Now I've come across this old Nick Kristoff column in the NYT [hat tip NRO's Campaign Spot].
It, too, is from March, 2007, the same time as the TNR piece. In this one there is no question but that the statements came directly from Obama himself.
In foreign policy as well, Mr. Obama would bring to the White House an important experience that most other candidates lack: he has actually lived abroad. He spent four years as a child in Indonesia and attended schools in the Indonesian language, which he still speaks.[Ha Ha. Only us hicks in Alabama are bothered by all this~!]“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.
[In the interview] 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.”
Moreover, Mr. Obama’s own grandfather in Kenya was a Muslim. Mr. Obama never met his grandfather and says he isn’t sure if his grandfather’s two wives were simultaneous or consecutive, or even if he was Sunni or Shiite. (O.K., maybe Mr. Obama should just give up on Alabama.)
So now we have two sources from the same timeframe (March 07), apparently based on interviews with Obama, wherein there was free ranging discussion of his and Wright's Muslim backgrounds. This could not have been a mistake...it was at exactly the time he was launching his campaign.
But now, a year later, the only time the media addreses the Muslim issue is to lambaste anyone who brings it up (No middle names!. He DID NOT study in a madrassas!).
I can think of many more sounds that he could have picked. What about a baby cooing? He picked this sound to rub our noses in it.