Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Muslim Blood in the White House?
Monday, January 29, 2007

Some more facts and innuendo in the case of Obama's family background. Bill Sammon, who wrote an attack book on Al Gore after the 2000 election, suggests that merely the fact that Obama's father was once a Muslim and his grandfather and uncle were Muslims is a problem for Obama. Aren't commentators saying all the time, "Where are the moderate Muslims?" Makes one wonder if they really want to find one, or is it easier to assume that none exist.

“The Indonesian school Obama attended in Jakarta is a public school that is not and never has been a Madrassa,” said a statement put out by the senator’s staff. But the school did teach the Quran, Islam’s holy book, along with subjects such as math and science, according to Obama, who attended when he was 9 and 10.
“In Indonesia, I had spent two years at a Muslim school,” he wrote in his first memoir, “Dreams from my Father.” “The teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during Koranic studies.”
Obama — whose father, stepfather, brother and grandfather were Muslims — explained his own first name, Barack, in “Dreams”: “It means ‘Blessed.’ In Arabic. My grandfather was a Muslim.”
In his second memoir, “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama added: “Although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist.”
Still, when his father, a black Kenyan named Barack Obama Sr., died in 1982, “the family wanted a Muslim burial,” Obama quoted his brother, Roy, as saying in “Dreams.”
The statement put out by Obama’s office last week referred to his father simply as “an atheist,” without mentioning his Muslim upbringing.
But with pundits already making faith a major issue in this presidential campaign — as evidenced by questions about Republican Mitt Romney’s Mormonism — Obama’s religious background is likely to come under further scrutiny.
“He comes from a father who was a Muslim,” said civil rights author Juan Williams of National Public Radio. “I mean, I think that given we’re at war with Muslim extremists, that presents a problem.”

Labels: Islam, Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 12:24 PM
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