Islamic world. When I began to criticize Obama, some of my followers wrote me and said "Shhh. He's one of us." Thus, many Muslims believe Obama is a Muslim. That' a fact.

Obama could have avoided all of this confusion if he had simply told the truth years ago. For some reason Barack fears the truth. No one had had to "Otherize" him as Kristof suggests. Obama "Otherizes" himself. For the reasons stated in my Psychological Profile, Obama does not like to tell the truth. He has lived the better part of his life in a fantasy world, and it is into that fantasyland that he retreats when he must deal with confusion and confrontation. In "Obamaland," "Barry Obama" was never a Muslim.

Kristof says that people are interested in Obama's religious history because we are using religion as a "proxy" for racism. That is a despicable suggestion. I don't know about Kristof but I have a publicly documented lifetime of work on behalf of civil rights, and a worldwide reputation for standing by Islam and condemning religious demonization. The only bigot in the room is Kristof, because he seeks to use bigotry and a subterfuge for Obama's psychological confusion and evasion.

Kristof's final slander is to claim some false sense of honor because he contributed to the confusion over Obama's religious history. Kristof previously wrote about Obama's singing the Islamic call to prayer in Arabic. On Sunday, September 21st, Kristof tried to impeach himself. He claimed that Obama could remember this prayer because "the call to prayer blasts from mosque loudspeakers five times a day." I have lived in Muslim lands, and I would hasten to say that very little that originates with the muezzin can be heard at a distance. Obama must have lived very close to a mosque if he was able to decipher the call to prayer so clearly and after the passage of forty (40) years as Kristof now suggests.

Kristof closes his smears by accusing scholars/writers such as myself of "calculating to undermine the political process" and "magnifying the ugliest prejudices." On the contrary, it is Obama, who has repeatedly and relentlessly lied about his religious history, and fellow travelers such as Kristof, who are doing so much to undermine our democratic institutions by seeking to substitute a big lie for the truth in this election campaign.

I stand by my facts. And I stand by the truth. It would be nice if Kristof and Obama would do likewise.
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