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Posted on 01/14/2008 9:11:02 AM PST by processing please hold
1. Was Barack Obama a Muslim?
The issue of Barack Obama's possible Muslim past has re-emerged with conflicting reports about the presidential candidate's childhood in Islamic Indonesia.
The controversy was initially touched off in early 2007 when several media outlets reported that Obama had attended a radical madrasa, or Islamic school, when he lived in Indonesia.
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs quickly countered with a statement: "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."
The reports about the radical madrasa turned out to be false. But in March 2007, Gibbs amended his previous statement, telling the Los Angeles Times: "Obama has never been a practicing Muslim," the key word being "practicing."
Obama, his Kansas-born mother and Muslim stepfather moved to Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, in 1967, and Obama lived there from ages 6 to 10.
The Times sent a reporter to Jakarta to investigate Obama's childhood years there, and published an article on March 16 that included these details:
* A close boyhood friend of Obama, Zulfin Adi, said Barack "was a Muslim. He went to the mosque." * Obama's first-grade teacher at a Catholic school, Israella Dharmawan, said: "Barry (Barack's nickname) was Muslim. He was registered as a Muslim because his father was Muslim."
* In the third grade, Obama transferred to a public school, where he was also registered as a Muslim. At the school, Muslim students attended weekly religion lessons about Islam.
* In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama mentions studying the Koran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school."
More recently, Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes wrote on FrontPageMag.com that his research led him to conclude that "Obama was born a Muslim to a non-practicing Muslim father and for some years had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of his Indonesian stepfather."
But on Jan. 2, the liberal organization Media Matters for America (MMfA) took issue with Pipes' report, criticized him for relying too heavily on the Times article, which it claimed was "disputed," in an effort to "revive Obama-Muslim falsehood."
Media Matters cited a March 25 article by Kim Baker in the Chicago Tribune that challenged several assertions in the Times story. Barker wrote that boyhood friend Adi "was not certain" about his statements regarding Obama's childhood and that he "only knew Obama for a few months."
The Media Matters Web posting stated: "Additionally, the Tribune reported that 'interviews with dozens of former classmates, teachers, neighbors and friends show that Obama was not a regular practicing Muslim when he was in Indonesia.'"
Media Matters also said that "Pipes did not note that Obama's Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, has been described in the Tribune as 'much more of a free spirit than a devout Muslim.'"
Pipes fired back with a FrontPageMag.com article on Jan. 7, titled "Confirmed: Barack Obama Practiced Islam."
Pipes asked if any of the information from the Chicago Tribune article refutes "my analysis, as MMfA contends. It raises questions about two details in the Los Angeles Times account — the accuracy of the Catholic school's registration form and the reliability of Zulfin Adi as a source on Obama. But on the larger issue of Obama's religious practices during his Jakarta years, it confirms the Times account."
Pipes concludes: "Therefore, what MMfA calls the 'Obama-Muslim' falsehood' is in fact confirmed by both articles as truthful and accurate."
And he adds: "All this matters, for if Obama once was a Muslim, he is now what Islamic law calls a murtadd (apostate), an ex-Muslim converted to another religion who must be executed. Were he elected president of the Untied States, this status, clearly, would have large potential implications for his relationship with the Muslim world."
http://www.islamichope.org/
I cannot get the link to work for some reason.
From the Arab press in 2005:
What is clear and obvious however is the overwhelming evidence of torture, extreme physical and psychological abuse and unlawful methods used by interrogators reported by human rights groups, Amnesty International, former detainees, X-military personnel and FBI secret reports that were leaked to the press on the conditions in Guantanamo. Sen. Dick Durbin made a comment on the Senate floor comparing the actions of American soldiers at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, Soviet gulags and a “mad regime” like Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s in Cambodia. Amnesty International, also, branded the facility the “gulag of our times”.
Aljazeera:
During a speech on Tuesday, Durbin, the Senate’s number two Democrat, quoted from an FBI agent’s report describing detainees at the naval base in Cuba as being chained to the floor without food or water in extreme temperatures.
“If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others - that had no concern for human beings.”
Durbin is not alone in his criticism.
Human-rights groups have long accused the administration of unjustly detaining suspects at the prison camp. Amnesty International last month called the detention centre the “gulag of our times”.
[My emphasis in each case.]
Since the they have sabotaged our men in TWO, I said TWO war theaters, they aid and abet th enemy daily, they leak intell to our enemy, the comfort terrorists daily by offering them our courts, and refuse to interrogate them with vigor.
You won’t catch me disagreeing with you on picking a losing D candidate.
Arguing it from their point of view, however, it would be tough trying to ‘talk it out’ with muzzies, when your guy ought to be executed under their 7th century laws.
Who’s in a better position to run the issue to ground than their ‘church’? If they substantiate it, and come to believe it, then how would the MSM portray that? Aside from their heads exploding from all the opposing venues of logic and illogic, you’d have to count on the MSM taking the low road and backing the Muzzies against President Hussein Obama.
To those who can pull up that site, who is the first man on the left in the picture? I know his face but his name escapes me.
It put there for the foreign press and Saudis who scour FR for the latest musings of the Great Shaitan. They do not know who Howdy Doody is.
Sorry to bore you with it.
Perhaps you might like this page and associated links as mitigation.
How Obama and 1st paternal cousin Odinga Tried to Bring Kenya Under Sharia Law and Failed, The Dose
So you too have fallen to the MSM forces of Mordor?
Who will save the hobbits?
Well , Gandalf and his crew have been at work. Shadowfax is saddled.
You decide whether the ride will be worth it.
How Obama and 1st paternal cousin Odinga Tried to Bring Kenya Under Sharia Law and Failed, The Dose
It would be a shame not to have you along and miss the shattering of the forces of Morder.
And watch out for Carville, he has agreed to again be Golum.
Wow, more internet kook-spawned nonsense that doesn’t touch on the issues. Issues where Obama is clearly wrong.
Why push this dopey conspiracy theory bullshiite when we can pound him on things that, you know, actually happened. We can do that, be right, and make good points without looking as nutty as basement-dwelling Paultards.
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he went from a muslim upbringing into that militant church.....at no place in his spiritual life has he had any exposure to true Christianity......
Nails it.
Put away the tin foil hats.
I think I'll snag that picture. :)
What makes you ask me that?
Let me give you an example of the kind of thing I want to see our side avoid. In the 2002 race for governor of Michigan, the Republican candidate, Dick Posthumus, tried to make an issue out of the fact that his opponent was born in Canada.
There were many good reasons to oppose Jennifer Granholm, but this was not one of them. He looked like an idiot (and was), and he lost.
There are many good reasons to oppose Barack Obama’s candidacy, but is the completely unsupported notion that he is secretly a Muslim really the thing we want to hang our hats on? And don’t we run the risk of looking like complete idiots if we do?
Louie doesn’t attend church there. That’s not to say that Obama won’t become a Muslim. That’s always a possibility.
If you find out whether or not it’s been photo shopped, please post it.
Having said that, I would be inclined towards putting us on a national effort to get ourselves energy independent...and I believe a President could get the American public behind such a venture if they were willing to take it to the people and make it an effort on the order of reaching the moon in the 1960s - and that we could be energy independent within ten years if we so chose...and then severe ties with the radical nations altogether.
At the same time, holding out an olive branch to those who adopt republican-principled constitutional republics that wish to become our true partners and allies.
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