"When it comes to Barack Obama, only one subject infuriates the swooning mainstream media more than his father's race—and that's his father and stepfather's religion. Why, the very mention of Barack's early Islamic training—or even his Muslim middle name—has become more sacrosanct a PC no-no than disclosing the race of a non-white crime suspect," Marc Sheppard wrote May 15, 2008, at American Thinker.
Of this there is no doubt. In the May 12, 2008, New York Times, Edward N. Luttwak, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, asserted, that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim by birth, which set off a firestorm among Obamaphiles.
However, it would seem that this lingering question should be relatively easy for Sen. Obama to resolve. The facts are simple.
Frances Rice, a lawyer and retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and chairman of the National Black Republican Association, provides some background:
Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii, and his full name is Barack Hussein Obama. He is named after his father who was born on the shores of Lake Victoria in Alego, Kenya. Obama's father was raised as a Muslim and married a white American woman, Anna Dunham of Wichita, Kansas while both were students at the University of Hawaii. Obama's parents divorced when he was two years old, and when he was six years old, his mother married an Indonesian oil company executive named Lolo Soetoro, who was also a Muslim and who introduced Obama to Islam.
The family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, where they lived for five years from1968 through 1973. Obama first attended a Catholic school for three years. In that school's documents, Obama is listed under the name Barry Soetoro as an Indonesian citizen, and his religion is listed as Islam. Later, Obama attended a Muslim school where he received Islamic religious training before he was sent back to America to live with his maternal grandmother while his mother and his half-sister, Maya, stayed in Indonesia.
Obama's half brothers and sisters in Nairobi, Kenya are Muslims. His step-grandmother, Sarah Hussein Obama, is a lifelong Muslim who said: "I am a strong believer of the Islamic faith." In an April 30, 2007 New York Times interview, Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng who now lives in Hawaii, said: "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim."
Obama, while describing his 1992 wedding, admitted that he was proud of his brother, Roy, who chose Islam over Christianity. "The person who made me proudest of all," Obama wrote, "was Roy. Actually, now we call him Abongo, his Luo name, for two years ago he decided to reassert his African heritage. He converted to Islam, and has sworn off pork and tobacco and alcohol."
In an April 5, 2004, interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, then Illinois Democratic senatorial nominee Barack Obama said that he became a "churchgoer" in 1985 when he first came to Chicago as a community organizer and worked with African American churches in African American neighborhoods.
And it was in those places where I think what had been more of an intellectual view of religion deepened.
I became much more familiar with the ongoing tradition of the historic black church and its importance in the community. And the power of that culture to give people strength in very difficult circumstances, and the power of that church to give people courage against great odds. And it moved me deeply.
The $64,000 question comes from Rice.
If Obama were not a Muslim from the time his religion was recorded in Indonesia as Islam until he 'converted' to Christianity, then what was he for 27 years?
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