Posted on 01/19/2007 7:52:42 PM PST by Torie
Obama 'was educated in madrassa'
Tim Reid and Tom Baldwin in Washington
# Senator hid time there, says article
# Clinton distances herself from claims
Barack Obama was given a rude awakening to the cut-throat world of presidential politics yesterday after being accused of hiding four years in which he was educated at a madrassa when a teenager.
The claim, made in the conservative Insight magazine, also revealed the Machiavellian scheming of political activists in a presidential race still nearly two years away.
It was aimed at tarnishing Mr Obama’s image in the week he announced himself as a White House contender. But the article also claimed that the madrassa allegations came from aides to Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama’s main opponent for the Democratic nomination.
This may be wishful thinking on behalf of Republicans. The Clinton camp is determined not to be accused of digging dirt on Mr Obama because they fear such tactics could backfire, given his popularity.
But the Insight allegations represent an exquisite double shot at the Democrats’ two leading White House contenders: it implies that Mr Obama, whose middle name is Hussein, is a closet Islamic extremist, and that Mrs Clinton is so rattled by his candidacy she is using underhand tactics to weaken him.
Mr Obama, who is expected to announce formally his candidacy on February 10, has never been subjected to the hardball tactics of the presidential arena — until yesterday. Last night an aide said that the campaign was working on a formal statement, but added that the claims were “not accurate”.
The online article begins: “Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?” It continues: “This is the question Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s camp is asking about Senator Barack Obama.”
Mr Obama’s mother was a white woman from Kansas; his father, a black Kenyan Muslim. He states in his recent biography that he attended a predominately Muslim school when he lived in Jakarta as a teenager.
But the article claims: “In Indonesia, the young Obama was enrolled in a madrassa and was raised and educated as a Muslim.” It says that Mr Obama omitted to say in his memoir, or at any other time, that he attended the school for four years.
Mr Obama, who has spent his adult life in Chicago, calls himself a Christian and says that he believes in God. He attends a local church.
A source close to the Clinton campaign told The Times, a day before the Insight article was published, that they do not want to be seen as attacking Mr Obama or digging for dirt, but that they would be happy for another Democrat contender to criticise him.
another poster has him confused with a muslim from Minn who was sworn in on the Koran.
Every single person here on FR and elsewhere had better get used to Clinton tactics right now. Start with renting and re-watching Primary Colors -- it was based on their first run and Emma Thompson really "got" Hillary in that movie.
That is exactly correct. Hillary, too.
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Doctors took the Hippocratic Oath to save lives, how can they even keep a medical license when they do this? That is what I'd like to know.
This madrassah thing is close to being a knee-jerk issue.
Criminy. Bad enough we get attacked by them; now the stinking libs want to try and elect a muslim nutjob?
Any muslim who renounces the faith is considered apostate. Once a muslim, always a muslim is the way they see it. There's a penalty for it, too. Ask Salman Rushdie about it.
The Clintonistas never let me down.
Even if he didn't swear in on a Koran, he's STILL considered a muslim, guilty of apostasy by his profession of Christianity, by islam. He could have an imam put a fatwa put out on him today. Or, he could just "go back"...
Can someone explain to me how it's "wishful thinking on behalf of Republicans" that Insight magazine would attribute allegations to a source?
Seems to me the "wishful thinking" is being done by liberal reporters. Like that's news, or something.
ANY candidate for ANY office, much less the president of the USA should not have ANY missing chunks of time that are not completely explained.
This guy scares the crap out of me for a multitude of reasons:
Too young.
Too inexperienced.
Cocaine use? Surely we can find candidates who didn't/don't do this.
Missing time where he MAY have been in a madrassa or similar "school".
Won't clearly declare what his "religion" is.
Working too hard on his IMAGE instead of his platform.
I am not a Dem, but I couldn't vote for him under any circumstance.
I think he was a Muslim for a lot longer than he admits, and that whatever religion you are drilled in in childhood (which is what madrassahs are designed to do) is bound to color your personality.
I suspect he is basically an opportunist-unbeliever at the moment. His church calls itself Christian, but operates a hospital where babies are allowed to be born alive and then starved to death or otherwise killed. That's probably why Obama voted against the born alive protection act four times. So he belongs to one of those extreme leftist pretend-churches that have little real connection to Christianity.
A sermon by his minister was posted here the other day and confirmed the impression. It might as well have been delivered by Reverend Al Sharpton.
He may still be a closet Muslim. I rather doubt it. I think he has followed his mother into crazy leftist multiculturalism.
He was there from ages 6 to 10 - possibly a fairly impressionable time period. An acquaintance whose sibling was in Obama's class at Punahou told us he was always a bit of a "strange duck." I would suppose coming from 4 years in a Muslim school would do that to a person. His attempts to portray himself as a "poor black child" who suffered terribly because of racism just don't hold water.
See below for bio with dates:
Obama was born in Hawaii. His father was a black man from Kenya, his mother a white woman from Kansas who had moved to Honolulu with her parents. Obama's father left the family to attend Harvard and eventually returned to Kenya, where he worked as a government economist. His mother's second husband was an Indonesian oil manager, and Obama lived in that country from the ages of six to ten years old. Afterward, he went back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents.
Although Obama's father only visited him once after he left, the son grew up with stories of his father's brilliant mind. Obama honed his own mind at Hawaii's top prep academy, Punahou School. From there, Obama went to Columbia University, where he became interested in community activism. After graduating in 1983, he moved to Chicago to spend three years as a community organizer on the city's poverty-stricken South Side.
Obama's intellect, drive, and social conscience led to his decision to become a lawyer. He went to Harvard Law School, where he became the first African-American president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. Upon his graduation (magna cum laude) in 1991, Obama shunned offers of prominent law firms and impressive clerkships in order to practice civil rights law in Chicago. He also took a position teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. Soon the idealistic young attorney became involved in politics.
If his parents or stepfather wanted to send him to an "real Indonesian" school, were there secular or public alternatives available? Just what might have been going through the parent's mind at the time (assuming we could ever know now)?
Questions about smearing can get pretty complicated nowadays. It looks like timing is crucial: the press would find out sooner or later whatever skeletons Obama has in his closet, and he'd have to go public with potentially damaging information before they did. So if the Clinton people brought this up is it damaging to them? Or is it all just a matter of dates, of getting the information out a little sooner?
Does the Clintons' reputation make it worse for them if her people leaked? Or, since we don't expect better of the Clinton team, does Hillary get a pass that another politician wouldn't?
And your point is?
On another topic, do you think Clinton will be hurt by her saying "you know" in almost every sentence, and sometimes more than once in every sentence? It drives me nuts, but then I am not an "available" vote for her sitting out there on the Fruited Plain. Maybe her fans love this little habit of expression of hers. :)
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