<p>Among traditional Jews, he will still be one of the goyim. The Lubaveitcher Rebbe still won’t shake Hillary’s hand.</p>
<p>The “godless Atheists” (I love the tautological redundancy) will recognize one of their own, even if he is churchgoer. ;)</p>
<p>“But at least as Senator Biden has pointed out, he is a very clean black man.”</p>
<p>HE’s Black? wow! :)</p>
<p>gawd this is like watching a tennis match.</p>
<p>Well, if you believe Rush, he doesn’t have to be Black unless he wants to be! (maybe he can be ‘honorary whitey’.)</p>
<p>But there is absolutely nothing he can do to get rid of his atheist background.</p>
<p>couldn’t he claim he said he was ‘a theist’?</p>
<p>Maybe he could tell Playboy he has “lust in his heart”, which would mark him as Presidential timber.</p>
<p>well I used to say of Bill that despite his many sexcapades I still don’t care for the fellow,…</p>
<p>“No, once you’ve explained the lies you posted.”</p>
<p>Hanna, why don’t you explain the lies I’ve posted, and go on record with what the truth is? Please include the date on which he proclaimed his membership in the United Church of Christ.</p>
<p>Also keep in mind how much more tolerant even the bigotted Republicans are than the Iranians would be if a candidate for their commander in chief were named Jesus Greenspan Herbert Walker Bush.</p>
<p>“well I used to say of Bill that despite his many sexcapades I still don’t care for the fellow,…”</p>
<p>I thought that was his best parts, whoops, I mean, part!</p>
<p>(do people proclaim their membership in the United Church of Christ like they declare their Presidential lu****lness?(gotta love those stars!) I have lots of good stories about reborn atheists…)</p>
<p>Frankly, I think it would have been much better had he done it much more often. Might have saved half a million children.</p>
<p>Ah, it’s always all about the children…</p>
<p>I suspect that any connection to Islam, whether real or imagined, will hurt Obama if it becomes a big topic. As much as I hate to say that. SHOULD it matter? This is an entirely different question completely. I don’t think it should matter. WILL it matter? I find it hard to believe that it truly wouldn’t. Still I hope it won’t. </p>
<p>Let’s face it. Republicans are good at running smear campaigns (nothing completely wrong with this, the Democrats try it too, they just don’t do as well). They’ve shown that several times. Democrats aren’t as good as marketing candidates. Everyone has skeletons in their closet - even objectively I find it hard to believe that people truly feel Bush has less than Kerry. But you’re looking at a lot of undecided people, and a lot of people who won’t vote unless something compels them to. Karl Rove got millions of evangelicals who didn’t vote in 2000 to the polls in 2004. It becomes a lot about how you can spin your own skeletons vs someone elses. Not everyone has their mind made up right now. </p>
<p>A lot of people are rather confident that a midterm victory puts the Democrats into a very good place going into 2008. I’m not so sure. When you look at the situation I feel it’s somewhat skewed. The type of campaign that put Bush in the White House in 2004 doesn’t necessarily IMO compel the same people who vote midterms. It told a lot of those people “vote for Bush and you won’t have to worry. He’ll protect your country” to the extent that it gets support behind Bush where it seems like they don’t have to worry about anything as long as he’s president. </p>
<p>Lots of things that shouldn’t matter will.</p>
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<p>Sure. The lies you spread are in post #22. Here’s my response “on record”:</p>
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<p>He is a Christian, not a Muslim, and therefore he cannot take any kind of care to conceal what he is not. See below for more discussion of his Christianity.</p>
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<p>I take “radical Muslim” to mean someone who attempts to spread Islam by force, or supports the suppression of other faiths. Obama’s father never did either. “Radical Islam” as I understand it (placing loyalty to Muslims above family, tribal, and national loyalties) would have been a bizarre aberration in the tribal Kenya of Obama Sr.'s early life and even more so in the religiously diverse postcolonial Kenya he returned to. He was a university lecturer and later worked for the Treasury department in Kenya. If he had called for war against the infidels, or condemned the many Kenyan Christians, Hindus, and animists, he would have been considered a freak.</p>
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<p>The school was not “Wahabbi,” as confirmed by CNN. It was an ordinary public school in a majority-Muslim country.</p>
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<p>I am personal friends with many members of Obama’s church in Chicago. I don’t know the date of his baptism, but he came to the altar and proclaimed his faith there in 1988 (before he left Chicago for law school). My friends have been worshipping with him and his family there for over a decade; they know many others who have been church members since before Obama joined. No one in that church doubts his faith. If you insist that he joined out of political expediency, when he was just out of college, well, one can’t ever prove what was in someone’s heart 20 years ago…but you’re essentially saying that you don’t believe ANYONE in public life who calls himself a Christian, because there is no stronger evidence than the embrace of professing Christians who have prayed together with him for decades. And you’ve got a hard row to hoe to tell me that my friends and the other members of that church aren’t Christians.</p>
<p>Great, all of which does nothing to address my questions about how he would be viewed in Muslim countries. I live in the USA, in the epicenter of American Islam, Detroit. So I have a feel for how he will be viewed in the USA if his debatable connections to Islam are not swept under the rug and are discussed 10% as Romney’s connections to the church of J.C. and Latter Day Saints. Reading this thread, I’m aware that mini likes Bill’s Willie; I know that Obama’s father, stepfather, and name point to Islam, and that it’s supposedly irrelevant to pursue that discussion–it’s not like the topic of Islam features anywhere in our foreign policy these days or anything. What I’m asking for the 3rd time is how will an Obama presidency play in Muslim countries?</p>
<p>Atheist backgrounds probably wouldn’t go over real well…</p>
<p>Your denial of the premisses of the discussion are classic Northwest political correctness (I have relatives in Olympia). Go back to daydreaming about Slick Willie (SPLAT!!).</p>
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<p>You mean bushlike as in being stubborn and arrogant?</p>
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<p>Middle East Muslims play fast and loose with the truth as it is (see Holocaust denial conference in Iran; acceptance by a majority of the population in most of those countries that the CIA or Israel highjacked the planes on 9/11) so I am sure it wouldn’t take much to convince them that Obama was born and raised a Muslim. A fraudulent chain email would be proof enough. That means he subsequently converted to Christianity. That’s a no-no.</p>
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<p>And they aren’t talking about death by old age, in case you miss the point. Under Sharia law he would be a dead man. And our electing him as President would be an insult to the Prophet and to Allah that would drive them into a suicidal frenzy. Well, I guess most of them wake up each morning in a suicidal frenzy over the West, so this would just add to that. </p>
<p>And to reply to another poster:</p>
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<p>Where did I say it was OK? One side smirks while the President is smeared and then rises up in righteous, PC indignation when the new pretty boy of the Dems is attacked. I am arguing for fair play and fair treatment, though I doubt we can expect that in the election to come.</p>
<p>“Your denial of the premisses of the discussion are classic Northwest political correctness (I have relatives in Olympia).”</p>
<p>Well, if you want to talk about the religious background of a man, you should be darn sure you know what that background is, before you open your mouth and put a…(I won’t go there. ;))</p>
<p>(At no time did he live without his atheist mother.)</p>
<p>“At no time did he live without his atheist mother”</p>
<p>You mean the atheist mother who married two Muslim guys in the space of a few years? Mini, please enlighten me about exactly what his religious background is. You apparently know the true from the false. I’m all ears.</p>
<p>If the discussion is about how Muslim countries view him, then it the extent of his Islamic background doesn’t really matter. It sounds to me like extremists in other countries will consider his previous affiliation with Islam, however nominal, as evidence that he has betrayed their faith and hate him for it. Since radical extremists are likely to hate ANY American president, this isn’t really such a problem.</p>
<p>If the discussion is about whether or not Obama himself still has ties to Islam, than I would think that it is pretty evident that the answer is no. A man with any serious religious conviction would not convert for political expediency. It is possible that he is downplaying his Muslim roots, but from everything we’ve heard and discussed in this thread, it seems that even if they were more extensive than he is claiming, he was never devout. It also seems unlikely that either his father or stepfather was extremist or even particularly religious, given that they were willing to marry a non-Muslim woman.</p>
<p>If the discussion is about whether it will matter in the election, then my opinion is that for the most part, it will only matter to those who aren’t inclined to vote for him in the first place. I also can’t see his opponents bringing it up against him, so I doubt the issue will get too far outside the blogosphere.</p>