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发帖数: 6571 | 1 Obama provides some information on his Islamic background in his two books,
Dreams and The Audacity of Hope (2006). In 2007, when Hillary Clinton was
still the favored Democratic candidate for president, a number of reporters
dug up information about Obama's time in Indonesia. Obama's statements as
president have provided important insights into his mentality. The major
biographies of Obama devote little attention to this topic, both the
friendly ones (such as those by David Maraniss, David Mendell, and David
Remnick) and the hostile ones (such as by Jack Cashill, Jerome R. Corsi,
Dinesh D'Souza, Aaron Klein, Edward Klein, and Stanley Kurtz).
I shall establish his having been born and raised a Muslim, provide
confirming evidence from recent years, survey the perceptions of him as a
Muslim, and place this deception in the larger context of Obama's
autobiographical fictions.
"I Have Never Been a Muslim"
Obama readily acknowledges that his paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango
Obama, converted to Islam. Indeed, Dreams (p. 407) contains a long quote
from his paternal grandmother explaining the grandfather's reasons for doing
so: Christianity's ways appeared to be "foolish sentiment" to him, "
something to comfort women," and so he converted to Islam, thinking "its
practices conformed more closely to his beliefs" (p. 104). Obama readily
told this to all comers: when asked by a barber (p. 149), "You a Muslim?"
for example, he replied, "Grandfather was."
Obama presents his parents and stepfather as non-religious. He notes (in
Audacity, pp. 204-05), that his "father had been raised a Muslim" but was a
"confirmed atheist" by the time he met Barack's mother, who in turn "
professed secularism." His stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, "like most Indonesians,
was raised a Muslim," though a non-practicing, syncretic one who (Dreams, p
. 37) "followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of
more ancient animist and Hindu faiths."
As for himself, Obama acknowledges numerous connections to Islam but denies
being a Muslim. "The only connection I've had to Islam is that my
grandfather on my father's side came from that country," he declared in Dec.
2007. "But I've never practiced Islam. ... For a while, I lived in
Indonesia because my mother was teaching there. And that's a Muslim country.
And I went to school. But I didn't practice." Likewise, he said in Feb.
2008: "I have never been a Muslim. ... other than my name and the fact that
I lived in a populous Muslim country for 4 years when I was a child I have
very little connection to the Islamic religion." Note his unequivocal
statement here: "I have never been a Muslim." Under the headline, "Barack
Obama Is Not and Has Never Been a Muslim," Obama's first presidential
campaign website carried an even more emphatic statement in Nov. 2007,
stating that "Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim,
was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."
"Barry Was Muslim"
But many pieces of evidence argue for Obama having been born and raised a
Muslim:
(1) Islam is a patrilineal religion: In Islam, the father passes his faith
to the children; and when a Muslim male has children with a non-Muslim
female, Islam considers the children Muslim. Obama's grandfather and father
having been Muslims – the extent of their piety matters not at all – means
that, in Muslim eyes, Barack was born a Muslim.
(2) Arabic forenames based on the H-S-N trilateral root: All such names (
Husayn or Hussein, Hasan, Hassân, Hasanayn, Ahsan, Muhsin, and others)
are exclusively bestowed on Muslim babies. (The same goes for names based on
the H-M-D root.) Obama's middle name, Hussein, explicitly proclaims him a
born Muslim.
Obama's registration document at Santo Fransiskus Asisi, a Catholic school,
in Jakarta. (Click to enlarge)
(3) Registered as Muslim at SD Katolik Santo Fransiskus Asisi: Obama was
registered at a Catholic school in Jakarta as "Barry Soetoro." A surviving
document correctly lists him as born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961; in
addition, it lists him having Indonesian nationality and Muslim religion.
(4) Registered as Muslim at SD Besuki: Although Besuki (also known as SDN 1
Menteng) is a public school, Obama curiously refers to it in Audacity (p.
154) as "the Muslim school" he attended in Jakarta. Its records have not
survived but several journalists (Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star, Paul
Watson of the Los Angeles Times, David Maraniss of the Washington Post) have
all confirmed that there too, he was registered as a Muslim.
(5) Islamic class at SD Besuki: Obama mentions (Audacity, p. 154) that at
Besuki, "the teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during
Koranic studies." Only Muslim students attended the weekly two-hour Koran
class, Watson reports:
two of his teachers, former Vice Principal Tine Hahiyari and third-grade
teacher Effendi, said they remember clearly that at this school too, he was
registered as a Muslim, which determined what class he attended during
weekly religion lessons. "Muslim students were taught by a Muslim teacher,
and Christian students were taught by a Christian teacher," said Effendi.
Andrew Higgins of the Washington Post quotes Rully Dasaad, a former
classmate, saying that Obama horsed around in class and, during readings of
the Koran, got "laughed at because of his funny pronunciation." Maraniss
learned that the class included not only studying "how to pray and how to
read the Koran," but also actually praying in the Friday communal service
right on the school grounds.
(6) Mosque attendance: Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's younger half-sister, said
her father (namely, Barack's stepfather) attended the mosque "for big
communal events," Barker found that "Obama occasionally followed his
stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers." Watson reports:
The childhood friends say Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the
local mosque. "We prayed but not really seriously, just following actions
done by older people in the mosque. But as kids, we loved to meet our
friends and went to the mosque together and played," said Zulfin Adi, who
describes himself as among Obama's closest childhood friends. ... Sometimes,
when the muezzin sounded the call to prayer, Lolo and Barry would walk to
the makeshift mosque together, Adi said. "His mother often went to the
church, but Barry was Muslim. He went to the mosque," Adi said.
(7) Muslim clothing: Adi recalls about Obama, "I remember him wearing a
sarong." Likewise, Maraniss found not only that "His classmates recalled
that Barry wore a sarong" but written exchanges indicating that he continued
to wear this garment in the United States. This fact has religious
implications because, in Indonesian culture, only Muslims wear sarongs.
(8) Piety: Obama says that in Indonesia, he "didn't practice [Islam]," an
assertion that inadvertently acknowledges his Muslim identity by implying he
was a non-observant Muslim. But several of those who knew him contradict
this recollection. Rony Amir describes Obama as "previously quite religious
in Islam." A former teacher, Tine Hahiyary, quoted in the Kaltim Post, says
the future president took part in advanced Islamic religious lessons: "I
remember that he had studied mengaji." In the context of Southeast Asian
Islam, mengaji Quran means to recite the Koran in Arabic, a difficult task
denoting advanced study.
In summary, the record points to Obama having been born a Muslim to a non-
practicing Muslim father and having lived for four years in a fully Muslim
milieu under the auspices of his Muslim Indonesian stepfather. For these
reasons, those who knew Obama in Indonesia considered him a Muslim.
"My Muslim Faith"
In addition, several statements by Obama in recent years point to his Muslim
childhood.
(1) Robert Gibbs, campaign communications director for Obama's first
presidential race, asserted in Jan. 2007: "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." But he backtracked in Mar. 2007,
asserting that "Obama has never been a practicing Muslim." By focusing on
the practice as a child, the campaign is raising a non-issue, for Muslims (
like Jews) do not consider practice central to religious identity. Gibbs
added, according to a paraphrase by Watson, that "as a child, Obama had
spent time in the neighborhood's Islamic center." Clearly, "the neighborhood
's Islamic center" is a euphemism for "mosque"; spending time there again
points to Obama's being a Muslim.
(2) He may have made faces and horsed around in Koran class but Obama
learned how to pray the salat in religion class; his former teacher at
Besuki, Effendi, recalls that he would "join the other pupils for Muslim
prayers." Praying the salat in of itself made Obama a Muslim. Furthermore,
he still proudly retains knowledge from that long-ago class: in March 2007,
Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times, witnessed as Obama "recalled the
opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them [to Kristof] with
a first-rate accent." Obama recited not the salat itself but the adhan, the
call to prayer (typically chanted from minarets). The second and third lines
of the adhan constitute the Islamic declaration of faith, the shahada,
whose very utterance makes one a Muslim. The full adhan in its Sunni
iteration (skipping the repetitions) goes as follows:
God is the greatest.
I testify that there is no deity but God.
I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.
Come to prayer.
Come to success.
God is the greatest.
There is no deity except God.
In the eyes of Muslims, reciting the adhan in class in 1970 made Obama a
Muslim then – and doing so again for a journalist in 2007 once again made
Obama a Muslim.
(3) In a conversation with George Stephanopoulos in September 2008, Obama
spoke of "my Muslim faith," only changing that to "my Christian faith" after
Stephanopoulos interrupted and corrected him. No one could blurt out "my
Muslim faith" unless some basis existed for such a mistake.
(4) When addressing Muslim audiences, Obama uses specifically Muslim phrases
that recall his Muslim identity. He addressed audiences both in Cairo (in
June 2009) and Jakarta (in Nov. 2010) with "as-salaamu alaykum," a greeting
that he, who went to Koran class, knows is reserved for one Muslim
addressing another. In Cairo, he also deployed several other pious terms
that signal to Muslims he is one of them:
"the Holy Koran" (a term mentioned five times): an exact translation
from the standard Arabic reference to the Islamic scripture, al-Qur'an al-
Karim.
"the right path": a translation of the Arabic as-sirat al-mustaqim,
which Muslims ask God to guide them along each time they pray.
"I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region
where it was first revealed": non-Muslims do not refer to Islam as revealed.
"the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed ... joined in prayer
": this Koranic tale of a night journey establishes the leadership of
Muhammad over all other holy figures, including Jesus.
"Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, peace be upon them": a translation of the
Arabic 'alayhim as-salam, which pious Muslim say after mentioning the names
of dead prophets other than Muhammad. (A different salutation, sall Allahu
alayhi wa-sallam, "May God honor him and grant him peace," properly follows
Muhammad's name, but this phrase is almost never said in English.)
Obama's saying "Peace be upon them" has other implications beyond being a
purely Islamic turn of phrase never employed by Arabic-speaking Jews and
Christians. First, it contradicts what a self-professed Christian believes
because it implies that Jesus, like Moses and Muhammad, is dead; Christian
theology holds him to have been resurrected, living, and the immortal Son of
God. Second, including Muhammad in this blessing implies reverence for him,
something as outlandish as a Jew talking about Jesus Christ. Third, a
Christian would more naturally seek peace from Jesus rather than wish peace
on him.
(5) Obama's overblown and inaccurate description of Islam in the United
States smacks of an Islamist mentality. He drastically overestimates both
the number and the role of Muslims in the United States, announcing in June
2009 that "if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we'd be one
of the largest Muslim countries in the world." (Hardly: according to one
listing of Muslim populations, the United States, with about 2.5 million
Muslims, ranks about 47th largest.) Three days later, he gave a bloated
estimate of "nearly 7 million American Muslims in our country today" and
bizarrely announced that "Islam has always been a part of America's story. .
.. since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States."
Obama also announced the dubious fact, in Apr. 2009, that many Americans "
have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country."
When ordering religious communities in the United States, Obama always gives
first place to Christians but second place varies between Jews and Muslims,
most notably in his Jan. 2009 inaugural speech: "The United States is a
nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers." Obama
so wildly overestimates the Muslim role in American life that they suggest
an Islamic supremacist mentality specific to someone coming from a Muslim
background.
(6) Obama's understanding of his duties as occupant of the White House point
to his Muslim origins. He announced in his Cairo speech: "I consider it
part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against
negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear." This revealing remark
points both to Obama's Muslim sensitivities and to his strange concept of
the U.S. presidency. (Imagine if John F. Kennedy had said something parallel
about Catholic Christianity at the Vatican.)
In the aggregate, these statements confirm the evidence from Obama's
childhood that he was born and raised a Muslim.
"My Whole Family Was Muslim"
Several individuals who know Obama well perceive him as Muslim. Most
remarkably, his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, has stated: "My whole family
was Muslim." Her whole family, obviously, includes her half-brother Barack.
In June 2006, Obama related how, after a long religious evolution, he "was
finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on
95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian
faith" with an altar call. But when his pastor at Trinity United, the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright, was asked (by Edward Klein, The Amateur, p. 40), "Did you
convert Obama from Islam to Christianity?" whether out of ignorance or
discretion, Wright finessed the question, replying enigmatically: "That's
hard to tell." Note his not rejecting out of hand the idea that Obama had
been a Muslim.
Barack's 30-year-old half-brother who met him twice, George Hussein Onyango
Obama, told an interviewer in March 2009 that "He may be behaving
differently due to the position he is in, but on the inside Barack Obama is
Muslim."
"His Middle Name Is Hussein"
Muslims cannot shake the sense that, under his proclaimed Christian identity
, Obama truly is one of them.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the prime minister of Turkey, has referred to
Hussein as a "Muslim" name. Muslim discussions of Obama sometimes mention
his middle name as a code, with no further comment needed. A conversation in
Beirut, quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, captures the puzzlement. "
He has to be good for Arabs because he is a Muslim," observed a grocer. "He'
s not a Muslim, he's a Christian," replied a customer. No, said the grocer,
"He can't be a Christian. His middle name is Hussein." The name is proof
positive.
Despite knowing better, Asma Gull Hasan "can't seem to accept that Obama is
not Muslim."
The American Muslim writer Asma Gull Hasan wrote in "My Muslim President
Obama,"
I know President Obama is not Muslim, but I am tempted nevertheless to
think that he is, as are most Muslims I know. In a very unscientific oral
poll, ranging from family members to Muslim acquaintances, many of us feel .
.. that we have our first American Muslim president in Barack Hussein Obama.
... since Election Day, I have been part of more and more conversations
with Muslims in which it was either offhandedly agreed that Obama is Muslim
or enthusiastically blurted out. In commenting on our new president, "I have
to support my fellow Muslim brother," would slip out of my mouth before I
had a chance to think twice. "Well, I know he's not really Muslim," I would
quickly add. But if the person I was talking to was Muslim, they would say,
"yes he is."
By way of explanation, Hasan mentions Obama's middle name. She concludes: "
Most of the Muslims I know (me included) can't seem to accept that Obama is
not Muslim."
If Muslims get these vibes, not surprisingly, so does the American public.
Five polls in 2008-09 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the
Press asking "Do you happen to know what Barack Obama's religion is?" found
a consistent 11-12 percent of registered American voters averring that he's
really a Muslim, with much larger percentages among Republicans and
Evangelicals. This number increased to 18 percent in an Aug. 2010 Pew survey
. A March 2012 poll found about half the likely Republican voters in both
Alabama and Mississippi seeing Obama as a Muslim. Pew's June-July 2012
survey found that 17 percent saying Obama is a Muslim and 31 percent not
knowing his religion, with just 49 percent identifying him as a Christian.
This points to an even split between those who say Obama is a Christian and
those who do not.
That those who see him as Muslim also overwhelmingly disapprove of his job
performance points to a correlation in their minds between Muslim identity
and a failed presidency. That such a substantial portion of the public
persists in this view points to a bedrock of reluctance to take Obama at his
word about being a Christian. This in turn reflects the widespread sense
that Obama has played fast and loose with his biography.
"He Was Interested in Islam"
While attending school in Indonesia, Obama famously attended Koranic class;
less known, as he recalled in Mar. 2004, was his "studying the Bible and
catechisms" at the Asisi school. As each of these classes were intended just
for believers, attending both was irregular. Several of his former teachers
there confirm Obama's recollection. Here are three of them on this topic:
Obama's first-grade teacher at Asisi, Israella Dharmawan, recalled to
Watson of the Los Angeles Times: "At that time, Barry was also praying in a
Catholic way, but Barry was Muslim. ... He was registered as a Muslim
because his father, Lolo Soetoro, was Muslim."
Obama's former third-grade teacher at Besuki, Effendi, told Anne
Barrowclough of the Times (London), that the school had pupils of many
faiths and recalled how students attended classes on their own faiths –
except for Obama, who alone insisted on attending both Christian and Islamic
classes. He did so even against the wishes of his Christian mother: "His
mother did not like him learning Islam, although his father was a Muslim.
Sometimes she came to the school; she was angry with the religious teacher
and said 'Why did you teach him the Koran?' But he kept going to the classes
because he was interested in Islam."
An administrator at Besuki, Akhmad Solikhin, expressed (to an Indonesian
newspaper, the Kaltim Post, Jan. 27, 2007, translation provided by "An
American Expat in Southeast Asia," quote edited for clarity) bafflement at
Obama's religion: "He indeed was registered as Muslim, but he claims to be
Christian."
This double religiosity, admittedly, is being discussed at a time when Obama
is an international personality and when the nature of his religious
affiliation had taken on political overtones; still, that three figures from
his Indonesian past independently made this same point is striking and
points to the complexity of Barack Obama's personal development. They also
raise the inconclusive but intriguing possibility that Obama, even at the
tender age of six through ten, sought to combine his maternal and paternal
religions into a personal syncretic whole, presenting himself as both
Christian and Muslim. In subtle ways, he still does just that.
Discovering the Truth
In conclusion, available evidence suggests that Obama was born and raised a
Muslim and retained a Muslim identity until his late 20s. Child to a line of
Muslim males, given a Muslim name, registered as a Muslim in two Indonesian
schools, he read Koran in religion class, he still recites the Islamic
declaration of faith, and he speaks to Muslim audiences like a fellow
believer. Between his non-practicing Muslim father, his Muslim stepfather,
and his four years of living in a Muslim milieu, he was both seen by others
and saw himself as a Muslim.
This is not to say that he was a practicing Muslim or that he remains a
Muslim today, much less an Islamist, nor that his Muslim background
significantly influences his political outlook (which, in fact, is typical
of an American leftist). Nor is there a problem about his converting from
Islam to Christianity. The issue is Obama's having specifically and
repeatedly lied about his Muslim identity. More than any other single
deception, Obama's treatment of his own religious background exposes his
moral failings.
Questions about Obama's Truthfulness
Yet, these failings remain largely unknown to the American electorate.
Consider the contrast of his case and that of James Frey, the author of A
Million Little Pieces. Both Frey and Obama wrote inaccurate memoirs that
Oprah Winfrey endorsed and which rose to #1 on the non-fiction bestseller
list. When Frey's literary deceptions about his own drug taking and
criminality became apparent, Winfrey tore viciously into him, a library
reclassified his book as fiction, and the publisher offered a refund to
customers who felt deceived.
In contrast, Obama's falsehoods are blithely excused; Arnold Rampersad,
professor of English at Stanford University who teaches autobiography,
admiringly called Dreams "so full of clever tricks—inventions for literary
effect—that I was taken aback, even astonished. But make no mistake, these
are simply the tricks that art trades in, and out of these tricks is
supposed to come our realization of truth." Gerald Early, professor of
English literature and African-American studies at Washington University in
St. Louis, goes further: "It really doesn't matter if he made up stuff. ...
I don't think it much matters whether Barack Obama has told the absolute
truth in Dreams From My Father. What's important is how he wanted to
construct his life."
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http://www.danielpipes.org/11952/obama-muslim-childhood |
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