"In Islam, divine blessing that is normally associated with holy men or women, waliy, either in life or in death.
Baraka can be transferred from one person to another, or from a material item to a person. Common in Islam is baraka that comes from local shrines, but the strongest baraka is in Mecca, and then especially, at the Ka’ba. Pilgrims returning, are carriers of baraka, as well as bringing with them baraka in the shape of items from holy places. One of the more popular baraka-carrying items is water from the well of Zamzam.
The grandfather: Before working as a cook for missionaries in Nairobi, Onyango had travelled widely, enlisting in the British colonial forces and visiting Europe, India, and Zanzibar, where he converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam and took the name Hussein Onyango Obama. WIKI
Hussein Onyango Obama gave his son, Obama Sr, two muslim first names. The muslim names come from islam. Barak is blessing. I first came across that name in that context in a book by the name of ‘The Blue Nile’ written by Alan Moorehead, published in 1962.
Naming a child Barak might be similar to sentiment behind the name of a friend of mine, whose parents gave her the first name of 'Lucky'.
The school Obama Sr attended was anglican:
http://www.eastandard.net/obama/InsidePage.php?id=1143998493&cid=530&;
“Okanda removes a brown card from one of them. “This one belonged to Barack Obama Sr. He joined the school in 1950 and left in 1953,” he explains.
Obama Sr — Index No 3422 — joined the school with his elder brother, Joseph, who left in 1951 for unexplained reasons.”
No child of a muslim convert would be named Joseph. The muslim equivalent would be Yusuf.
Just as Cat Stevens became Yusuf Islam.
Obama Snr arrives in Hawaii with the names Barack Hussein Obama - knowing that the BARACK is not the intended arabic spelling. After a while, he reverts to the original, as his father intended. Kenya is independant now, anything inherited from the hated english, including the spelling of the name, is discarded. As for obama zero...his reasons for changing his name from one to the other after going to school as Barry...I really don't have any idea. Other than he's a schizophrenic.
The name ‘Barak’ is an Old Testament name that dates back at least to 1239 BC. In the OT, Barak is a lesser know character that is singled out for his faith in God.
“And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets” (Hebrews 11:32).
Barak was a general who lived in the north and won a great victory over a superior army. Barak’s story is found in Judges 4-5. He got into the book of Judges through his association with a judge— Deborah.
Fast forward 3,200 years, It is doubtful the Islamic grandfather had the OT in mind when he named his son Barak. It is no wonder Barry sought to modify the spelling of his ‘name’ to something other than Judeo-Christian.
Or maybe they are just casual about the spelling of Bear-ick, how many ways are there to spell Mohammed (14) or Hussein (11)?
Mohamed, Mohammed, Mahomet, Muhamad, Mohhmad,....Hussayn, Hussain, Hoseaine,.... Whose-sane?
..as a follow on to #9352:
In the early eighties, obama zero arrived in Kenya to introduce himself as the long lost son and strike up a relationship - during the visit ‘granny’ says, ‘what? you’re still writing your name with a ‘c’ in it? That’s not right, your ‘father’ would have hated that! That’s the way the colonials wrote his name...’
And that’s how Barack became Barak, IMO.
It's the culture.
BO, Sr. did have a half-brother Yusuf (son of his non-grandmother Sarah)-- so there's the .1% -- but he was born after Sr., not before. The Standard must have seen the genealogy, but since accuracy's not a valued tradition in Africa, and there are likely few existing records of anything in Kenya, what the heck, throw it in there. Older/younger -- doesn't matter, since it's all nonsense.
And there's an alternate, more plausible story out there (not written by Africans) that Hussein Onyonga Obama worked for USIS as a cook for the Hagberg family in Muthaiga near the US ambassador’s residence, not as a cook for missionaries.
And BO, Jr.didn't, to the best of published and known knowledge, visit Kenya in the early '80's -- it was the summer of 1988, before he entered Harvard Law.
For a lowly community organizer, though, that was one heck of a trip -- according to his book, he spent over a month, maybe two, or even more, that summer traveling, first in Europe, then in Kenya -- on the remainder of a mere pittance of a salary. He must have been very frugal with his meager income to afford that, although frugality doesn't seem to be his strong point now...or at any other time.
Okanda removes a brown card from one of them. “This one belonged to Barack Obama Sr. He joined the school in 1950 and left in 1953,” he explains.
Obama Sr — Index No 3422 — joined the school with his elder brother, Joseph, who left in 1951 for unexplained reasons.
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Is there a photo of the brown card? How do we know the guy who wrote the article didn’t spell it Barack? Just because Okanda said a card belong to Obama doesn’t mean the guy who wrote the article didn’t misspell the name. right?