A verbal gaffe by Barack Obama on the ABC Sunday news show This Week have fueled scurrilous Internet rumors that the candidate is a secret Muslim. Barack Obama made the gaffe while discussing the rumors with host George Stephanopoulos.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Stephanopoulos reminded Barack Obama that McCain himself has denied spreading the rumors. “You’re absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith,” Obama said, before being corrected by Stephanopoulos.
The slip of the tongue has caused a firestorm on the Internet, with accusations being made about Barack Obama being a Muslim. It is true that Obama’s father was a lapsed Muslim and that Obama’s middle name is “Hussein”, a common Muslim name. But it is not true that Barack Obama is Muslim.
Clearly Barack Obama meant to say something like “My alleged Muslim faith” instead of “my Muslim faith.” Clearly he was referring to how the people spreading the rumors think of him and not how he thinks of himself.
In fact it is well documented that Barack Obama attended the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for many years. This attendance spawned a legitimate scandal due to the fiery, hate filled sermons of that church’s long time pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Barack Obama, who regularly attended Trinity and even took his wife and young children to hear Jeremiah Wright’s sermon, denied having remembered some of Wright’s more pungent pronouncements, such as when he cursed America. Barack Obama was eventually compelled to repudiate Jeremiah Wright, who has since retired as pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ.
Of course being a Muslim does not necessarily make one a jihadist and should not disqualify one from being President, any more than being a Catholic, Mormon, or Evangelical should. While some of the more mawkish pronouncements of the Muslim faith being a “religion of peace” are debatable, Islam is a religion of very strict rules, even when waging jihad against enemies of the Muslim faith.
The Koran suggests that noncombatants and that even the infrastructure of the enemy are to be spared. Deliberate suicide is forbidden. Martyrdom consists if dying in battle against an enemy and not deliberately blowing oneself up and taking innocents with one.
It should also be noted that some of the most stalwart allies of the United States in the War on Terror have been Muslims. Tribal fighters in Anbar Province, Iraqi soldiers and police officers, Kuwait, and American Muslims who have volunteered to serve are prime examples.
In a strange way, it might have been better for Barack Obama if he actually had been a moderate, anti Jihadi Muslim rather than a member of Jeremiah Wright’s church. Obama could have used his candidacy to explain how the jihadists are not representative of the Muslim faith and could have rallied Muslims of good will to more openly oppose the terrorists.
Instead, Barack Obama must spend his campaign under the burden of having been a member of a church where actual hate was preached, hate of a type that should not be allowed in any place or worship, whether it is a Christian church or a Muslim mosque.
Source: Oops! Obama says ‘my Muslim faith’, Matthew Nickerson, Chicago Sun-Times, September 8th, 2008
Barack Obama’s Hate Mongering Pastor–Jeremiah Wright, Mark R. Whittington, Associated Content, March 14th, 2008
