PrintAugust 24, 2010
Now, why would 20% of Americans think Obama is a Muslim?
According to this poll released last week, nearly one in five Americans believes that President Obama is a Muslim, despite his consistent claims to be a Christian. The White House commented that "obviously," the president is a Christian; "he prays every day." Various liberal columnists quickly ran to the president's aid with mouths agape over the obvious stupidity of this sizable chunk of the American peasant class.
The only thing truly obvious about this poll, in my opinion, is that it was meant to be a distraction from the growing, across-all-strata anger at the president's policies, a still-gloomy economy, and a widely held perception of the president as a lazy man who much prefers the perks of high office to the actual work required of the officeholder. So Pew decided to provide a neat little piñata of supposed stupidity at which the liberal-elitist media could poke with holier-than-thou glee.
Obviously, however, these petulant liberal columnists did not bother to do their homework. From their every rant so far over the persistence of the Obama-Is-Muslim perception, it's clear that none of them have looked at this with anything but the most shallow objective. Obama says he's a Christian; therefore, he is.
Ah, but the perception that he is a Muslim persists. Now, why might that be?
Let me count the reasons...
We could put aside the little Freudian slips Barack Obama uttered at unscripted moments during the campaign, but just for the record, and since they might indeed have added to the public perception of Obama as a Muslim, let's just remember a few of them.
There was that little episode where candidate Obama did reference "my Muslim faith" to George Stephanopoulos and was corrected by the interviewer.
Then there was the little slip-up where candidate Obama, referring to his campaign travels, mentioned that he had already visited 57 states, a gaffe that might have had no religious/political significance were it not for the fact that the only world entity known to have precisely 57 states is the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Now, admittedly, these were short blurbs, uttered off-teleprompter by candidate Obama, but they indeed added weight to the perception that Obama might be attempting to cover a stealth Muslim faith behind his murky cloak of Christian proclamation.
And although this hardly qualifies as a Freudian slip, candidate Obama did pooh-pooh the dangers posed by that "tiny country," Iran, causing any sentient person to feel at least a little angst over where Obama's fidelity (and his senses) might be found. Then there was the lengthy rambling of candidate Obama on the hearty endorsement he received from Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam and the most well-known Jew-hater in America. Obama refused to reject the endorsement while cherry-picking certain statements of Farrakhan's to denounce and spent the rest of his ramble highlighting the Jewish contribution to the Civil Rights Movement. These were hardly clarifying moments in which either the candidate's wisdom or his self-proclaimed Christian faith shone.
All of these murky moments might have been buried under Obama's inauguration hoopla if not for the president's immediate moves towards the Islamic world. Instead of putting the "Obama is a Muslim" perception to rest, President Obama revived this notion with apparent gusto.
First, there was the premier interview as president to the foreign press, which Obama gave to an Arab television network. Then there was the "suck up to Islam" speech the president gave in Cairo, in which he purely made up Muslim history to make Islamists feel good. Throw in the obsequious bow to the Saudi king. Throw in Obama's claim on international television that America is "not a Christian nation," but is indeed "one of the largest Muslim nations" (a claim which relied on more faulty Obama arithmetic), and it would take a nitwit not to question the president's credibility on every issue, including his religion.
Add the weight of Obama's outward and pronounced humiliations of Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Obama's continual strong-arming the Israelis to stop building upon their own land so as not to irritate the Palestinians, and the perception of Obama's fealty to Muslims grows mightily. Throw in Obama's dictum to all American intelligence agencies that any mention of Islam in connection to modern terrorism is now a concerted no-no, and the "Obama is a Muslim" perception becomes a big, fat elephant in the room.
With the elephant now growing great big tusks, the president one-ups himself and ceremoniously throws the weight of the presidency into the Ground Zero mosque debate. Choosing the symbolically significant White House Iftar dinner, in honor of Ramadan, with a roomful of prominent Muslims from around the world, the president clearly endorsed building the Cordoba House mosque. And no effort at political backtracking can remove that perception. The "Obama is a Muslim" elephant is beginning to stink at this point.
Despite a later claim to Christian conversion, Barack Obama was born Muslim, to a Muslim father, who gave him a Muslim name, "Barack Hussein." As anyone who knows even a smidgen of Islamic theology well understands, Islam is a religion conferred by the father to his children at birth, in which the father claims his child for Allah, if you will. Since Barack Obama's mother openly professed -- throughout her life -- a rather pronounced disdain for all religion, it makes perfect sense that she would defer to her new husband on this religious ritual.
As all Westerners agree, however, there isn't much in a given name. Islamists, on the other hand, put a great deal of emphasis on this at-birth claim for Allah. And as the New York Times so eloquently pointed out during the campaign, whether Obama (or we) likes it or not, the Islamic world now views Barack Hussein Obama as an apostate to Islam, which under Islamic law is the most grievous offense a man born Muslim can commit.
Not only was Obama born a Muslim, but while living in Indonesia from age six to ten, he was registered in school as a Muslim, regularly studied the Koran, and openly stated in public in 2007 that the Muslim call to prayer was the "prettiest sound" he had ever heard. Fine. I sincerely doubt that many Americans really wish to parse Obama's religious claims now on the strength of childhood experiences alone.
...Which brings us to the real heart of this matter: Jeremiah Wright, Jr. The undeniable reality concerning Obama's "conversion" to Christianity is that it occurred under the mentorship of a man known far and wide as a purveyor of black liberation theology, which is about as unorthodox Christian as a sect can get. James H. Cone, the father of black liberation theology, has stated openly that he was attempting to forge a third way between Martin Luther King's orthodox Christianity and the Islamic beliefs (Nation of Islam, then Sunni Islam) of Malcolm X.
When I visited Trinity United Church of Christ in January of 2008, I spent about an hour perusing the books for sale in Obama's then-church home bookstore. The one unifying theme of books for sale at Trinity was not Christianity, but black nationalist politics, cunningly wrapped in religious language, both black Muslim and black liberation theology.
Obama's connection to Jeremiah Wright was, in fact, conspiratorially swept under the liberal-media rug, as we now know from recent JournoList e-mail revelations. Anyone with an ounce of common sense should have known that as Obama ascended to the presidency, his true colors would show themselves. And show they have.
Barack Obama unceasingly demonstrates that his disavowal of Wright's mentorship was every bit as hollow as his claim to unifying political grace.
In every apology for America that Obama has made, we hear Jeremiah Wright's voice "G*d-damning" America. In Obama's decision to send an American apology envoy to Hiroshima, we hear Wright's anti-American screeds loud and clear. In Obama's sending back the bust of Churchill to the Brits, Wright's still-sore rants over the white Europeans and the slave trade -- dead for more than a century -- are seen clear as day. In Obama's open arms to Islam -- no matter what -- we see and hear Wright's love of the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X.
So here's to our formerly august media in their summer with American malcontents.
The truth always will out.
Obama lied; hope died.
And you people got caught with your pants down.
Deal with it.
Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at www.kyleanneshiver.com.
Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at www.kyleanneshiver.com.
