<p>“Do you think the fact that he was raised a Muslim”</p>
<p>I hope that, like the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, this figment of the blogosphere’s imagination will play no role in the election.</p>
<p>"Obama, man who wants to be the U.S. President, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (A Muslim) of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. (atheist).</p>
<p>When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced and his father returned to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro, a Muslim, and moved to Jakarta with Obama when he was six years old. Within six months he had learned to speak the Indonesian language.</p>
<p>He spent “two years in a Muslim school, then two more in a Catholic school” in Jakarta. Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim while admitting that he was once a Muslim, mitigating that information by saying that, for two years, he also attended a Catholic school.</p>
<p>Obama’s father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a radical Muslim who migrated from Kenyato Jakarta, Indonesia.</p>
<p>Obama’s spymasters are now attempting to make it appear that Obama’s introduction to Islam came from his father and that influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya immediately following the divorce and never again had any direct influence over his son’s education.</p>
<p>Dunham married another Muslim, Lolo Soetoro, who educated his stepson as a good Muslim by enrolling him in one of Jakarta’s Wahabbi schools. Wahabbism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad on the industrialized world. Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when you are seeking political office in the United States, Obama joined the United Church of Christ to help purge any notion that he is still a Muslim."</p>
<p>You know you’re in trouble when your quote turns up on and urban legends page:</p>
<p><a href=“http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_barack_obama_muslim.htm[/url]”>http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_barack_obama_muslim.htm</a></p>
<p>TourGuide, when you are quoting, it is usual to cite the source. If you do not cite the source, readers are justified in discounting the information.</p>
<p>However, let’s assume that everything you said is true. Attending a Muslim school (for a whole two years!) does not mean that you were “raised a Muslim,” especially if you were living in a Muslim-majority nation where most of the quality schools were run by mosques and churches. I’m sure all the Jews, Baptists, and Hindus at St. Alban’s would be perplexed to discover that they have been “raised Episcopalian.”</p>
<p>From the site I cited above:</p>
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<p>Of course, had he been Muslim, it should have no bearing on his suitability to be president, anyway. The smear here is not whether he is or is not (though it’s clear that he isn’t and wasn’t) but that he is lying about it and pretending to be Christian.</p>
<p>I don’t believe Obama was raised a Muslim. He isn’t a Muslim now. Not that it really matters. Muslims come in all flavors and stripes. Hard to believe, but the majority are not terrorists, the majority have values quite similar to those we hold dear.</p>
<p>“He isn’t a Muslim now”</p>
<p>HEY DID YOU GUYS KNOW HE’S BLACK? WOW! :)</p>
<p>The question really is can he do the job or not? That’s all I worry about with any of them. The guy could be a plaid scientologist and I’d be fine with that as long as he kept it out of the body politic. </p>
<p>As far as one poster put Well at least GW stays the course, no matter what the polls say.</p>
<p>Would Peyton Manning be the quarterback (possibly the best alltime) he is if he had to run the play as called? The ability to assess the situation and adjust accordingly is a skill that leaders should have.</p>
<p>I got that same e-mail about a month ago, got another one about Hliary that said bad stuff too. I don’t plan (leaning McCain or Guliani) to vote for either of these yahoos, but I am not going to base my vote off of some e-mail with bs facts in it.</p>
<p>I say that it is indisputable that in his early years he was given a Muslim upbringing. </p>
<p>What’s more, it seems to me that Tourguide was asking a rather neutral and academic question. I believe it to be a very good question; both at the political level and on the geo-political level. Could work well one way or bad the other. I would be very interested in a reasoned conversation of the point.</p>
<p>The hysteria, at least from my point of view, is in those who would see this as automatically scandalous and therefore try to expunge and deny a fact of Obama’s life, one the one hand, and turn Obama into a Wahabist cleric on the other. </p>
<p>Get a grip and then consider this very provocative question rationally not viscerally, even if all the while the knee-jerks.</p>
<p>“I say that it is indisputable that in his early years he was given a Muslim upbringing.”</p>
<p>Well, bully for you. I find evidence of the tooth fairy indisputable as well. After all, we are all brought up with teeth.</p>
<p>We will not be allowed to question anything about Obama. He has been declared a Saint by the left. If we do question, it will immediately be inferred that we are smearing racists/bigots (see #27 above).</p>
<p>Relative to Rudy and Newt, apparently there isn’t much to smear. (which is too bad - I absolutely LOVE negative campaigning, and think it works!)</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see how Hillary/Edwards etc. debate Obama. How do you ask hard questions while still remaining PC? It will have to be done with behind the scenes dirty work. All will have to remain sweetness and light on the surface, or risk offending the entire base of the Democrat party. Pathetic, actually, when you think about it.</p>
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<p>mini</p>
<p>I find nothing at all wrong with having a Muslim upbringing and I am not at all sure if your non-sequitur above is intended to besmirch the society of Muslims or is simply a socialist stab at humor (an ice-pick?).</p>
<p>As to your having teeth: whether or not it follows that there is a tooth-fairy we will have to wait 'till we arrive at the other side to know; but I do hope that it follows that having teeth you brushed them.</p>
<p>HH, I don’t see anyone declaring him a saint, nor do I see anyone not allowing questions about him, but a tiny bit of research would have garnered the facts about Obama “being raised a Muslim”.</p>
<p>My grandmother</p>
<p>“I say that it is indisputable that in his early years he was given a Muslim upbringing.”</p>
<p>"When Obama’s mother remarried, it was indeed to an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, whom his stepson describes as a “non-practicing” Muslim. But it was his “secular” mother who supervised his education, Obama has written, sending him to both Catholic and Muslim primary schools after the family moved to Jakarta. There is nothing on record to indicate Obama attended a madrassa (Muslim religious school) run by Wahabbists, and in any case it’s unlikely his mother would have chosen to expose him to such an extreme form of Islam given her stated abhorrence of religious closed-mindedness and her stated goal of giving him a well-rounded education, including in matters of faith.</p>
<p>Update: CNN has tracked down the school in question, the Basuki School in Jakarta, which a deputy headmaster described as a “public school” with no particular religious agenda. “In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don’t give preferential treatment,” he told CNN. A classmate of Obama’s described the school as “general,” with students of many religious backgrounds attending. Obama entered the school at the age of 8 and attended for two years."</p>
<p>Now, my “public school” in NYC was 90% Jewish. Guess all those folks now saying their Ave Marias were given a Jewish upbringing. Just a fact of their lives. Nothing against Jewish folks myself, having once been one.</p>
<p>(My post above was entered incorrectly.)</p>
<p>Obama lives 2 blocks from me. I voted against him in a primary and for our Congressman Bobby Rush (former Minister of Defense of the Black Panthers) because I thought Rush was more representative of the people in our district than a member of the University of Chicago elite.
I voted for him for US Senator. Don’t read too much into this. My East Coast liberal family members can’t comprehend how one million Illinois voters voted for both Bush AND Obama. IMO, Midwesterners tend to vote more for the man or woman and less for ideology than people in some other parts of the country.
ANYWAY, Obama voted “no” on one of the Supreme Court nominees (I think Alito) because he said that he didn’t have enough information about him. This was in the context of Democrats trying to get more of a paper trail about the nominee from the Administration. The thing is, I don’t really believe that that is why he voted “no”. I could have understood a yes or no vote for cause much better.
I don’t have a lawyers background which might have helped me with this. Maybe procedure is paramount in law in a way I don’t understand. This gets back to the “Present” votes in the OP. I guess I’m bothered by this and looking for help.</p>
<p>“I just finished reading Obama’s first book and there is no mention whatsoever of him being “raised a Muslim”.”</p>
<p>Gee, do you think there could be a reason he didn’t mention it?</p>
<p>“TourGuide, when you are quoting, it is usual to cite the source. If you do not cite the source, readers are justified in discounting the information.”</p>
<p>Hanna, I really don’t care if anybody discounts my quote or not…I just wanted to get it out on the table that there appears to be a Muslim connection to Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (something nobody seems to be aware of–whereas JFK’s Catholicism and Mit Romney’s Mormonism were/are major issues). And D Parker is right, I asked a neutral question, and got a chuckle out of the Political Correctness Police immediately dispatching a SWAT team to discredit my quote, my question, and almost my sanity for even asking the question, as if it’s not a relevant issue.</p>
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Expect no less!</p>