OBAMA GREW UP AS A MUSLIM, SAYS MALIK

[Tylergal]

Malik Obama confirms his half-brother Barack grew up a Muslim
By Israel Insider staff  June 13, 2008
 
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Malik holds a photo of Obama and him in Muslim dress, reportedly when the two first met in 1985
 
Apparently the Obamas of Kenya have been reading those scurrilous emails to which Barack likes to refer, because they have no doubt -- contrary to the claims of the Obama campaign, that the presidential candidate was raised a Moslem. They take that as a given.

As the Jerusalem Post reports, "Barack Obama's half brother Malik said Thursday that if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background. In an interview with Army Radio he expressed a special salutation from the Obamas of Kenya."

The Obama brothers' father, a senior economist for the Kenyan government who studied at Harvard University, died in car crash in 1982. He left six sons and a daughter. All of his children - except Malik -- live in Britain or the United States. Malik and Barack met in 1985.

In a remarkable denial issued last November that still stands on the official campaign website, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs issued a statement explaining that "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."

Apparently Malik Obama, himself a Muslim, had not read the press release.

Melanie Phillips is the most recent commentator to draw attention to the massive body of evidence that leaves no doubt that Barak Hussein Obama was born a Muslim (Islam is patrilineal) and raised a Muslim (so registered in school, acknowledging attending Islamic classes, reported accompanying his step-father to the mosque, and able to recite the Koran in the original Arabic).

Reuven Koret, Aaron Klein and Daniel Pipes have previously pointed to the attempts by Obama and his campaign to conceal the candidate's Muslim background. The well documented evidence draws upon the on-the-ground interviews by researchers in Indonesia and Kenya, published quotations of Obama's childhood friends and his school records, as well as the candidate's own autobiography.

It is not clear whether Barack Obama will now disown his half-brother Malik, or throw him under the campaign bus, for acknowledging that shared family background. In any case, some one should notify "Fight the Smear" tout de suite. Perhaps they can get him with the program.

[Tylergal]

onfirmed: Barack Obama Practiced Islam

by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
January 7, 2008
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In a recent analysis, "Was Barack Obama a Muslim?" I surveyed available evidence and found it suggests "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 step-father." In response, David Brock's organization, Media Matters for America (MMfA), which calls itself a "progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media," has criticized one of my sources of information.

MMfA contends in "Daniel Pipes relied on disputed LA Times article to revive Obama-Muslim falsehood," that "key aspects" of a March 16, 2007, Los Angeles Times article I quoted were later challenged by another newspaper account, "History of schooling distorted," by Kim Barker in the Chicago Tribune on March 25.

Falsehood? That's a strong word.

To assess MMfA's claim, let's review its preferred article and examine what Barker has to say on four topics related to Obama's Indonesian years, 1967-71:

   1. His attendance at a Catholic school;
   2. His attendance at a public school;
   3. His step-father, Lolo Soetoro; and
   4. His friend, Zulfan Adi.

To start with, about the Catholic school, Fransiskus Strada Asisia, which Obama attended 1967-70 (words in square brackets are added by me):

    Interviews with dozens of former classmates, teachers, neighbors and friends show that Obama was not a regular practicing Muslim when he was in Indonesia, despite being listed as a Muslim on the registration form for the Catholic school, Strada Asisia, where he attended 1st through 3rd grades. At the time, the school most likely registered children based on the religion of their fathers, said [Israella Pareira] Darmawan, Obama's former [1st-grade] teacher. Because Soetoro was a Muslim, Obama was listed as a Muslim, she said.

    The enrollment form from the Catholic school, which has been cited as evidence that Obama was a Muslim in Indonesia [including by the Los Angeles Times], also was rife with errors. It listed Obama as an Indonesian, listed his previous school incorrectly and failed to list his mother, Ann, at all.

Barack Obama with his public school classmates in Indonesia.
About Obama's time at a public elementary school, 1970-71, variously known as the Sekolah Dasar Nasional Menteng No. 1 or the Basuki school, Barker writes:

    When Obama attended 4th grade in 1971, Muslim children spent two hours a week studying Islam, and Christian children spent those two hours learning about the Christian religion.

During a recent visit to this public school, Barker found that

    Weekly religious classes are required for all students, whether Muslims, Christians or Hindus, under the government curriculum. A new shiny mosque is in the corner of the courtyard. "The Muslims learn about Islam, prayer and religious activity," said Hardi Priyono, the vice principal for curriculum. "And for the Christians, during the religious class, they also have a special room teaching Christianity. It's always been like that."

About Obama's step-father, Lolo Soetoro and his religiosity, Barker writes:

    In their first neighborhood, Obama occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers, a few neighbors said. But Soetoro usually was too busy working, first for the Indonesian army and later for a Western oil company. "Sometimes Lolo went to the mosque to pray, but he rarely socialized with people," said Fermina Katarina Sinaga, Obama's 3rd-grade teacher at the Catholic school, who lived near the family. "Rarely, Barry [a nickname for Barack] went to the mosque with Lolo."

Barker learned from his friends and family that Lolo Soetoro, who died in 1987, was "much more of a free spirit than a devout Muslim" and "hardly the image of a pious Muslim."

    His nephew, Sonny Trisulo, 49, said Soetoro always liked women and alcohol. One of his health problems was a failing liver. "He loved drinking, was a smart and warm person, the naughtiest one in the family," Trisulo recalled.

As for Zulfan Adi, cited in the Los Angeles Times piece:

    Zulfan Adi, a former neighborhood playmate of Obama's who has been cited in news reports as saying Obama regularly attended Friday prayers with Soetoro, told the Tribune he was not certain about that when pressed about his recollections. He only knew Obama for a few months, during 1970, when his family moved to the neighborhood.

Does any of the above information from the Chicago Tribune article refute 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 Zulfan 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. Note in particular three excerpts from Barker's article:

    * "Interviews with dozens of former classmates, teachers, neighbors and friends show that Obama was not a regular practicing Muslim when he was in Indonesia" – implying he was an irregularly practicing Muslim.
    * "Obama occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers, a few neighbors said" – confirming that he did pray in the mosque.
    * "Obama's 3rd-grade teacher at the Catholic school, who lived near the family [said that] ‘Rarely, Barry went to the mosque with Lolo'" – confirming that Obama attended mosque services.

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 United States, this status, clearly, would have large potential implications for his relationship with the Muslim world.

In sum: Obama was an irregularly practicing Muslim who rarely or occasionally prayed with his step-father in a mosque. This precisely substantiates my statement that he "for some years had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of his Indonesian step-father."

Therefore, what MMfA calls the "Obama-Muslim falsehood" is in fact confirmed by both articles as truthful and accurate.

Calling this a falsehood is in itself a falsehood.

[caesu]

i don't give hate/smear sites like FrontPageMagazine and WorldNetDaily much credibility.

[LouiseVargas]

Tyler,

Your political rants reach only a small group here. Your rants do not reach the American voters.

[WhiskeyGirl]

Tyler,

Your political rants reach only a small group here. Your rants do not reach the American voters.

I am an American voter.  My family and friends are American voters.  Perhaps there are also some guests that read here and are American voters too?

[caesu]

From the Fact Check Desk: What Did Obama's Half-Brother Say About Obama's Background?

June 18, 2008 12:39 PM

It was a sloppy paraphrase that emerged as false evidence.

Malik Obama, the older half brother of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, gave a brief interview to Israeli Army Radio.

The Jerusalem Post listened to the interview, apparently, and produced a story saying "Malik Obama says his brother will be good president for the Jews. Barack Obama's half brother Malik said Thursday that if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background."

Nowhere is Malik quoted.

The Jerusalem Post has since taken the story down of its website, but you can see a cached version HERE.

Conservatives jumped on the Jerusalem Post's paraphrase that Malik said Obama "will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background" as some sort of evidence that Malik was saying Obama was raised a Muslim, which the campaign says he was not.

This suspicion reared its head in Israeli blogs and the blogs of supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, and Sean Hannity fan sites and Free Republic and conservative blogs.

It ended up on Fox News, with anchor Brut Hume saying on June 16 that: "Barack Obama is a practicing Christian, married in a Christian church, whose children were also baptized in that church. His campaign has emphasized his faith in part to dispel what the campaign calls an online smear campaign which contends among other things that Obama was raised a Muslim. There is even a statement on his official campaign website reading, quote, 'Obama has never been a Muslim, and is a committed Christian.' But Obama's half brother is not so sure. Malik Obama tells The Jerusalem Post that, 'if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background.'"

So is it true?

No.

**

ABC News got a hold of the audio of Malik's interview with Israel Army Radio, and Malik said nothing of the kind.

You can't hear the questions -- only Malik's answers (listen HERE) -- but whatever the interviewer asked about Obama's father's Muslim heritage, or the Muslim minority in Kenya, Malik said, “I don’t think that’s in any way going to be something to worry about. I myself am not speaking for him. But we are here, we love people in general. People love us. I myself love people who love me. You know, so, and I think it’s mutual. I can’t go in terms of Israel and Kenya and America, and so forth, you know, but based on what else I’ve heard him say and what I know of him as an individual, I don’t think Israel should worry too much, you know, about the connection. Because, I am a Muslim myself, and I don’t think that my being a Muslim has got anything to do with my brother being the President of the United States.”

It may be that the Israeli Army Radio interviewer asked about Obama having a "Muslim background." But even if the interviewer did, Malik did not say that or come close to saying that.

It could be that the interviewer used the phrase, and Malik interpreted that in a way that squares with the Obama campaign's story -- that Obama's father was a largely secular man born Muslim.  We don't know.

But nowhere in there does Malik expressly say anything about Obama having a Muslim background.

And nowhere does he "confirm" anything about Obama having a Muslim background.

Malik refers to Obama having a "connection" to something, perhaps Islam, which could clearly be a reference to Obama's father.

This interpretation spreading throughout the blogosphere and cable news is just not supported by the facts. The paraphrase was sloppy, for such a sensitive subject, and Malik's quotes don't even come close to supporting any assertion that Obama himself has a Muslim background.

**

In Obama's book Dreams of My Father, interestingly enough, he writes about meeting Malik as an adult: “I checked into the cheapest room I could find and waited. At nine, I heard a knock. When I opened the door, I found a big man standing there with his hands in his pockets, an even-toothed grin breaking across his ebony face. ‘Hey, brother,’ he said. ‘How’s life?’ In the pictures I had of Roy, he was slender, dressed in African print, with an Afro, a goatee, a mustache. The man who embraced me now was much heavier, over two hundred pounds, I guessed, the flesh on his cheeks pressing out beneath a thick pair of glasses. The goatee was gone; the African shirt had been replaced by a gray sports coat, white shirt, and tie. Auma had been right, though; his resemblance to the Old Man was unnerving. Looking at my brother, I felt as if I were ten years old again.”

It was later that Malik converted to Islam, Obama wrote in Dreams: “The person who made me proudest of all, though, was Roy. Actually, now we call him Abongo, his Luo name, for two years ago he decided to reassert his African heritage. He converted to Islam, and has sworn off pork and tobacco and alcohol. He still works at his accounting firm, but talks about moving back to Kenya once he has enough money.”

In the Israeli Army Radio interview Malik said that Obama was the "best man at my wedding and I was best man at his wedding."

And in my favorite part of the interview, Malik said, "I think he'll be a good president as long as all of this, you know, doesn't go to his head."

Mark Twain is said to have quipped, "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."

And that was before the internet. And cable.

-- jpt

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/06/from-the-fact-c.html

smear > debunked

[Tylergal]

A parallel comparison: If a Jewish boy is raised in a shul, taught Judaic Studies, i.e., Hebrew, Chumash, Mishna, Gemara/Talmud, given Bar Mitzvah lessons, until the highly impressionable age of ten then is teleported into an Atheist/Pagan divorcee's home for the remainder of his upbringing what would be the outcome?