The basis for President Obama’s speech to the Muslin world June 4
Published: June 2, 2009
Updated: June 2, 2009
President Obama will “make a major speech on ties with Muslims” on June 4, as part of a “continuing effort of the president to engage the Muslim world.”
The text has not yet been released, but the content of that speech has been being written throughout our president’s life.
He was born in Hawaii to Barrack Hussein Obama Sr., a Kenyan of the Luo ethnic group, and Ann Dunham.
“My grandfather, who was Kenyan, converted to Christianity, then converted to Islam,” Obama said. “[A]lthough my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition.”
Ann Dunham Obama next married Indonesian student, Lolo Soetoro, whose visa was revoked in 1967.
So, when Barack was six, his family moved to Indonesia, where Barack was enrolled and listed as a Muslim attending a Muslim school in central Jakarta from 1968 to 1972.
The Chicago Sun-Times quoted Obama’s own description of his stepfather’s faith: “Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths.”
“In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology,”1 but his own favorite book, Mr. Obama says, is “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, Alex Haley’s book about the assassinated leader of the Nation of Islam.
As an adult, Obama was a member of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Chicago church for more than two decades.
Rev. Wright’s church gave Louis Farrakhan, the current head of the Nation of Islam, its 2007 “Trumpeter Award” because, Rev. Wright said, “Minister Farrakhan will be remembered as one of the 20th and 21st century giants of the African American religious experience.”
During the primary season, Rev. Jeremiah Wright commented: “Barack might be forced by the media and/or by supporters to be very absent from this church and to put distance between our church and himself.”
Wright explained: “When [Obama’s] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli” to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi with Louis Farrakhan, “a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.”
Obama identified Rev. Wright as his “spiritual adviser” and mentor. The training he received from Wright, Obama said, “was the best education I ever had.”
Former PLO and Arafat spokespersons Raschid and Mona Khalidi founded the Arab American Action Network in Chicago. A gala dinner was held in their honor with a commemorative book filled with testimonials, including ones from the Khaladis’ friends and Hyde Park neighbors, the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers and then-state Senator Barack Obama.
One of Mona Khalidi’s groups had received a $40,000 grant from the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama and Ayers served on the fund’s board of directors.
Khalidi told the mostly Palestinian crowd that state senator Obama deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat: “You will not have a better senator under any circumstances.”
Earlier this year, news cameras filmed President Obama bowing to Saudi King Abdullah at the Group of 20 summit in London, showing our president bent low at the waist, head lowered, and his right hand extended for King Abdullah to accept. The Saudi-backed Arabic paper Asharq Alawsat wrote approvingly: “Obama wished to demonstrate his respect and appreciation of the personality of King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz…”
What will the president say in his June 4th speech? Whatever he says, we can only pray that it will be spoken with a respect and appreciation of the personality of the people for the United States, whose national motto is, “In God We Trust.”
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Reader Reactions
Obama a Muslim…hmmmm Another set of half truths and inuendo. I can easily argue the point but recall this nation is very strong and regardless of your religous views…. You can worship whatever faith you’d like, hence the term Freedom of Religion. A founding principal of the great nation. Obama regardless of whether you like him or not, and I’ll admit I voted for McCain, is indeed a Christain. Having said that what would happen if he converted to Islam. The last time I heard barring the extremists the principals of the religion are indeed very docile. Discussing extremists I just saw another article on the late term abortion doctor that was killed by a Roman Catholic. I am glad I am Anglican Catholic where we tolerate just about anything whether I agree with it or not, let Mr. Obama set the direction attempt to carry out his promises and then in 4 years vote again after he either succeeds or fails in his plans. Personally our economy is too much trouble to have anyone fail. While we have a large amount of foreclosures in process there are even more on the horizon when people find jobs they will not be paid what they were in the past. We are not through this mess at all and to try and discredit someone isn’t contributing to progress, WAKE UP, focus on the problem!
I see we’re back to the partisan hack Sharman… innuendo and half-truths. I saw Obama readh for the King’s hand with BOTH HANDS too early and ended up in what could be construed as a bow if you are the type who only looks for bad things to write about the president.
Sharman, for the next article why you don’t you tell us how the guy who shot the doctor in Church isn’t a terrorist?


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