Posted on 01/28/2007 12:26:41 PM PST by expatguy
begin my translation
Barack Obama, the first black person who is currently considering a run for the United States presidential race in 2008, was remembered by the teachers and his friends at the Menteng Primary School, Jakarta, as the student who was left-handed and smart.
On a clear Friday morning, we were were welcomed by children's laughter at SDN 1 Menteng, Jakarta. The children aged from six years old were all wearing Muslim clothes. The boys were wearing the hat and baju koko and the girls were wearing a veil. Right? That the Islam school? No, that is the status of the all schools in the country since 1970. Each Friday, all the school childen must wear Muslim clothes and that also includes children who are non-muslim.
Not long afterwards, a child named Timothy spoke up. "I want to be like Obama (Barack Obama) , he said while laughing together with the other children.
Apparently, all of them have now come to know that the US presidential candidate for 2008 had once gone to this school in SDN 1 Menteng. Timothy delivered us to see Deputy Principal Akhmad Solikhin who was in his office. Akhmad was being visited by the United States Embassy staff. After having to wait for several hours, the party from the United States embassy left.
Akhmad said that since the news that Barack Obama had previously gone to this school in Jakarta, the world public seemed to be focused on this school that was previously named Carpentier Alting Stichting Nassau School. Including the US Embassy took part in attention. It is said, they want to give a big contribution to increase in the quality of the education in the school, the quality of the students, the teachers, as well as school facilities.
"For a long time we did not have any element of politics, we are always open" he said. Up until now this Primary School has established the same work as the Seameo Center-Bangkok, in fact the Homestay program in Australia ends February of this year. "We often sent the students and the teachers to Bangkok for the study" claims Akhmad.
[snip]
But, we managed to succeed in investigating his teacher who had held the office of the principal named Tine Hahiyary (1971-1989). "At that time, I was not Barry's teacher but he is still in my memory" claimed Tine, who is currently 80 years old. The teacher who taught him was named Hendri but he has died.
[snip]
Concerning the religion of the US senator, Akhmad Solikhin, the representative of the SDN head 1 Menteng, was not sure if Barry's religion was Islam. "He (Barry) indeed was registered as Islam, but he claims to be Christian" he said surprised. But, according to Tine the teacher, Barry actively took part in the Islamic religious lessons during his time at the school. His teacher was named Maimunah and she lived in the Puncak area, the Cianjur Regency. "I remembered that he had studied "menjaji" (recitation of the Quran)" Teni said.
Isn't he running for president up in Illinois? Just look for the ears.
Hasn't he denied this?
Thanks for the ping........
Ping
ping
I'm not sure why he changed his name when he went to Hawaii.
What I am beginning to uncover is that he had some trouble in Indonesia and this was one of the factors leading to his departure. I will try to elaborate later.
Surely we have FReepers in Hawaii.
Good info. Keep us posted. The story You wont see on the alphabet networks......
Thanks for the ping... please keep me updated on any new developments.
Obama's classmates and teachers all seem to have good memories. Only Obama can't seem to remember.
Great job...I'd like on to this ping list.
Appreciate that. Thanks.
+Ping+ -- Updated
Thought you'd be interested in this:
"Liberal Juan Williams Agrees With Schlussel on Obama Muslim Background"
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/
By Debbie Schlussel
So, now, will all the far-left websites condemning me on my December post about Barack Hussein's Muslim background, condemn liberal National Public Radio and FOX News commentator Juan Williams? First, the Hillary camp agrees with me, and now Juan Williams, who said:
He comes from a father who was a Muslim. I mean, I think that given we're at war with Muslim extremists, that presents a problem.
Amen, Juan.
More from the Washington Examiner's Bill Sammon, who repeats a lot of what I've said on this site, but gives a little fresh info, too (I've skipped the stuff I already wrote about). I was right on the money about Obama's sympathies and loyalties. To whom will he be more sympathetic and loyal--his Muslim family members or you? If you picked you, your ego needs a deflation (and your brain, an inflation):
Obama - whose father, stepfather, brother and grandfather were Muslims - explained his own first name, Barack, in "Dreams": "It means 'Blessed.' In Arabic. [DS: Plagiarized from the Hebrew, "Baruch."] 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. . . .
Obama's grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, for whom the senator was given his middle name, Hussein, was fiercely devoted to Islam, according to an account in "Dreams." The grandfather, who died in 1979, was described by his widow when Obama visited Kenya in the late 1980s.
"What your grandfather respected was strength. Discipline,' Obama quoted his grandmother as telling him. "This is also why he rejected the Christian religion, I think.
"For a brief time, he converted, and even changed his name to Johnson. But he could not understand such ideas as mercy towards your enemies, or that this man Jesus could wash away a man's sins.
"To your grandfather, this was foolish sentiment, something to comfort women," she added. "And so he converted to Islam - he thought its practices conformed more closely to his beliefs."
When Obama was 2 years old, his parents divorced and his father moved away from the family's home in Hawaii. Four years later, his mother married an Indonesian man, Lolo Soetoro, who moved his new wife and stepson to Jakarta.
"During the five years that we would live with my stepfather in Indonesia, I was sent first to a neighborhood Catholic school and then to a predominately Muslim school," [DS: the one Obama is now claiming is a "public" school] Obama wrote in "Audacity." "In our household, the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf.'
Obama's stepfather was a practicing Muslim.
"Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths," Obama recalled. . . .
"It was to Lolo that I turned to for guidance and instruction," Obama recalled. "He introduced me as his son."
Although Obama wrote of "puzzling out the meaning of the muezzin's call to evening prayer," he was not raised as a Muslim, according to the senator's office. Nor was he raised as a Christian by his mother, a white American named Ann Dunham who was deeply skeptical of religion.
"Her memories of the Christians who populated her youth were not fond ones," Obama wrote. . . .
Later in life, however, he was drawn to the writings of an influential American Muslim who served as the spokesman for the militant Nation of Islam.
"Malcolm X's autobiography seemed to offer something different," Obama wrote. "His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me; the blunt poetry of his words, his unadorned insistence on respect, promised a new and uncompromising order, martial in its discipline, forged through sheer force of will."
He added: "Malcolm's discovery toward the end of his life, that some whites might live beside him as brothers in Islam, seemed to offer some hope of eventual reconciliation."
While working as a community organizer for a group of churches in Chicago, Obama was repeatedly asked to join Christian congregations, but begged off.
"I remained a reluctant skeptic, doubtful of my own motives, wary of expedient conversion, having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won," he wrote. . . .
Obama's family connections to Islam would endure, however. For example, his brother Roy opted for Islam over Christianity, as Obama recounted when describing his 1992 wedding.
"The person who made me proudest of all," Obama wrote, "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."
Meanwhile, Obama remained sharply critical of what he called 'the religious absolutism of the Christian right." . . .
Obama calls the Iraq war "a botched and ill-advised U.S. military incursion into a Muslim country." He is also protective of civil rights for Muslims in the U.S.
"In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans ⦠have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging," he laments. "I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."
But the ugliest direction of all is the blind fluctuation to a Barack Hussein Obama Presidential candidacy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.