Posted on 06/28/2008 9:35:21 AM PDT by Beckwith
Beckwith responds to The Washington Post.
The first thing I have to say about "An Attack That Came Out of the Ether," published by The Washington Post on June 28th, is that at NO time was I ever contacted by this woman, Danielle Allen. I spoke to two male Post reporters, who spoke to me over the phone for a period of months. The first contact was in the fall of 2007. They told me they were trying to track down the source of emails they considered negative to the Obamamessiah.
Allen obsesses about the "Muslim" Obama stories, but steers clear of Obama's relationships with communists, Marxists, socialists, terrorists and convicted swindlers. The trick she attempts to use is to knock down one or two or three items and the other four thousand don't count.
The following notice appears on my website's "About" page: "I don't write this stuff -- I cherry-pick it and publish it here -- every attempt is made to provide attribution and/or links to the original source -- if you don't like the writer's viewpoint -- send them an email -- not me. If the reader finds content that is incorrect, I will correct or delete it upon the submission of two links to an independent source with more accurate information."
And I mean just that and I do just that. I want The Obama File to be able to withstand the type of attack that Allen attempts in this article.
When Allen quotes me: "If 20 percent of what's on my Web site is true, this guy is a clear and present danger," she left out the whole quote. I told her reporters that I believed that The Obama File content was better than 95% accurate, but that If 20 percent of what's on my Web site is true, this guy is a clear and present danger. I still believe that.
Allen writes, "There was 'Beckwith,' whom she pegged as a veteran from Boston, old enough to vote for John F. Kennedy, in uniform by 1964, and host of a Web site that devotes considerable space to an 'Obama file' that says the senator is 'by birth, blood and training, a Muslim.'"
That statement is true. Just ask Obama's sister Maya. In an interview with the New York Times, published on April 30th, 2007, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s younger half sister, told the Times, "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim."
I assume Maya thinks of her brother, Obama, as a member of her family?
Even if Maya didn't make such a statement. Islam is patrilinear. The son of a Muslim is a Muslim (birth, blood) and Obama did study Islam, the Quran and the Hadith at the Besuki Primary School in Jakarta, Indonesia for two years (training). Further, he attended mengaji classes where he studied the Quran in its native Arabic.
In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama mentions studying the Quran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school." He wrote, "In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Koranic studies."
According to Tine Hahiyary, one of Obama's teachers and the principal from 1971 through 1989, Barry actively took part in the Islamic religious lessons during his time at the school. His teacher was named Maimunah and she lived in the Puncak area, the Cianjur Regency.
"I remembered that he had studied "mengaji" (recitation of the Quran)" Tine said.
These facts can account for the startling statement Obama made on February 27th, 2007, when he said the Muslim call to prayer was "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth."
In an interview with Nicholas Kristof, published in The New York Times, Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer, the Adhan, "with a first-class [Arabic] accent."
The opening lines of the Adhan (Azaan) is the Shahada:
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that Muhammad is his prophet...
According to Islamic scholars, reciting the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, makes one a Muslim. This simple yet profound statement expresses a Muslim's complete acceptance of, and total commitment to, the message of Islam.
Obama knows this from his Quranic studies -- and he knows the New York Times will publish this fact and it will be seen throughout the Islamic world.
Regardless of Obama's religion, what message is he sending the world's 1.2 billion Muslims?
I suppose it's easy for Obama to remember the Shahada for the 35 years since he left Indonesia -- and in 'first-class' Arabic -- especially since he believes the Muslim call to prayer is "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth." -- no matter what religion he belongs to, or not, those Muslim prayers run through his head, and often -- what does that really make him?
And although I do have a Boston accent, of which I'm proud (you can hear it on the webcast at the link on the main page), Allen gets in a little ethnic stereotyping by calling my accent a "... thick Boston brogue" -- Bostonians don't have brogues -- my antecedents from Ireland do -- it's a good thing I don't have a chip on my shoulder and charge "racism" at such obvious stereotyping -- like some folks might do.
And there is no "unnamed 'colleague' in Europe" -- that's probably my friend and fellow FReeper, ExpatGuy, who operates the "An American Expat in Southeast Asia" blog (a truly great resource). But, what the heck, Europe, Southeast Asia, they're all foreign places.
Allen is also incorrect when she writes, "His initial goal was to take swats at the liberal left. 'Then this new guy comes along called Obama,' he said." -- All one has to do is to read the "About" page on my website to get it right -- "The Obama File is a spinoff of www.FreedomsEnemies.com where it started out as a single page. Freedom's Enemies documents the relationship between the political left and Islamofascism. Along comes Obama -- with a foot in each camp -- and The Obama File just evolved.
The reason I spun off The Obama File is that I did not want the Freedoms Enemies website a pejorative to the information I was compiling on Obama.
This sentence is also false -- "Beckwith said he built a Web site that features hundreds of pages of material intended to undermine Obama." -- There are 18 pages on my website. Because I take pains to document and provide attribution for everything, those 18 pages link to thousands of source articles, primarily from mainstream media sources (including The Washington Post), and my intention is not to "undermine" poor Barry -- it is to "oppose the most liberal (read "left-wing") member of the U. S. Senate sitting in the Oval Office" -- just like it says on my "About" page.
I suppose it could have been more of a hatchet job, but what amazes me is Allen's obsession with the Muslim thing -- that rumor is a year old and has been fed more by Obama and his family more than anyone else.
Why hasn't Allen attempted to knock down Obama's relationship with communists, Marxists, socialists, terrorists, convicted swindlers, and, dare I say it, DHIMMICRATS!
Could it be that those long-term relationships are just too easy to document?
What is it? Did you find out?
Why do these professors write books on subjects nobody cares about?
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