Posted on 03/01/2009 1:49:05 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I used to get a real kick when some leading African-American Democrats would claim President Bill Clinton was the first African-American president because he "displayed almost every trope of blackness": "single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas?" Then along came Barack Obama and Bill Clinton was just another racist for comparing Obama's candidacy to Jesse Jackson's in the early part of the presidential race.
Conservatives have been resoundingly condemned as religious bigots for suggesting that Obama is the first Muslim president. After all, his Kenyan father and grandfather and Indonesian adopted father were all Muslims. Obama was raised as a Muslim in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country. And when he joined a Christian church as an adult, he chose the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church, which has more in common with Islam than mainstream Christianity. Well, lo and behold, American Muslims themselves consider Obama the first Muslim president. Asma Gull Hassan candidly writes for Forbes about "My Muslim President", while adding that any conservative who cites her column is just a "right-wing zealot" trying to smear Obama as a Muslim traitor in the White House:
"I know President Obama is not Muslim, but I am tempted nevertheless to think that he is, as are most Muslims I know. In a very unscientific oral poll, ranging from family members to Muslim acquaintances, many of us feel, just as African-Americans did for the non-black but culturally leaning African-American President Bill Clinton, that we have our first American Muslim president in Barack Hussein Obama.
I know it's odd to say this. At first, I thought I was the only Muslim engaging in this folly, and I am reluctant to express it lest right-wing zealots try to use "Muslim" as a smear and cite my theory as proof of an Islamic traitor in the White House or some such nonsense. But, since Election Day, I have been part of more and more conversations with Muslims in which it was either offhandedly agreed that Obama is Muslim or enthusiastically blurted out. In commenting on our new president, "I have to support my fellow Muslim brother," would slip out of my mouth before I had a chance to think twice.
"Well, I know he's not really Muslim," I would quickly add. But if the person I was talking to was Muslim, they would say, "yes he is." They would cite his open nature and habit of reaching out to critics, reminiscent of the Prophet Muhammad's own approach, and also Obama's middle name, Hussein. Most of the Muslims I know (me included) can't seem to accept that Obama is not Muslim.
Of the few Muslims I polled who said that Obama is not Muslim, even they conceded that he had ties to Islam. These realists said that, although not an avowed and practicing Muslim, Obama's exposure to Islam at a young age (both through his father and his stint in Indonesia) has given him a Muslim sensibility. In my book, that makes you a Muslim--maybe not a card-carrying one, but part of the flock for sure. One realist Muslim ventured that Obama worships at a Unitarian Church because it represents the middle ground between Christianity and Islam, incorporating the religious beliefs of the two faiths Obama feels connected to. Unitarianism could be Obama's way of still being a Muslim. (And let's not forget that the church Obama worshiped at for so many years had a minister who reminds most Muslims of their own raving, excitable ministers. Even if Obama really is Christian, he picked the most Muslim-esque minister out of the bunch to guide him.)
The rationalistic, Western side of me knows that Obama has denied being Muslim, that his father was non-practicing, that he doesn't attend a mosque. Many Muslims simply say back, "my father's not a strict Muslim either, and I haven't been to a mosque in years." Obama even told The New York Times he could recite the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, which the vast majority of Muslims, I would guess, do not know well enough to recite.
I think many of us Muslims see Obama as Muslim, or at least of Muslim heritage, because his background epitomizes one of the major Muslim experiences--a diverse upbringing that eludes any easy classification as specifically one religion or one culture. So many of us Muslims around the world have Islam in common, but an altogether different culture from one another. Many Muslims share a culture with a Christian, Hindu or Buddhist community but not the same religion. When faced with such diversity, there are no hard and fast rules for Muslim identity."
And hopefully our last.
His father was Muslim so he was born into the gift of Islam if he denies it then he is an apostate.
You’re not holding your breath until he does I hope!
Has Obama been seen going to Church since January 20th?
He’s our first “Black Liberation” president. He and Rev Wright are no more religious than Louis Farrakhan.
Details:
http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/#Section%204
AOL has a new poll on Obama’s birth certificate that needs to be FREEPED.
Do you have a link?
Barack Obama received at least some instruction in the Islamic faith of his father and went with him to the mosque, but the importance of this experience is vastly overstated by conservative commentators who seek to portray Obama as a Muslim of sorts. Radical anti-Americanism, rather than Islam, was the reigning faith in the Dunham household. ...
Barack Obama is a clever fellow who imbibed hatred of America with his mother's milk, but worked his way up the elite ladder of education and career. He shares the resentment of Muslims against the encroachment of American culture, although not their religion. He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath. The difference is that he is practicing not on a primitive tribe but on the population of the United States.
There is nothing mysterious about Obama's methods. "A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is," wrote Karl Krauss. Americans are the world's biggest suckers, and laugh at this weakness in their popular culture. Listening to Obama speak, Sinclair Lewis' cynical tent-revivalist Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or, even better, Tyrone Power's portrayal of a carnival mentalist in the 1947 film noire Nightmare Alley. The latter is available for instant viewing at Netflix, and highly recommended as an antidote to having felt uplifted by an Obama speech. ..."
Article: Obama's women reveal his secret
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB26Aa01.html
5.56mm
5.56mm
That Stephanopoulos interview wasn’t some kind of a fake, was it? Right out of his own mouth “ ... my Muslim faith”. Nor did he catch or correct himself, but only repeated Stephanopoulos’s correction, “... your Christian faith.” To me it sure sounded like, “whatever.”
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new
There are eight rotating screens, so you might have to wait a minute for the Obama story/poll to come up.
The start of the slow 0bama reveal????
If he really is a member of the Religion of (no) peace, then he must be praying at least once a day. His Secret Service detail must know about it, if he is, since they have to be near his person at all times. Even if he has to retire to the private apartment, they would know what he is doing. It would eventually come out, intentionally or not, through them or some other white house staffer.
Looks. Walks. Quacks.
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