Post-American Presidency (9 page)

It was “disparaging” Obama and taking the low road simply to call him by his full name? Apparently so. Leftist professor Juan Cole huffed in
Salon
that Obama’s name was “a name to be proud of. It is an American name. It is a blessed name. It is a heroic name, as heroic and American in its own way as the name of Gen. Omar Nelson Bradley or the name of Benjamin Franklin. And denigrating that name is a form of racial and religious bigotry of the most vile and debased sort.”
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It is worth pointing out, however, that Cunningham did not in fact speak disparagingly of Obama’s name, or denigrate it. He just used it, without explicit commentary upon it. Of course, McCain, Obama, and the others who took umbrage at this usage were noting the subtext: that Obama’s middle name of Hussein, so unfortunately shared with the Iraqi dictator recently toppled by American troops, could
imply to some that the Democratic candidate was not quite American, not quite as Christian as he claimed, and possibly holding loyalties to entities at war with the United States.

These implications were what made the usage so offensive—and so throughout the presidential campaign of 2008, commentators on both sides of the political divide studiously avoided even mentioning Obama’s middle name, tacitly accepting the contention that Cole articulated, that to do so would be “racial and religious bigotry of the most vile and debased sort.”

Obama himself played up this idea, suggesting in June 2008 that the Republicans would run against him by exploiting that bigotry: “The choice is clear. Most of all we can choose between hope and fear. It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”
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And in September 2008, he expanded upon this theme, telling a crowd in Pennsylvania: “I know that I’m not your typical presidential candidate and I just want to be honest with you. I know that the temptation is to say, ‘You know what? The guy hasn’t been there that long in Washington. You know, he’s got a funny name. You know, we’re not sure about him.’ And that’s what the Republicans when they say this isn’t about issues, it’s about personalities, what they’re really saying is, ‘We’re going to try to scare people about Barack. So we’re going to say that, you know, maybe he’s got Muslim connections.’… Just making stuff up.”
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Thus it was all the more surprising when, once elected, Obama began to use that same “funny name” and even to speak about his “Muslim connections.” He announced in an interview with the
Chicago
Tribune
in December 2008 that he would be sworn in as president as “Barack Hussein Obama,” but disclaimed any agenda in doing so: “I think the tradition is that they use all three names, and I will follow the tradition. I’m not trying to make a statement one way or another. I’ll do what everybody else does.”

However, in the same interview, he gave voice to a desire that would lead to his proudly proclaiming his middle name a few months later: “I think we’ve got a unique opportunity,” he told the
Tribune
, “to reboot America’s image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular.” He said he wanted to “create a relationship of mutual respect and partnership in countries and with peoples of good will who want their citizens and ours to prosper together.”
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OBAMA THE BELIEVER

In pursuit of these goals, when Obama made his much-anticipated major address to the Islamic world from Cairo on June 4, 2009, he proclaimed proudly that “much has been made of the fact that an African-American with the name Barack Hussein Obama could be elected President.”
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In the same speech, he invoked the “Muslim connections” that he had derided during his campaign as dirty tactics from his political opponents: “I am a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims.”

However, so anxious was he to appeal to the Islamic world that he made several statements in the speech that Muslims would understand as indicating that he himself was a believer in Islam. He referred several times to the “Holy” Qur’an, and referred to “Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad (peace be upon them).” Muslims generally say “peace be upon him” after mentioning the name of a prophet.

Did Obama mean to imply, then, that he accepted Muhammad as a prophet? And, given the Islamic flavor of his locution here, did
he mean to imply also that he accepted the Islamic understanding of Moses and Jesus not as the cardinal figures of Judaism and Christianity, respectively, but as two prophets on the roster of Muslim prophets?

It was a momentous phrase—one that could have been the subject of some intense and revealing questioning from the international media. But, of course, no such questioning was forthcoming.

Obama also extended to Muslims worldwide “a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: assalaamu alaykum.” While he characterized this as a greeting from Muslims in America and not from him personally, his usage was significant, since
assalaamu alaykum
, peace be upon you, is the greeting that a Muslim extends to a fellow Muslim. And most tellingly of all, Obama said: “I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed.” Not “where Muslims believe it was first revealed,” or “where it began,” or “where it was founded,” but “where it was first
revealed
.”

The choice of words was telling. Did Obama really believe, then, despite his proclamation of his Christian faith, that Islam was
revealed
—that is, revealed by Allah to Muhammad, not developed out of human experience? Did he mean to signal to Muslims worldwide that he believed that Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, received divine revelations that were collected in the Qur’an? Or was he a Christian of an unorthodox variety, accepting both Jesus and Muhammad, the New Testament and the Qur’an, despite the many contradictions between them?

And most important of all, what would his apparent acceptance of Muhammad and the Qur’an—at least in some form—indicate about both the veracity of statements made by his campaign in the run-up to the election? Also, what would his positive view of Islam indicate about his policies toward Israel, Iran, and the Islamic world in general, given the deeply ingrained nature of Islamic anti-Semitism and the
intransigent bellicosity of traditional Islamic theology and law regarding non-Muslims?

No reporter was willing to follow up with such questions in the wake of the Cairo speech. No one seemed to pick up on just how remarkable Obama’s statements were in light of the campaign he had run.

OBAMA THE CHRISTIAN AT THE FIGHT THE SMEARS WEB SITE

“Let’s not play games,” said Barack Obama to George Stephanopoulos in a September 2008 interview. “What I was suggesting—you’re absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith. And you’re absolutely right that that has not come.”

Stephanopoulos quickly interjected a correction: “Christian faith.”
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Slip of the tongue?

Many who were skeptical about Obama’s campaign-era version of his early life seized upon this as evidence that he wasn’t being honest about his Muslim upbringing. And indeed, whether or not this was a slip of the tongue, there was plenty of evidence to fuel their skepticism.

“My father was from Kenya,” Barack Obama explained in December 2007, “and a lot of people in his village were Muslim. He didn’t practice Islam. Truth is he wasn’t very religious.”
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And on May 22, 2008, he said: “My father was basically agnostic, as far as I can tell, and I didn’t know him.”
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Yet as Obama prepared to deliver his major address on America and the Islamic world in Cairo in June 2009, Denis McDonough, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said that “the President himself experienced Islam on three continents before he was able to—or before he’s been able to visit, really,
the heart of the Islamic world—you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father.…”
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A Muslim father? So was Barack Obama, Sr., a practicing Muslim or not? And why was the president’s father, who died in 1982, an agnostic in 2008 and a Muslim in 2009?

The curiosities, discrepancies, deceptions, and mysteries just begin there.

Obama further stated in December 2007: “I was raised by my mother. So, I’ve always been a Christian. The only connection I’ve had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father’s side came from that country. But I’ve never practiced Islam. For a while, I lived in Indonesia because my mother was teaching there. And that’s a Muslim country. And I went to school. But I didn’t practice.”
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In line with this, in June 2008 the Obama campaign launched FightTheSmears.com, a Web site devoted to debunking purported lies and distortions about the candidate. Prominent among the “smears” to be debunked was the widely circulating claim that Obama was a Muslim, or at very least had been a Muslim in his youth. “Obama never prayed in a mosque,” the Web site stated. “He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ.”
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Yet there is an abundance of evidence to contradict the claims that Obama never prayed in a mosque, was never a Muslim, and was not raised a Muslim. Nicholas Kristof of
The New York Times
wrote in March 2007—before Obama’s religious background became a point of controversy—that Obama remembered quite fondly some of his childhood lessons in Islam. “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.’”
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Kristof also notes that Obama “once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school”—an incident Obama himself recalls in his first autobiography,
Dreams from My Father
: “In the Muslim school,” the future president recalled, “the teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during Koranic studies.”
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This was apparently at Public Elementary School Menteng No. 1, which Obama attended for fourth grade. In 1971 in Indonesia, when Barack Obama was in that grade, only Muslim children studied Islam in school. Christian students were in another room studying Christianity.
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According to Hardi Priyono, the vice principal for curriculum, “the Muslims learn about Islam, prayer and religious activity, and for the Christians, during the religious class, they also have a special room teaching Christianity. It’s always been like that.”
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A teacher in the school, Tine Hahiyary (1971–1989), said of young Barry Soetoro: “I remembered that he had studied ‘mengaji’ (recitation of the Qur’an).”
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The American blogger in Indonesia who uncovered this information explained: “While the word ‘mengaji’ means to either learn or study, however, the actual usage of the word ‘mengaji’ in Indonesian and Malaysian societies means the study of learning to recite the Qur’an in the Arabic language rather than the native tongue.… To put it quite simply, ‘mengaji classes’ are not something that a non-practicing or so-called moderate Muslim family would ever send their child to. To put this in perhaps a Christian context, this is something above and beyond simply enrolling your child in Sunday school classes. The fact that Obama had attended mengaji classes is well known in Indonesia and has left many there wondering just when Obama is going to come out of the closet.”
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So if Barry Soetoro attended Qur’an classes in his Indonesian elementary school, was Barry Soetoro a Muslim? Barry Soetoro was registered in Assisi Primary School in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1968, as an Indonesian citizen whose religion was Islam.
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Assisi was a Catholic
school, and according to Israella Dharmawan, Obama’s first-grade teacher, “Barry was also praying in a Catholic way, but Barry was Muslim.” This may, however, have simply been a formality based on his stepfather’s religion: “He was registered as a Muslim,” Dharmawan continued, “because his father, Lolo Soetoro, was Muslim.”
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Maya Soetoro-Ng recalled: “My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim.”
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“American Expat in Southeast Asia,” the American blogger in Indonesia who uncovered much of what we know about Obama’s Indonesia years, concludes that “the evidence seems to quite clearly show that both Ann Dunham and her husband Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo” were actually “devout Muslims themselves and they raised their son as such.”
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Thus the available evidence indicates that, contrary to the Obama campaign’s claims, Barack Obama was known to be a Muslim, was raised a Muslim for at least part of his childhood, and attended a mosque on at least a few occasions (whether or not he actually prayed in it, which was the specific claim that the Web site denied).

But he has explained nothing.

If Barack Obama was raised a Muslim, why lie on his Fight The Smears Web site? The idea that the American people, after hearing for seven years after 9/11 that Islam was a religion of peace, would reject Obama because as a child he was briefly a Muslim, is hard to believe. But Obama, instead of coming clean, has obfuscated and denied the facts. He claimed during his campaign to have been a practicing Christian for twenty years. He was, at the time, forty-seven years old. What was happening in his life prior to age twenty-seven?

Faced with the evidence of Obama’s Muslim upbringing, by October 2008 the Obama camp had revised the Web site’s statement to remove the initial sweeping claims.
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As of July 2009, the Fight The Smears site contained this much more easily defensible statement:
“Barack Obama is a committed Christian. He was sworn into the Senate on his family Bible. He has regularly attended church with his wife and daughters for years. But shameful, shadowy attackers have been lying about Barack’s religion, claiming he is a Muslim instead of a committed Christian.”
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