Posted on 06/28/2008 9:35:21 AM PDT by Beckwith
Beckwith responds to The Washington Post.
The first thing I have to say about "An Attack That Came Out of the Ether," published by The Washington Post on June 28th, is that at NO time was I ever contacted by this woman, Danielle Allen. I spoke to two male Post reporters, who spoke to me over the phone for a period of months. The first contact was in the fall of 2007. They told me they were trying to track down the source of emails they considered negative to the Obamamessiah.
Allen obsesses about the "Muslim" Obama stories, but steers clear of Obama's relationships with communists, Marxists, socialists, terrorists and convicted swindlers. The trick she attempts to use is to knock down one or two or three items and the other four thousand don't count.
The following notice appears on my website's "About" page: "I don't write this stuff -- I cherry-pick it and publish it here -- every attempt is made to provide attribution and/or links to the original source -- if you don't like the writer's viewpoint -- send them an email -- not me. If the reader finds content that is incorrect, I will correct or delete it upon the submission of two links to an independent source with more accurate information."
And I mean just that and I do just that. I want The Obama File to be able to withstand the type of attack that Allen attempts in this article.
When Allen quotes me: "If 20 percent of what's on my Web site is true, this guy is a clear and present danger," she left out the whole quote. I told her reporters that I believed that The Obama File content was better than 95% accurate, but that If 20 percent of what's on my Web site is true, this guy is a clear and present danger. I still believe that.
Allen writes, "There was 'Beckwith,' whom she pegged as a veteran from Boston, old enough to vote for John F. Kennedy, in uniform by 1964, and host of a Web site that devotes considerable space to an 'Obama file' that says the senator is 'by birth, blood and training, a Muslim.'"
That statement is true. Just ask Obama's sister Maya. In an interview with the New York Times, published on April 30th, 2007, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s younger half sister, told the Times, "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim."
I assume Maya thinks of her brother, Obama, as a member of her family?
Even if Maya didn't make such a statement. Islam is patrilinear. The son of a Muslim is a Muslim (birth, blood) and Obama did study Islam, the Quran and the Hadith at the Besuki Primary School in Jakarta, Indonesia for two years (training). Further, he attended mengaji classes where he studied the Quran in its native Arabic.
In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama mentions studying the Quran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school." He wrote, "In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Koranic studies."
According to Tine Hahiyary, one of Obama's teachers and the principal from 1971 through 1989, 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 "mengaji" (recitation of the Quran)" Tine said.
These facts can account for the startling statement Obama made on February 27th, 2007, when he said the Muslim call to prayer was "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth."
In an interview with Nicholas Kristof, published in The New York Times, Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer, the Adhan, "with a first-class [Arabic] accent."
The opening lines of the Adhan (Azaan) is the Shahada:
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that Muhammad is his prophet...
According to Islamic scholars, reciting the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, makes one a Muslim. This simple yet profound statement expresses a Muslim's complete acceptance of, and total commitment to, the message of Islam.
Obama knows this from his Quranic studies -- and he knows the New York Times will publish this fact and it will be seen throughout the Islamic world.
Regardless of Obama's religion, what message is he sending the world's 1.2 billion Muslims?
I suppose it's easy for Obama to remember the Shahada for the 35 years since he left Indonesia -- and in 'first-class' Arabic -- especially since he believes the Muslim call to prayer is "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth." -- no matter what religion he belongs to, or not, those Muslim prayers run through his head, and often -- what does that really make him?
And although I do have a Boston accent, of which I'm proud (you can hear it on the webcast at the link on the main page), Allen gets in a little ethnic stereotyping by calling my accent a "... thick Boston brogue" -- Bostonians don't have brogues -- my antecedents from Ireland do -- it's a good thing I don't have a chip on my shoulder and charge "racism" at such obvious stereotyping -- like some folks might do.
And there is no "unnamed 'colleague' in Europe" -- that's probably my friend and fellow FReeper, ExpatGuy, who operates the "An American Expat in Southeast Asia" blog (a truly great resource). But, what the heck, Europe, Southeast Asia, they're all foreign places.
Allen is also incorrect when she writes, "His initial goal was to take swats at the liberal left. 'Then this new guy comes along called Obama,' he said." -- All one has to do is to read the "About" page on my website to get it right -- "The Obama File is a spinoff of www.FreedomsEnemies.com where it started out as a single page. Freedom's Enemies documents the relationship between the political left and Islamofascism. Along comes Obama -- with a foot in each camp -- and The Obama File just evolved.
The reason I spun off The Obama File is that I did not want the Freedoms Enemies website a pejorative to the information I was compiling on Obama.
This sentence is also false -- "Beckwith said he built a Web site that features hundreds of pages of material intended to undermine Obama." -- There are 18 pages on my website. Because I take pains to document and provide attribution for everything, those 18 pages link to thousands of source articles, primarily from mainstream media sources (including The Washington Post), and my intention is not to "undermine" poor Barry -- it is to "oppose the most liberal (read "left-wing") member of the U. S. Senate sitting in the Oval Office" -- just like it says on my "About" page.
I suppose it could have been more of a hatchet job, but what amazes me is Allen's obsession with the Muslim thing -- that rumor is a year old and has been fed more by Obama and his family more than anyone else.
Why hasn't Allen attempted to knock down Obama's relationship with communists, Marxists, socialists, terrorists, convicted swindlers, and, dare I say it, DHIMMICRATS!
Could it be that those long-term relationships are just too easy to document?
WA PO is Horrific and Allen disgusting! Congratulations!
More info re my previous post:
“In short, Mr. Odinga in effect offered to Islamize Kenya in return for Muslim votes, despite the fact that Muslims make up only 10% of the population, compared to the 80% who are Christian. Mr. Odinga himself is nominally an Anglican, yet he signed a document that refers to Islam throughout as “the one true religion” and denigrates Christians as “worshippers of the cross.”
http://www.nysun.com/opinion/kenya-connection/69273/
I do not believe that there is anything kooky, far rightish, or out of the mainstream in concluding that Barack Obama converted to Christianity after being raised a Muslim during the early years of his life. To believe otherwise, one has to consider Daniel Pipes some kind of unscholarly kook, which is absurd. One also has to discount Obama’s own words, such as his revelation in his autobiography that he took Koranic Studies as a child.
There have also been interivews with his childhood friends who say he was “quite religious in Islam” and active in the prayer room.
The primary problem here is that FReepers do better research than Mosk and Allen.
The Washington Post piece is both amazingly sloppy and obviously slanted.
The author doesn't bother to actually examine the most critical and interesting items you bring up, among which I believe is Senator Obama's public recitation of the shahada and its inescapable meaning; instead, it blandly dismisses everything as a "smear", no matter how well documented.
However it treats Ms. Allen as an authority on Internet campaigning, and ignores the significance of the fact that she is not a disinterested observer, but an ardent supporter of Senator Obama's.
As far as her actions as an expert "political theorist", I fail to see in the article any delineation of any such actions. While she has written in the past on citizenship (viz., Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education), the conversation related in the Post article does not appear to be the critical analysis that one would expect from an expert.
Instead, she is acting as some sort of reverse opposition research for Senator Obama, and one who has successfully managed to get the Washington Post to print this very slanted and sloppy piece.
"Barack Obama Is Not and Has Never Been a Muslim," followed by: "Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim."
I have a few questions for Obama's campaign and anyone inerested in researching Obama's background...which when considering him for the President of the United States, we as voters in this Republic have a de facto responsibility to do when any questions arise.
From that article:
“I was a little Jakarta street kid,” he said in a wide-ranging interview in his office (excerpts are on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground). He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school, but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics — and more likely to be aware of their nationalism — if he once studied the Koran with them.
Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”
Allah is Most Great. Allah is Most Great.
Allah is Most Great. Allah is Most Great.
I bear witness that there is none worthy of being worshipped except Allah.
I bear witness that there is none worthy of being worshipped except Allah.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah.
Come to prayer. Come to prayer.
Come to Success. Come to Success.
Allah is Most Great. Allah is Most Great.
There is none worthy of being worshipped except Allah.
From that article:
Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng explained to Jodi Kantor of the New York Times: "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim." An Indonesian publication, the Banjarmasin Post reports a former classmate, Rony Amir, recalling that "All the relatives of Barry's father were very devout Muslims."
Barack Obama's Catholic school in Jakarta.
The Catholic school: Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press reports that "documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim" while at a Catholic school during first through third grades. Kim Barker of the Chicago Tribune confirms that Obama was "listed as a Muslim on the registration form for the Catholic school." A blogger who goes by "An American Expat in Southeast Asia" found that "Barack Hussein Obama was registered under the name ‘Barry Soetoro' serial number 203 and entered the Franciscan Asisi Primary School on 1 January 1968 and sat in class 1B. … Barry's religion was listed as Islam."
The public school: Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times learned from Indonesians familiar with Obama when he lived in Jakarta that he "was registered by his family as a Muslim at both schools he attended."
Now, whether or not Obama considers himself Muslim now, whether or not he is willing to admit to his past and upbringing, these questions and his efforts to hide or color the truth of his background are relavent to his aspirations to be President. The answer is plain...we can't. Hos own shifting stances on the issues, his own willful assocaitions for decades with virulaent anti-Americans and then his attempts to hide from those associations all atest to this.
Thanks.....
I pinged you to backhoe’s exhaustive collection of links and sources on the MD4Bush Mosk affiar, but I’ll post it in this thread so it gets wider viewing:
The O’Malley Affair- NCPAC, MD4Bush, Ehrlich, & more
various FR links & stories | 02-13-05 | the heavy equipment guy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1342165/posts
PLEASE be aware that backhoe continued to add links and new information throughout 2005, so the entire 150+ replies are worth browsing through, it provides a chronological view of the affair as it played out in the media, court of public opinion, and court system.
That's a point that can't be emphasized enough. With a few clicks of the mouse one can verify or dispute some article that the MSM puts out. It imposes a much higher standard on the reporters which they find terribly inconvenient.
especially considering they linked all the liberal media sources in the article...
don’t fret- they still claim the Swift Boat Veterans slimed kerri, once again proving it is physiologically possible to insert one’s head up one’s butt....
By Joe Kaufman
Feb. 05, 2008
"With its similarity to popular online sites such as Facebook and MySpace and its links to a network of grassroots blogs, Barack Obama's campaign website has been hailed as a testament to the candidate's transformative politics. But at least part of the senator's online outreach, "Muslim Americans for Obama '08," proposes installing Muslim prayer areas in public places and giving Muslims time off for prayer and has denounced Obama's colleagues in the U.S. Senate who happen to be Jewish. This segment of Obama's online outreach also has ties to unindicted co-conspirators in terror trials and has recruited Obama supporters from among the ranks of fundamentalist Muslim extremists.
On the blog, which is attached to BarackObama.com, viewers can read about "the Senate pro-Israeli zionist hawk Joe Lieberman," as well as criticism aimed at Obama himself for getting too cozy with the Israeli lobby. As stated on the blog, that last part was derived from information found on Electronic Intifada (EI), a terror apologist website based in Chicago, Illinois, Obama's hometown. According to the site's co-founder, Ali Abunimah, Senator Obama once told him, regarding Abunimah's anti-American and anti-Israel writings, to "Keep up the good work!"
While the Muslim Americans for Obama '08 blog is hosted by Obama's website, it is actually part of another site that goes by the same name, located at muslimsforobama08.com. The registered agent for the site is Zakiyah Omar, a women's costume designer from Jacksonville, Florida. Omar has been involved in the Obama campaign since December 2006 (She has had the site since February '07). She too has her own blog hosted by the official Obama website."
I was wondering about that myself. In Boston we famously drop the R's. The Irish speak with a brogue, but thy don't drop their R's. No way anyone with half a brain anywhere in America would confuse a Boston accent with a brogue. Anyone, except a Communist at Princeton.
save
Kudos! Bless you for all your efforts. Prayers for your continuing fight against these despicable slimers, from a native of Mass.
If he loses, (please God) it will tragically be labeled as a racist outcome, fomenting more division and violent retribution. God bless and protect America.
I haven’t read much by Pipes except articles posted on FR. I have corresponded with his father, Richard Pipes, an outstanding Historian of Communism and a Russian Scholar at Harvard, his work was superior. If the son is of the same caliber, his views are probably correct.
I wonder if Allen is stalking us even as we type?
The Obama “Fight the smear” campaign is a really odious disguise for this coordinated effort by a political campaign, allies in the media and academia to silence his critics. Hell, silence the questioners.
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