Actually, it started with his name. The St. Petersburg (FL) Times asked for Obama's birth certificate to dispel rumors about his name, and the Obama campaign refused. The rest of the story flows from there.
First Free Republic thread on Obama's birth certificate.
From a January 2011 refresher post of mine:
I decided that it's time for a short refresher on how this whole Obama birth certificate scandal began.A poster on another thread asked "What is Politifact?"
My answer was:
Politifact is the political blog at the St. Petersburg Times in Florida.
Coincidentally, Politifact is the news organization that started the whole Obama birth certificate scandal.
From April 18, 2008: No Muhammed or Mohammed in Obama's name:
We have now searched every public record we can access and find nothing to support the notion that Obama has a second middle name of "Muhammed" or "Mohammed."We have a copy of Obama's marriage certificate from the Cook County Bureau of Vital Statistics in Illinois.
We looked at Obama's driver's license record in the state of Illinois...
We searched property records for Obama...
We also found Obama's registration and disciplinary record with the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois.
We tried to obtain a copy of Obama's birth certificate, but his campaign would not release it and the state of Hawaii does not make such records public.
-PJ
To provide credit where credit is sue:
Illinois Senatorial candidate (Republican) Alan Keyes brought this subject up in a debate way back in 2004, when he described Obama as an “illegal alien.”