At the top of the news is an ABC report that the Reverend Franklin Graham said President Obama was “born a Muslim,” although “it’s obvious that the president has renounced the prophet Mohammed, and he has renounced Islam, and he has accepted Jesus Christ. That’s what he says he has done. I cannot say that he hasn’t. So I just have to believe that the president is what he has said.”
The problem here is not theology or Constitutional law. People are born in cultural contexts and they have a right to change their beliefs. There is no religious test for the Presidency; it doesn’t matter whether the president is atheist, Muslim or Christian. The difficulty is political. Barack Obama had carefully crafted an image designed to minimize his Muslim roots and by necessity downplayed his Christian associations in order to reap the benefits of straddling both worlds. It was an attempt to square the circle. Now the circle is reverting to itself.
Graham described the situation accurately:
I think the president’s problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim, his father gave him an Islamic name. Now it’s obvious that the president has renounced the prophet Mohammed, and he has renounced Islam, and he has accepted Jesus Christ. That’s what he says he has done. I cannot say that he hasn’t. So I just have to believe that the president is what he has said. The Islamic world sees the president as one of theirs.
But in order for the Islamic world to see the president “as one of theirs,” the change from Islam to Christianity had to be toned down. If the president had played up his acceptance of Jesus Christ and “renounced the prophet Mohammed” it would have not have gone well in the Muslim world. So Obama selected what seemed like a good PR strategy of fudging at the edges. It may have sounded like a good idea at the time. He would have it both ways: an “obvious” Christian with links to the Reverend Wright’s Christian church but still someone the Islamic world could see “as one of theirs.”
But as often happens when someone tries to have it both ways the politics of elision can get you into trouble with both sides. In this case the president tried to establish his Christian “bona fides” and retain his Muslim ones in a loose sort of way. He did not have to do this. Obama had the choice of being definite about his beliefs, taking the PR lumps and getting past it. Obama could, like Julia Gillard of Australia, have claimed to be an atheist. He could have claimed to have been a Muslim the political consequences be damned. Or he could have embraced Christianity with a zeal of convert. What he could not do was don the mantle of both Christianity and Islam at the same time.
Polls which showed that large parts of the public considered him Muslim were a sign that this PR strategy was collapsing. Now he is placed in the unenviable position of having to choose between sweethearts. He can no longer visit them on alternate days. The days of sending one message to Muslims and another to his domestic audience are waning.
None of this settles where the president’s true belief lies. Belief is an inward state, often unsettled in the person himself. Sometimes it is something given scant attention except in moments of danger, distress or imminent death. But an outward identity is a palpable thing. It describes how we announce our beliefs, if we have any, to the world. The president, as Franklin Graham says, can only be taken at his word. The problem is that he has sent too many, too conflicted and too complex a signal to be readily understood. He was the blank canvas on which people projected their dreams; and to which they have now projected their fears.
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The President should just fess up. After a year in the White House he has become a bitter clinger. He went home on his birthday because it is now legal to own guns in Chicago. He was registered at a gun shop for his birthday gifts so one friend could get him the Glock, another the shotgun and another the Luger. After opening his presents and going to the firing range he attended a meeting of Pentecostals and got re-re-baptized (this time with a full dunking so no one would see his crossed fingers).
I thought the statement the White House Spokesman made on Obama’s Christianity went a little overboard. OK, he did not sound more Catholic than the Pope — only more born again than George W. Bush. Is this another case where his most avid admirers are going to assume he is lying (allowing me to agree with them for once)?
For the record, I think his religion is Calculating Politician.
“He was the blank canvas on which people projected their dreams; and to which they have now projected their fears.”
In Switzerland there is the expression: “er ist eine Flasche”, or “he is an empty bottle”. It is used to describe one of those useless guys who exist in a large bureaucracy. A Wally. Obama doesn’t believe in any religion or is he an athiest. He is an empty vessel who is only worried about himself.
Unfortunately, affirmative action has led to the promotion of someone who would be as harmless as a Wally to POTUS. And now that he is in power, all he seems to want to do is to be one of the glitterati. Golf, 747 junkets to Democratic fund raisers, vacations in Costa-del-Sol and Martha’s vinyard, dinner with all the hollywood progressives. Meanwhile Pelosi, Reid and all his Czars run the show.
Wretchard writes: “But an outward identity is a palpable thing. It describes how we announce our beliefs, if we have any, to the world.”
We expect politicians to be politicians; but we expect the President to be more than a mere politician. We want the President and First Lady to represent the best of America, and at the very least to keep up appearances. Overall, Americans may be attracted to rascals, especially celebrity ones, but we expect fellow Americans, and especially neighbors and friends, to be who they say they are.
Obama is finding out the reality of political Gresham’s Law: once you corrupt the value of your word, you can’t expect anyone to trust you any longer. Obama always claims he’s telling the truth. But he hasn’t told the truth (e.g., Obamacare will lower costs, cross my heart), and no one believes that he is doing anything other than blowing smoke.
No one is going to trust him about anything, except those who are getting some monetary or psychological payoff from supporting him.
The Obama show is getting to resemble the King and the Duke episode from “Huckleberry Finn.” (Huck–”these liars warn’t no kings nor dukes, at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds.”
And the danger is that, under pressure, one reverts to type.
ADE
I’m way beyond trying to rationalize why Obama is duplicitous and untrustworthy. Whether he’s a muslim or not I do not know. I do know that every single position he has taken related to Islam has been 100% consistent with declared jihadists.
We can be reasonably certain that Obama is well aware of sharia and its complete and utter incompatibility with individual rights and republican government. Has he ever once criticized sharia? Silence speaks volumes.
On the other hand Pelosi is a declared Catholic. Her behavior and stated beliefs are so far removed from Catholic doctrine that it makes her public declaration as duplicitous as Obama’s lack of one.
The further left one goes the less likely it becomes that religious declarations, when made, are made honestly and not purely for political gain.
Looking for any honesty in either of these two is a fool’s game.
Barack Hussein Obama is Muslim, as my Norwegian forbears were Lutheran and my Bavarian forbears were Catholic.
The most beautiful sound in the world
Is the call to morning prayer
So sayeth B. Hussein
In Cairo without care
The Imams smile and smirk
They can’t see what’s the fuss
They wink and whisper low
He’s clearly one of us
It’s not the Muslim faith
Who cares he won’t eat pork
But put a victory mosque
In Manhattan New York?
He tried to sell us on
His bogus Christian views
By sitting twenty years
In Wright’s race baiting pews
We know just what he is
Chameleon, colors change
All things to everyone
The facts he’ll rearrange
But we will all survive
We’ve seen his like before
He’s wakened up the crowd
He’ll soon be out the door
I didn’t originate the term but I sure recognize the concept when I see one, and as far as I’m concerned he’s a card-carrying member of the First Church of Post Turtles.
Be real interesting if Rev. Wrong produces a certificate of baptism for Obama. Of course a baptismal certificate doesn’t prove that a person is a Christian in their heart, but it would be guaranteed to throw a wrench into Teh Won’s Muslim outreach– especially if it indicates he was baptized as an adult.
“Having it both ways” when it came beliefs, lifestyle, religions, positions on issues, and what is your favorite brand of beer used to be the mark of the truly sophisticated Progressive man. He wears boxers and briefs simultaneously and drinks the beer because it has both more taste and is less filling. Jack in the box of all beliefs and master of none.
If Obama has made that unpopular, well, that’s change I can believe in.
If we can take him at his press release then the Resident has positioned himself as a muslim apostate.
The is no critter on earth that is hated more by muslims than an apostate.
So such a claim, on his part, is virtually suicidal. Elsewhere on the planet we have seen that no amount of security can keep suicide bombers from taking out political ‘targets.’
On the other hand, if he tells the ummah that he was just ‘screening’ the kafir then he’s politically dead on the Hill.
Presidents are allowed to lie to foreigners, but not US; not on matters of religious orientation.
This is way beyond, “I did not sleep with that woman, Monica…”
America does not want a president that treats them like a bed partner of convenience.
I’d say he’s struck in a deceit spiral.
A good sum up of issues. Lately the news media has gone full retard on this issue… even fox. Obama is a muslim period everyone who knows the slightest thing about religion knows this… which shows that 4/5 of the US is retarded.
The question is “is he a practicing muslim” or not.
The other insanely retarded thing the media has played up is obama eating pork and during ramadan as proof he’s not a muslim… How retarded are these ppl? Really retarded it seems since they all seem to be claiming that 9/11 was either a jew conspiracy… Muslims are allowed to eat pork or during ramadan if it further they muslim goals… just like the 9/11 hajackers did all kinds of “non”-muslim things as most muslims do “non”-muslim things.
Hooooo boy: flaming-skull post over at Ace’s blog:
“Unmosqued: Steve Emerson Unearths Tapes of ‘Moderate Bridge-Building’ Imam Rauf”:
“Steve Emerson has unearthed 13 hours of audio tape of Imam Rauf. Emerson and his team of investigators has spent the past four weeks going through the newly found material. Rauf is a ‘radical extremist cleric who cloaks himself in sheep’s clothing.’
Among the shocking revelations Emerson’s team will reveal next week — they found Rauf:
Defending wahhabism – a puritanical version of Islam that governs Saudi Arabia
Calling for the elimination of Israel by claiming a one-nation state, meaning no more Jewish State.
Defending Bin Laden’s violence.”
http://minx.cc/?post=304874
A tradition has to be both an imposition and a choice. If it lacks either, it isn’t a tradition.
Belief is a little odd: there aren’t present beliefs. Belief is a token in accounts and explanations.
“Of course I believed that the chair would hold my weight,” means I gave no thought to its collapsing, not that I was going around believing. (Wittgenstein)
What Obama believes isn’t quite to the point; it’s what side is he on.
People who try to straddle fences usually wind up with groin injuries. Why should POTUS — any POTUS — be any different?
Wonderful poem, Walt!
He sought to be everyone’s God not realizing that one truly does have to be a god in order for this to work. Maybe he actually thought he was, but sooner or later living gods are expected to produce the miracles they claim the power to make. If they can’t they often end up being the first sacrifice to the next god that comes along.
Sometimes when you ask for too much you end up getting nothing at all. Obama wanted universal adulation and worship. It was and is too much to ask. I believe that he shall end up getting none from anyone in the very near future. The blank canvas when stained or torn has no value, and it is tossed into the garbage heap.
The problem is that Obama is , if we are to belief him, an apostate muslim. A child born to a muslim is a muslim. He doesn’t have a choice in the matter according to the all merciful Allah. I don’t know the precise sharia law, but I believe the punishment for an adult muslim that renounces his faith is death. (Lesser punishments apply to children who renounce I think.)
A. If he is an apostate, then the Islamic governments cannot deal with him, and by Sharia Law should try to kill him.
B. If he is not an apostate and a true muslim, then he has lied to the American people.
Which is it? It is either Door A or Door B, not some fuzzy wuzzy Door C where he has it both ways.
Obama is guilty of ‘apostasy’ and should be punished by Sharia law.
But in islam, ‘Taqiyya’ is used to disguise ones true beliefs and is encouraged by the Quran.
From The Middle East Quarterly:
“The Doctrine of Taqiyya:
According to Shari’a—the body of legal rulings that defines how a Muslim should behave in all circumstances—deception is not only permitted in certain situations but may be deemed obligatory in others. Contrary to early Christian tradition, for instance, Muslims who were forced to choose between recanting Islam or suffering persecution were permitted to lie and feign apostasy. Other jurists have decreed that Muslims are obligated to lie in order to preserve themselves, based on Qur’anic verses forbidding Muslims from being instrumental in their own deaths.”
One can find lip service from Obama about Jesus, but the basis of his conversion experience in Obama’s own words said nothing about Jesus, love, forgiveness, resurrection or even God. Judging by Obama’s account, he converted to a liberation mishmash victim story of blacks as an oppressed chosen people based entirely on Old Testament allusions.
Here are Obama’s own words describing how he became Christian without Christ or God or the New Testament. His conversion was about race.
“And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of the ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had been spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until the black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world.
Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shamed about, memories more accessible than those of ancient Egypt, memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild. And if part of me continued to feel that this Sunday communion sometimes simplified our condition, that it could sometimes disguise or suppress the very real conflicts among us and would fulfill its promise only through action, I also felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams.”
The president, as Franklin Graham says, can only be taken at his word.
With respect, this is bloody nonsense. Why would any self-respecting sane person take the word of a proven liar in the face of so much contrary evidence? If you’re not prepared to deal with the ugly truth that he is clearly not the Christian he claims he is, at least have the good sense to keep your thoughts to yourself.
If Obama isn’t a Muslim he deserves an Academy Award for playing one. Sharia law is barbaric. He goes to Cairo and tells Muslims how enlightened they are.
huxley @ 19 (for “Obama”)
“the Christians in the lion’s den”
Uh, Daniel was Jewish….
If one could go back to 2006 and recraft Barack Obama’s image, you can argue that it should have been simplified and stripped of its contradictory messages. The price of the constructing yourself as the central pole of the Big Tent is that the stays are going to pull you every which way. That is alright while the tent is small and low, but when it is as big America the great expanse of blank canvas is then subject to the buffeting of high winds. That is when contradictions are exacerbated; that is when one or two wires start twanging out of the ground.
The stays starting coming loose over the Ground Zero Mosque. That little wire was inconsequential of itself; but in the mysterious ways of complex systems its effects cascaded around that complex artifice that is Barack Obama’s public image and pulled yet another wire loose. The Muslim poll; then the loose cannon that is Nancy Pelosi and now Franklin Graham. The problem for the President isn’t this wire. It’s the next.
He can’t tighten the wire in this direction without creating stresses in other parts of the system. The terrible effect of “Falsus in Unum, Falsus in Omnibus” is that the failures in one place can cascade far and wide. When a politician’s political standing declines many previously unaskable questions suddenly become askable. What I should be afraid of, were I Axelrod, is what the next question might be.
Very very good post, wretchard.
I think there is more to say, but it’s churlish to say so, in the face of such a nice essay. I refer to a bit of the stuff posted the other day at Powerline, about Obama wanting to be exotic, and people taking him at his intention by marking him Muslim, evidence be slim or conflicting or even less. Plus, he’s used to double-shuffling the man, as a community organizer and as a candidate, claiming stuff he can’t come close to supporting, walking it back partway, and leaving it hanging. When he raises his hand in the signal V formation and says, “Live long and prosper!”, will that be any more or less credible than anything else that has come out of his pie-hole in the last four years?
gokart-mozart@21 said:
“the Christians in the lion’s den”
Uh, Daniel was Jewish….
————–
Yes, that’s what Obama said. It’s silly. It’s not even a verbal gaffe. It’s from a key passage of his “Dreams From My Father” memoir.
How does anyone take Obama seriously as a Christian? He doesn’t know the Bible or care enough to get proofreaders who do.
gokart-mozart @21 : ““the Christians in the lion’s den”
Uh, Daniel was Jewish….”
Yeah, I noticed that too. Maybe he was conflating Daniel in the lion’s den with Christians being fed to the lions in the Colisseum. But the obvious lurch from all the Old Testament references to Christianity circa Acts should have caused someone to speak up. I’m assuming he actually WROTE that junk?
The Barack Hussein Obama Mosque
I certainly understand why Barack Obama’s initial instinct was to back the building of the mosque, and it certainly wasn’t just because he was addressing a group of Muslims at a Ramadan dinner. That was certainly the venue, and Obama, like most people, enjoys applause, which is why we always get to see him addressing union members and deep-pocket Democrats at fund-raising events. But the main reason he backed the mosque is because, no matter where he may have been born, there is a basic disconnect between him and this nation.
That may sound far-fetched, considering that he was elected president of the United States less than two years ago, garnering about 63 million votes. But that was after he and the MSM had successfully pulled the wool over a great many eyes. He has now had time to show his true colors in his America-bashing speeches; by his banishing the little statue of Churchill, while kowtowing to Saudi royalty; by his assuming with no facts at hand that a white Cambridge police officer was stupid and clearly in the wrong; by refusing to connect the Fort Hood assassin or any of the other terrorists with Islam; declining even to prosecute the New Black Panthers for intimidating white voters. Heck, this clown won’t even cross his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance.
I used to be so naïve that I assumed the reason that Obama attended Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s racist church for 20 years was merely a means to worm his way into Chicago’s black community so that he could pursue a career in politics. I have since come to believe that Obama shares Wright’s disgusting beliefs. I believe the reason that he, unlike most Americans, Democrats included, think it’s a swell idea for the 13-story mosque to be erected is because, like his religious mentor, he is convinced that 9/11 was a case of America’s chickens coming home to roost.
—-
(this was apparent to me from day 1:
We would never think twice about some white scumbag who regularly took his young children to KKK meetings, would we?)
Dennis Miller still clings to the benign explanation.
This man’s entire life consists of benign coverups of who he really is.
—
In poker, when a player unconsciously tips his mitt it’s called a “tell”. With Obama, his tell is when he says, “Let me be perfectly clear.” Another sure way to recognize that he’s lying is to see if his mouth is moving.
—
Speaking of non-Islamic theologies reminds me that Barack Obama, when he was addressing wealthy San Franciscans at a fund-raiser in 2008, dismissed millions upon millions of American Christians as “those people clinging to their religion and their guns,” but has never once described Islamics as
those people clinging to their religion and their suicide bombs.
Certainly, 75 million can’t be more wrong than the 67 million that voted for this guy.
This muslim non-native born citizen of the US has demonstrated during the past two years that (a) he doesn’t have the cojones to take strong positions; (b) he’s a double talker on critical issues; (c) he lies, being even called a liar in Congress in his face; and (d) he hides his real records from the American people.
Thus, the question remains: are the people and especially the conservative analysts/reporters willing to take and deal with the truth, at last? It’s certainly encouraging that 75 million of our fellow citizens are willing to take the truth.
Dr. Mabuse@25
I’m sure it was a conflation error due to ignorance. Neither Obama nor anyone around him knows or cares much about Christianity. They are simply appropriating aspects of the religion to gain political power.
This ploy is transparent or should be. Yet no one calls Obama on it.
I first read that account quoted in Andrew Sullivan’s blog ( http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/03/what-obama-saw.html ) and Sullivan was praising Obama’s account to the skies for making “the message of Jesus so compelling.”
Yet Obama’s “pellucid” explanation mentioned Jesus not at all nor love nor God nor anything else normally to be found in a Christian conversion. Instead Obama’s conversion was entirely about how the Old Testament can inform the black experience.
There is something to that and if it uplifted Obama, fine, but it is not to be mistaken for the message of Jesus.
Obama sold the Lockerbie bomber for $72k. That was 189 Americans for chump change political contributions from BP. BP then got a $800 billion oil concession from Libya.
Do you thin Eisenhower or Trueman would have done that?
It appears that in politics a pellucid exposition can be trumped by a Pelosied demand for investigations everywhere. Ultimately holding the teacup correctly doesn’t fix the problem of having no tea. Ain’t nothing like the absurd to demean the sublime.
Tail Gunner Nancy
What we now have reams and reams of documentation for is that he is a liar. So it doesn’t much matter what he says from here on out. Even a bunch of the dunderheads who voted for him and worshipped him until recently are figuring that out.
What we need to do is take him out with the rest of the trash in November and try to salvage our Republic.
If nothing else, he’s guilty of economic treason. If this individual is not impeached and convicted and removed from the office of POTUS, then the laws covering impeachment and conviction and removal can just as well be cooked into a meatloaf and served to Joe Arpaio’s jailbirds.
It seems the problem of no tea in the teacup remains a political not an epistemological problem for the Left. It is still a matter of perspective. It is always a matter of perspective, for them, not reality. There is no world exterior to the mind. There is no You and I, there is only an Us and a Them. There is nothing more nimble, in a way, than the mind of the true-believer.
“Winston, how many fingers am I holding up?”
Seeing what one expects to see will be a difficult to habit to break.
As he has so many times, once again Obama has shown himself to be neither fish nor fowl, but as slippery as an eel. The man is simply incapable of making a firm commitment. He should have remained in the Senate; it is full of such feckless hybrids.
Aardvark: The Obama show is getting to resemble the King and the Duke episode from “Huckleberry Finn.” (Huck–”these liars warn’t no kings nor dukes, at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds.
After the November 2010 election:
“. . . here comes a raging rush of people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, and banging tin pans and horns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by; and as they went by I see they had the king and the duke astraddle of a rail—that is, I knowed it WAS the king and the duke, though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn’t look like nothing in the world that was human—just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier-plumes. Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn’t ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings CAN be awful cruel to one another . . .”
“But as often happens when someone tries to have it both ways the politics of elision can get you into trouble with both sides.”
I think it was said of Eldridge Cleaver during his Algerian(?) exile “Stradaling the fence is hard on the balls.”
“The days of sending one message to Muslims and another to his domestic audience are waning.”
Quick – what group is famous for doing this?
Doug! Well said.
Obama is as a result of being a red diaper baby . ” Man in the Trap”. An excellent book explaining why character structures are so flawed and the ideological leanings. A new one out now is by Dr. Charles Konia called The Emotional Plague.
No one construct can explain one such as Obama with his issues of race, international background,(kinda a military brat moving often)but the newest movement for mental health approximately in the latter part of the last century is Adult Children of alcoholics. There is a long list called the laundry list of typical behaviors of children raised in homes with illness, alcohol, divorce etc. Obama also has a very weak masculine as anyone can see. The greatest juxtaposition to me was him firing the General. Obama cannot fathom “fighting”…michelle does that for him with words and body language.
He suffers greatly but has repressed it by running for the external gold and applause. It will never fill him nor Michelle . They are like the poor red necks who win the lottery. They blow it all very quickly for they do not have an internal center/core.
He will be written about for a very long time but very few get him if they do not look at his horrific childhood.
It is chilling to think about the measures he has taken to alter our world and even the planet for his longing to be seen , known and FEEL IMPORTANT.
Also the author Alice Miller explains the roots of evil which to me is when one cannot face their reality and lie to themselves and everyone around them to run from their pain. Many defenses are used to keep them from feeling. He has many people keeping him propped up…who are as sick as he is and who knows what deep pockets keep him running like a gerbil in a cage.
Wretchard said:
If one could go back to 2006 and recraft Barack Obama’s image, you can argue that it should have been simplified and stripped of its contradictory messages.
If one did, there would be no there absent the contradictions, there is a nonentity.
The Boss @ 30. I have GOT to start a Commonplace Book
Doug: Quit calling it a mosque. Its a War Memorial.
Things are about to go to the next level.
http://gkurl.us/geu
Steve Emerson rides again.
Popcorn for everybody!!!!!!!
W: “The president, as Franklin Graham says, can only be taken at his word.”
Well, it’s more complicated than that because there is the Muslim doctrine of taqqiya.
“Within the Islamic theological framework, the concept of taqiyya… refers to the practice of precautionary dissimulation whereby believers may conceal their faith when under threat, persecution or compulsion. The practice of concealing one’s faith in dangerous circumstances originates in the Qur’an itself, which deems blameless those who disguise their beliefs in such cases…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya
“Islamic Tactics of Taqqiya teaches Muslims to practice Deception, Fraud & Double Standards to spread Islam…”
http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/65699
“A Muslim is allowed to lie to prevent harm that may come to him or to Islam… There are certain provisions for lying, so a Muslim can lie for the cause of Islam…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMc3XMB6ZZg
Cybergeezer’s Taqiyya point is well taken. But in a nasty, dysfunctional childhood filled with abandonment such as Buraq’s, a child often learns to be a master liar just to mentally survive. How many sides is he lying too? Does he even know? He may be just a hard left marxist with heavy Islamic sympathies, or then again, he may be a true believer. We probably will never know.
Its seems though that most Islamic governments believe he is on their side. Buraq must have made sufficient assurances and shown sufficient sympathies to enough of the right people in the Muslim world to convince them he is a Muslim true believer and his “Christianity” act is just taqiyya. If that were the case, that would be why all the bowing, the chit chat with Al jazeera, the snubbing of Israel , and his support for the Ground Zero Sharia Compliance Center are important. To avoid the “Apostate” label, Buraq needs to periodically show his submission to Islam to maintain his status as a true believer in the eyes of influential muslims, whether he is a true believer or not.
At best he has conflicting loyalties. At worse, if he is a true believer, since Allah demands total and complete fealty to the political and military strategies of the Koran , Buraq would have to effectively be an enemy agent of a foreign power, the House of Islam. The Koran does not allow for two masters; it allows only one: Allah.
Most people miss the main point: It’s not so much a question of whether the President is Muslim or Christian, per se. Rather, the question is: how hostile is he going to be to Christianity? One may assume, following the statements of Imam Rauf and others of his ilk that the odds are even that a Muslim President would be at least passively hostile to Christianity.
Given that many of our laws and traditions are inherited from and pased on Christian traditions and practices (via English Common Law) this would also imply that he’s hostile to our entire culture and – possibly – desirous of imposing Shariah law upon our society.
Back in those times when I was an attorney much of my practice consisted of criminal defense work. Of my clients who were actually career criminals I have the following observations to make:
(1) Despite their levels of intelligence, and many of them were very smart, they seem to be unable to contemplate the future. It does not matter to them if they are the only ones who could have raided the jewelry box if they know that they won’t be discovered today. The fact that they were the only ones who could have done it will be revealed tomorrow somehow escapes their minds. They live in the present. The idea of the future is somehow inconceivable to them.
(2) The idea that they can’t spin a lie that won’t be believed or that will be called upon is alien to them. That provokes rage upon their part. The victims are always supposed to believe their lies. How dare they not? Such arrogance on the part of the victims.
(3) In the final analysis nothing can ever really be their fault. Its always somebody else’s
fault. You know, “the Devil made me do it,” or “I was misled.” Personal responsibility for your own conduct is an alien concept.
The thing that bothers me is to what extent the behavioral patterns of our current ruling class mirror that of career criminals. Is there a distinction, or does cutting the Gordian Knot reveal that there isn’t any difference in them at all except for the amount of loot they have the capacity to steal?
Byron York had a piece about this today. In it he noted a story (IIRC coming from one of the ghost-written autobiographies) that BO fresh in Chicago was getting a haircut, the patrons and the barbers picking up on his name asked if he (Obama) was Muslim and Obama’s answer was “My grandfather was”, which of course does not answer the question. According to York’s piece Obama recounted his father was a Muslim who eventually became an atheist.
That is it, Christianity, Islam, etc is so much flying spaghetti monster to Obama. I get the feeling the real visitor to Wright’s church was Michelle and not Barak who was along because that is what a good husband does. Does the Whitehouse start to make more of a show of “Obama’s Christianity”? I do not think so.
I do agree with him on the appeal of the call to evening prayer. I remember with great fondness walking in Al-Ain at evening time listening to the same thing, watching some people hustle to the nearest mosque or up by the clocktower round-about the Pakistanis just saying their prayers outside and together, while I was looking for a nice nook to sit down get out of pedestrian traffic and eat my schawarma or having a nice stroll with the Empress after mass.
Tcobb @ 44: very interesting post.
I see an analogous behavioral fault in the incompetents swarming the corporate IT department these days, in large part because of the depressed salaries – though which is cause and which effect, I leave to you. Anyway, the trait seems to be that anyone who gets hold of *a* fact, stops right there. That it’s well known we need fifty facts, does not motivate them to keep moving. That their fact is in conflict with the (one) fact that their neighbor has, invokes no excitement. That we are tasked with building a ziggurat and they have hold of exactly one brick does not seem sufficient reason for them not to seem both satisfied and paralyzed by the afterglow.
I swear I did not see such people in professional positions twenty years ago. Certainly not for more than a few weeks at a time.
No, He can’t be a Muslim because Muslims are anti abortion, and he is doing his best to push abortion all over the world.
wouldn’t it be interesting to know if Imam Rauf was also in attendance at that famous bye-bye dinner for Rashid Khalidi?
I want to see that tape. how about it, LA Times?!
The thick uncertainty is palpable in the air and Barry Poo ain’t helpin’. He seems to be piling on the uncertainty. Vacays? Muslim pandering? Joblessness going sky-high? Ugh.
I don’t know his private religious views. Of course, if he is an Islamist, which he can be without being necessarily devout, then he has no private religious views. I think the best way to see him is as 1/3 Alinsky/Ayers Marxist, 1/3 Black Liberationist with and eye towards Africa and Kenya in particular, and 1/3 ‘pure’ Muslim. No matter which third of the pie you look at, it is anti-American, anti-white, anti-Semitic, anti-West and anti-Israel.
He is very much like the college radicals I knew back-when, with the Islam part added. They loved Marx and the Third World; they might have had qualms about some Islamic practices but would not hesitate to buy into Palestinian, Arab, etc., victimhood if it brought them allies.
So I don’t see Obama as divided or conflicted. His Marxist part wants to coop the Islamic part. His black liberationist part is already Kenya-Islamic. His Islamic part is happy to play with the remainder, swallowing them on command. And his Luo roots were tied to slave trading and early conversion to Islam, from what I gather.
In fairness to him, though, I don’t thing that the religious beliefs of GHW Bush, Bill Clinton and some other Presidents have been that clear. The main thing about Obama is that he is against what most Americans are for, he wants to be dictator of a socialist state while being a libertine, and he enjoys punching Israel and Great Britain. In other words, he is an enemy of the majority of Americans, and lots of other people too.
Perhaps Obama’s deep values could be ascertained with some of the following questions:
1. Does the Constitution offer guarantees for freedom of speech?
2. Does the Constitution offer guarantees for freedom of religion?
3. Is it constitutionally viable to put up a billboard in New York City showing the Danish cartoon about Muhammed?
4. Should the right of a citizen to post such a billboard be defended by the President of the United States?
5. Is it constitutionally viable to build a Victory Mosque close to Ground Zero?
6. Should the constitutional right to build the mosque be defended by the President?
7. Is the constitutionality of the billboard greater or lesser or the same as the constitutionality of building the mosque?
8. Do you think the city of New York would somehow find a way to prevent the billboard?
9. Would you be comfortable, given its constitutionality, placing such a billboard across the street from the Victory Mosque?
10. Would the builders and supporters of the mosque, who are intent on emphasizing constitutional rights, be respectful of the constitutional right to put up the billboard?
Inquiring people want to know.
If you think that the mosque is protected by constitutional rights but oppose the billboard, please explain the constitutional basis for your opinion.
And if the “yes on mosque but no on billboard” is your position, please explain why your objections to the billboard do not also apply to the mosque.
In the Aristotelian Logic world, the answers are obvious. In the Islamic Logic world the answers would be quite different.
“One-third inexperienced incompetent; one-third radical leftist; one-third Muslim.”
Mabuse@25, the reason no MSM commentator or news reader spotted that mangling of Judeo-Christian History (or theology, if you like) was that an anti-Christian bias is an essential part of the professional make-up of a modern journalist. No MSM organization will advance an “on-air” personality to a position of any responsibility if it gets out that the person is even sympathetic to Christianity, much less a professed Christian.
Too many brights among the elite; Christians need not apply.
Wretcherd
For anyone that has been outside of America and traveled to the MIddle East, you darn well know that if your father is Muslim, you are a muslim. Thats the way it is. If you decide you don’t want to be a muslim anymore, you are a Aposate. You are persona non-grata. Its tough to be a player from the land of the sand. His Father was a Muslim and his Step father was a Muslim. But The O is an american and says he is a christian. Only in a Non Sharia country can a muslim renounce their faith.
So a progressive player, BHO used Christianity to get “in” with the votes in Chicago and the State of Illinois. It worked, our organizer made a name amongst the progressive party machine. Sweet success, but things came quickly. He went to the National stage and played well against a inept opposition. With the help of Journolista’s he reached the brass ring. He won.
Darn the luck. He “in” is now an “out”. How can he play both sides in of all things, religion? He can’t. Even the press can’t stop what is happening. It will be beyond their control. somehere in a jungle, a desert, a fertile field, people are reading and wondering. Look at it this way, it has a knucklehead like me writing about it. I am a lurker, not a writer.
PS
What I find really comical, in this alternate universe that is our progressive america, is the fact that BHO’s popularity is as high as the bottom of my shoe in the Muslim world. Yes, you guessed it, his numbers are in the dumpster in the middle east. Seems leaders from all over are more popular than our President. From Ackmapajmas (whatever the spelling is) to our buddy Chavez. Everyone is rating much higher then Obama. What a strange little planet we have.
As he
It is not only his faith which he must clarify, but virtually everything else aout him. This problem is intimately intertwined with the whole “birther” issue, originally raised, not by Republicans, but by rivals from his own party. It involves questions about his academic record, passport, and much more. Who are his friends, and for how long? What of the charges by Jack Cashill that Bill Ayers was the ghost author of his two autobiographies. And part of the problem is, there have been so many vague and contradictory tales, that whatever the full truth is, which Barack-X might tell, how many of us would believe him “this time”?
Larry @ 50: Dubya’s religious beliefs were absolutely out front and plain as day. He wanted to give the Moslems in Iraq the benefit of Christian charity in every way, the benefit of the doubt, and the material aid. I believe that on a personal basis, for him, that was a greater factor than anything political, anything about weapons of mass destruction, anything about oil, anything about doing a favor for Saudi Arabia, anything about the legacy of his father, etc, etc, etc. And he did this even knowing it would likely martyr himself, for such it so often goes.
I’m afraid he was more wrong than right, but I will salute the man until he and/or I pass on for the courage and morality that it showed, and for showing why you want a man of good faith in high office.
(For I believe we were right to invade Iraq for all the secondary reasons, and he *might* have done so anyway, but he *did* do so on the basis of faith above all).
Larry @50 “I don’t thing that the religious beliefs of GHW Bush, Bill Clinton and some other Presidents have been that clear.”
I seldom know the specifics of what any politician believes: I don’t know what Bill Clinton thought of the Atonement, or what Bush thought of Faith vs. Works, or what Gerald Ford thought of Sola Scriptura. But I’d also say that there was never any mystery about their religious beliefs. I might think Clinton was a hypocrite, but that was based on his behavior (ostentatiously carrying a big Bible around when he was in hot water for lechery). It never happened that I thought he was somehow running a double game, dressing up in Christian clothes while all the time being a secret believer in something else, and placating me with one images while flashing secret signals to the “other team”. Obama is different from any other politician I’ve ever experienced in this way. In his case, I really do think his “Christian” professions are not just hypocritical, but maliciously deceptive. The closest comparison is to a politician who acquires a wife and family as a beard, to hide his secret gay life. It’s the same desire to grab the comforts and benefits of the “respectable” lifestyle, while having the freedom to enjoy a parallel and contrary one as well.
From ‘The Audacity Of Hope, “I WILL STAND WITH THE MUSLIMS SHOULD THE POLITICAL WINDS OF WAR SHIFT IN AN UGLY DIRECTION..” Who the hell is he kidding? He is a Muslim and there is no doubt about it. His “church” in Chicago was Marxist political theater with an overlay of pseudo Christianity, to fool the masses. His “pastor” Wright was a “former” Muslim. This is a man who can insinuate that someone is a racist without even a clue, without even knowing them, but we are to believe he is something else entirely even after he leaves enough clues for anyone to trip over, anywhere they look. We have a black Muslim in the White House, a man whose world view and attitude could be interchangeable with that of Louis Farrakhan. 2012 can’t come fast enough when we finally have the opportunity to excise this malignancy from the White House and our national psyche. He declared a fatwa on this country and if he or his puppet masters don’t like the fact that Americans are starting to understand we have someone with a treacherous allegiance and background as President, well that’s just tough, isn’t it. Would he have been elected, had the public been this well informed before November 2008?
Excerpt from “The Lay of the Last Minstrel”
by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land?
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell.
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung.
he is muslim until he renounces that he is. I have not heard that he has renounced it.
Graham is just trying to be cute and it isn’t pretty.
deception and duplicity are just standard fare with the crime know as islam.
we will know he has renounced islam when there is a fatwa against him as an apostate.
Josh, I was referring to Bush’s father, GHW Bush. As to whether Dubya’s prime motivation in Iraq was to spread ‘Christian charity’, I can not say, but I think there was much more to it than that.
Dr Mabuse, I agree and disagree with your point. When someone’s ‘hypocrisy’ is so thorough that their behavior contradicts the main tenets of whatever they profess to believe, it’s fair to ask what they really believe.
Regarding both Presidents that I mentioned, and I did not think of this when I posted at #50, there have been repeated claims that GHW and Bill Clinton both were Freemasons. I do not know whether Christianity ‘allows’ for Freemasonic membership, or if these claims were true, but I have seen references to speeches by both men which contained one-world or new-world-order references with religious symbolism that was certainly not Christian, Jewish or Muslim. So I don’t know. I am not borrowing from the Evangelical Christian claim that ‘Freemasons are evil’; I simply wonder what both individuals believed.
We will know he is not a Moslem when he changes his name to Barry Hallelujah Oglethorpe. I mean, seriously, folks.
Larry, OK, sorry if I missed that. But the left has delighted in comparing Dubya’s religiosity to Islamic anything and made a moral equivalence out of whole cloth, so one wants to remember Dubya in the conversation.
56. Dr. Mabuse,
If you believe the controversial Larry Sinclair, the beard business may also be more applicable than you intended. While I remain agnostic on the charge, it is a matter of allegation.
Wretchard
My view is that Obama has changed the game. The Left has relied on salami tactics to steer the country in their direction for the last sixty years, relying on the one thin slice of Marxist socialism at a time to advance, knowing the populace will not notice, like the frog placed in a pot of gradually heating water. But Obama was greedy. He saw the majorities in the Congress and decided to go for the whole salami. And thank goodness he did, for he woke up those who sleep, and just in time. I believe the country has Awakened, and the steady leftward slide is about to be reversed. Not halted. Reversed. It will take time to change the culture back to where it was, but as Mao, the Obama White House’s favorite philosopher once said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And that step begins this November.
#61: My Father, both my Grandfathers, and all four of my GreatGrandfathers were Masons. All were religious. They ranged from devout Episcopalians and Congregationalists to Quakers turned Methodists, and Presbyterians. My ancestors were coming to America from the early 1630s up through the 1720s. In almost every case they were escaping the religious persecutions such as the what the Huguenots escaped in France, the Quakers were subjected to by the Church of England, the persecutions of Protestants in Catholic Germany and those feisty Scots-Irish Presbyterians.
#61 Larry in the Silicon
I was referring to Bush’s father, GHW Bush.
Bush 41 has always been an active Episcopal layman. He was on the vestry of St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Kennebunkport and presently serves on the vestry of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston. A friend of mine who graduated from Bowdoin says that the Bushes are regular churchgoers; they aren’t just nominal members.
He did address the General Convention of the Episcopal Church while he was vice president but I can’t find an online link to that address. Here is a link to Bush 41′s remarks at a meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals in 1992:
http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/public_papers.php?id=4019&year=1992&month=3
I think the reason why Bush 41′s faith was less obvious to the public is that Episcopalians tend to be relatively reserved about expressing their piety in public (my dad’s side of the family was Episcopalian, so I have some experience with that kind of reticence). Bush 43 became a Methodist when he married Laura and adopted the more open style of expression of that tradition.
As for Freemasonry, some Protestant groups have no problems with members being Masons. The only group I know of that objects (other than the Roman Catholic Church) is the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
Hell has frozen over. The New York Times is reporting a Pew Research survey that suggests the Democratic Party is losing the Jewish vote — in droves.
The bad news (for the Democrats) is that the poll was taken before the Mosque brouhaha. What it is now, God only knows. “(It should be noted that the Pew poll was taken before Obama’s bold support for the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque a few blocks north of ground zero.)” The graphic in the NYT site shows a steady decline in Democratic Party affiliation since 2008. Combined with the rapid drop in Hispanic support for President Obama the question now arises. Do the Dems just laugh this off? Stay the course or find some way of trimming their sails to catch the prevailing wind?
What is truly remarkable about this Presidency in crisis is that there are no obvious signs of re-jigging. There are no widely reported meetings of Democratic elders closeted in strategy conferences. The President, who is currently vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard, does not seem to be in crisis mode even as his party hurtles towards possible loss in November.
This eerie whistling in the dark at a time when a crisis may be brewing in Iran, suggests that there’s nobody home. Each crisis is met by a perfunctory response. The North Korean’s sank a South Korean ship and so what? The Iranians are about to pass a milestone maybe, and so what? The terrible “so whats” accumulate.
The trail of administration’s unfinished business, from the postponed trial of KSM, to the never-happened Grand Bargain with Iran interspersed with bits and pieces of half-finished policies among whom wander forgotten and misplaced czarlings are mute testimony to an organization is disarray. It’s like a carcass with maggots visibly burrowing to the surface.
And then there are the vultures.
Bill Clinton is out there “defending” an Obama whose ever-lengthening vacations are starting to look like escapes from a reality. Bill is probably positioning himself to pick up the pieces. Maybe one of the reasons why the Democrats aren’t in frantic conclave to change strategy is that they’ve already written off Obama and are circling like buzzards waiting to grab the parts of the Party that make it through November.
If the President implodes the Democratic Party scene that follows will be interesting to behold. As usual the Left will say that the President didn’t go Left enough while the other side will argue that a “run to the middle” would have saved him. When the Big Tent collapses a lot of kicking and squirming figures will be seen wrestling under the collapsed expanse of blank canvas.
The Progressives, Liberals, Leftists, Marxists, Socialists, Feminists who together insist on defending Islam are doing so from the demonstrably insane assertion that as a faith it is the legitimate response of an authentic third-world population reacting to centuries of colonial and imperialist oppression. It’s the only metaphorical lens around which they can wrap their sweaty little brains.
The chief executive has been steeped in this tangle of Progressivist pseudo-revolutionary self-contradicting claptrap for his entire life. He is born of a woman so besotted by the romance of outlaw politics that she seemingly could only achieve estrus in the company of a person not of her race, culture, or religious heritage. Poor bastard…
If BO should quit in a snit or be gone from the Presidency for any reason before November 2010 election winners take office in January, would Biden be President and Pelosi be VP,constitutionally, until January 2013? Just asking?
Quip: Let’s see. Jump over the ditch, or not. I’ll split the difference.
From The Political Manual: Taking Positions:
Obama convinced some of the Right and most of the Independents that he was telling them the truth about what they wanted to hear, while not being serious about what they disliked. He had to guard against the creeping realization by everyone that he is untrustworthy about everything. His tactic is failing.
Marta #70:
If Obama should leave the presidency, Biden would become president and he would appoint his own VP, I think. At least, that is the way it worked with Gerald Ford, who appointed Rockefeller as his VP in 1974.
And that’s how Ford became V.P. under Nixon. Agnew resigned in disgraced leaving the office vacant.
Gerald R Ford was quickly selected by Nixon ( the Speaker was a Democrat ) because he was the Republican Whip in the House.
There were no skeletons in the closet and he was admired across the aisle.
The Speaker gets the big office only if both executives are killed by AQ at a stroke or some other tragedy. ( nuclear strike ? )
BTW, just because the King of Saudi Arabia is in on the joke does not mean that AQ would not regard the Resident as an apostate.
After all, he’s targeting them all of the time everywhere on the planet.
Where’s the love?
With so many schisms under islam the world is filled with apostates.
For the true believer, murdering a Shi’ite has a bigger payoff than a Christian, nay, even a Jew.
Apostates ALWAYS are at the top of the list, and all schismatics are by definition apostates.
Wretchard at #68: When the Big Tent collapses a lot of kicking and squirming figures will be seen wrestling under the collapsed expanse of blank canvas.
There are worse Big Tent disasters than collapse: one of the worst fire disasters in American history occurred a month after D-Day in Hartford, Connecticut, when the Ringling Brothers circus tent caught fire with 6,000 people inside it:
“Because the big top tent had been coated with 1,800 lb (816 kg) of paraffin dissolved in 6,000 US gallons (23 m³) of gasoline (some sources say kerosene), a common waterproofing method of the time, the flames spread rapidly. Many people were badly burned by the melting paraffin, which rained down like napalm from the roof. The fiery tent collapsed in about eight minutes according to eyewitness survivors, trapping hundreds of spectators beneath it.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_circus_fire
So perhaps there will be more of a panicky rush for the exits from Obama’s circus rather than wrestling underneath the canvas.
Pelosi was the one who rammed through health care when O’s staff was ready to throw in the towel.
I think that the current white house is already prepared for a republican congress. The O’s just don’t care that much. The white house didn’t write any of the democratic legislation. They won’t write any of the repubublican legislation either. They pretty much figure congress is not their problem.
That’s why you’re hearing about clinton making the rounds for the dems. He wants to be known as the guy trying to save the democratic party.
He’s reminding them of the good old daze…
Nothing further need be said.
If I were H…
And a real politician…
I would be concerned.
——
SoS SoS SoS…
Save our Ship of State.
W @68: I wish I could believe what the NY Times reports. I have seen only one single person in my circle of Jewish liberals here in Los Angeles express regret that they voted for Obama. That person now sees BHO as worse than Carter. Every other one — that numbers well over two dozen I see and speak to frequently — still supports the President and continues to see him in a favorable light.
Besides, it is cheap to tell a pollster something; whom you vote for and whose candidate you contribute to is the real story. Taqiyya comes in many flavors.
The interesting thing will be to watch what happens when the structure is obviously on the point of collapse. Will the Journolist types and the likes of Nancy Pelosi rush in to shore it up with their own hands or will they flee fearing for their own political lives? There is a saying about rats and sinking ships…
And as far as the Progressives are concerned in regards to Mr. Obama they may start to appreciate the wisdom of the old saying: Be careful for what you wish for–you just might get it.
They did.
Now the consequences follow, and they are not what they expected. And contrary to what they believe there is no “reset” button. You can’t really go back to “its all Bush’s fault.” That’s wearing thin and no one much credits it anymore.
Best quote yet (originator unknown): “If being a Christian was a crime, the case against Barack Obama would be dismissed for lack of evidence.”
Now for the news: Bosephus (Hank Williams Jr to those of you who don’t sabe
picking and grinning) has a new one. It is about Obama.
Title: “The Great Reneger”.
(Chortle)
Anybody seen Buddy?
Who are we kidding? Obama has no beliefs. He’s a sociopathic changeling.
Batman @78 I wish I could believe what the NY Times reports. I have seen only one single person in my circle of Jewish liberals here in Los Angeles express regret that they voted for Obama. That person now sees BHO as worse than Carter. Every other one — that numbers well over two dozen I see and speak to frequently — still supports the President and continues to see him in a favorable light.
Don’t you see any inconsistency at all between “Jewish liberal” and “Republican Jew”?
Even if your “well over two dozen” (30?) Jews were a random sample of American Jews, it’s so small that you’d have a margin of error of 17% at 95% confidence. This assumes that the NYT’s 33% is the actual Republican percentage of Jews in the United States. (The margin of error depends on the actual percentage.)
If your own 3% (1/30) is the actual percentage, the margin of error is 6%, and the NYT is mistaken or lying, but your own poll is no evidence of that.
Some great posts here, but getting back to Obama’s “conversion” experience as related in #19, in his own words..
Notice something else missing? Actually, two things…
The word “faith”…nowhere to be found.
“Without faith it is impossible to please God…”
The second ingredient missing is “humbleness”. Knowing you cannot save yourself…knowing your best efforts is like filthy rags before a HOLY GOD.
Instead we get “a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shamed about” and “that this Sunday communion sometimes simplified our condition” (uh..yes!,
that’s EXACTLY what it’s supposed to do) and finally,
“the very real conflicts among us and would fulfill its promise only through action..”.
There it is, folks. Obama IS NOT a true Christian!
BUT he is also NOT a Muslim.
He belongs to the “First Church of Community Organizing”,
the Saul Alinsky branch, where whatever you say is right in your own eyes as long as it accomplishes the ultimate goal of wealth redistribution and power.
Heck, he might even name himself “The Pope” of that cult after he leaves office…
Worked for Algore and his “First Church of Global Warming”.
One America-Hater is much like the next. Perhaps if I studied and dissected them, I could tell them apart.
Tcobb @44: Theodore Dalrymple has done valuable work in this area, which exactly confirms your observations. But I’d like to add one of my own.
High intelligence, as I’ve written before, is a tool, not a goal nor a state of grace. One uses it to get where one wants to go. One of the conceits of the man blessed with high intelligence but low or no morality is that he can jigger “the System” before it recognizes and reacts to his transgressions.
If he’s right about that, then he can indeed “empty the jewelry box” and get away cleanly, even if no one else could possibly have done the deed.
Of course, the critical word in the sentence above is if. But one who’s practiced deceit for profit for years is likely to downplay that word; his record of success will persuade him that he can prevail as he’s done before, regardless of any changes in the interim. He might even blind himself selectively to trends that countervail his optimism, such as the rise of the New Media and the prodigious memory of the Internet.
And to me, that’s Barack Hussein Obama in a nutshell.
Ray Charles. America the Beautiful: “America…Amerrrrr-i-ca, God mend thine every flaw…” Got it? Can you hear it in the mind’s ear? Does your skin tingle? One suspects Pres. Malignant Noisome Pestilence’s skin crawls at the song. And that is the difference between him and us. He doesn’t get this country. He never has. He never will.
40. CPT. Charles links to an Atlas article about Steve Emerson’s find of Audiotapes of Imam Rauf.
There is a non-functional link to Emerson interview on Bill Bennet Show.
Here is a link to an mp3 download of the interview on billbennett.com
—
Atlas:
Steve Emerson has unearthed 13 hours of audio tape of Imam Rauf. Emerson and his team of investigators has spent the past four weeks going through the newly found material. Rauf is a “radical extremist cleric who cloaks himself in sheep’s clothing.”
Among the shocking revelations Emerson’s team will reveal next week — they found Rauf:
Defending wahhabism – a puritanical version of Islam that governs Saudi Arabia
Calling for the elimination of Israel by claiming a one-nation state, meaning no more Jewish State.
Defending Bin Laden’s violence
Demonstrating that there is a lot more to this man than merely a cleric.
When Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber was drafted into the army he was asked how could he fight for the country that had treated his people so badly. He said, “There ain’t nuthin’ wrong with this country that Hitler can fix.”
There ain’t nuthin’ wrong with this country that Barry Hessein can fix!
The illegal squatter in the white house declared on CNN that he is indeed muslim. If you go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCAffMSWSzY you can watch and listen to this arrorgant despicable lame excuse for human state with his usual arrogance that he is indeed muslim. Think about it. Muslims hate Christians and Jews. The muslim terrorist hates Christian and Jews. Have you seen the disdain that he holds for Israel? The next thing on the agenda is the DHIMMI CONTRACT. If you don’t know what that is then go to http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/3009/07/18/video-the-dhimmi-contract/. If you are a Christian or Jew and you are reading this, then watch the video and learn of your future fate at the hands of muslims.
68. Wretchard – great post.
While I think it is a great idea that some Jews are seeing the light, I don’t think it matters. Come election time, the dems will remind the Jews that conservative Christians vote republican and the Jews will bounce back to the dems as if on a rubber band.
Somebody has taught the Jews that cCs are their worst enemy, worse than Islamists.
The fact is we have a right to know as much about who we have in elected office as possible. What we got was someone who has hidden himself, with a lot of help, from the public. The political establishment and the media did not do their job in investigating who he is. And the public made no demands but instead many bought into a fantasy of making history.
We don’t know who he is because he doesn’t know who he is.
A friend of mine just started his own business making landmines that look like prayer mats.
It’s doing well.
He says Prophets are going through the roof.
It’s a great opportunity if you want to buy some stock.
19. huxley
One can find lip service from Obama about Jesus, but the basis of his conversion experience in Obama’s own words said nothing about Jesus, love, forgiveness, resurrection or even God. Judging by Obama’s account, he converted to a liberation mishmash victim story of blacks as an oppressed chosen people based entirely on Old Testament allusions.
I hesitate to tell you this but more and more “Old Testament” stories are being proven by archeologists and others every year. Yes, some are exaggerated or otherwise changed by the ancient writers or their editors in the past, much like stories and accounts of modern events. But that is just how it was and is.
But your comment about “his conversion” is an interesting take. When I read the parts you quoted, I didn’t really get that he was converted or such, what I got out of it was that he was substituting his learned black liberation, radical and racial teachings and “feelings”. The same way most blacks do right up to this day. It is an easy out, out of personal responsibility and accountability and a field of fertile excuses and unrealistic [or at best, free, feel good] wishes.
Big day today. A county fair in a neighboring town presents an opportunity for me and some of my buds to go and spread the word and our propaganda and of course some good b-b-q and maybe even a beer or two. I know my girls will enjoy it.
I’m working for my kids and grand kids this day and will go to church tomorrow and pray for them.
What will you do?
Papa Ray
PS. “THE WON” believes in nothing, not even himself, he is but a puppet of many powerful shadow masters and he is failing them and it is starting to show.
I would imagine that they are sorely pissed.
OH, and I don’t believe he wrote either of “his” books. They are just a fabrication by those that were molding him for their assault on America.
In 2008, before the election, I saw a video on the internet. It was a video recorded by a home camcorder showing Obama at about age 18 or 19 talking about his plans for his life. It is very revealing. I recently tried to find this video with no results. Have any of you seen this video? It was sent to me by a friend and I’m assuming that if I saw it, many other people must have seen it. I would love to watch it again.
It’s clear that Obama had an agenda from an early age. I believe he has been practicing taquiya since he was a young adult. His plan:
1. Get an ivy league education.
2. Find a reasonably attractive wife.
3. Get involved in the community in Chicago so you gain some name recognition and notoriety.
4. Join a church so you can be identified as an upstanding person in the community.
5. Have a couple kids to cement your mainstream appearance as a Christian family man.
6. Run for office.
7. Practice how to use words to cover up your true intentions.
8. Run for the next highest office.
9. Pass yourself off as a constitutional professor. (By the way, Obama’s remarks about the Constitution being a negative document and doing nothing about redistributive change shows how absolutely ignorant he is of the climate in which the U.S. was founded and the intentions of the Founders.)
10. Run for POTUS and make people believe you’re more of a centrist than a far-left radical.
11. Fundamentally transform the U.S.A. and destroy it.
I believe that he developed this agenda as a young man and has been single-minded in its achievement.
The things that will bring him down are his flawed personality and character disorder. Let’s hope that the meltdown will be soon and we can get rid of this mental case who is ruining our country.
I just want to say that I think Walt’s poem is outstanding! Actually, I have to say that a lot of the posts here are remarkably good. I must say that I never bought the meme that Obama is a Christian. I think his whole story is starting to unravel. What I never understood is why the media was never curious about the fact that his academic records are sealed. Frankly, I’ve never heard of that before. Is this a common practice? Anybody know?
Byron York says that Obama has a “Muslim problem.”
Why is the fact that about one-quarter of the American people believe that Obama is a Muslim a problem? As Seinfeld said of homosexuality: “… not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
The American leadership – from Bush after 9-11 on – has been at pains to tell us that virtually all Muslims are peaceful and moderate. We have two Muslims in Congress. Why is the White House upset that a growing number of people believe he’s Muslim?
We note two things about references to Obama as a Muslim. The Left vehemently denies it and calls it a slur. The Right also denies it and tries to explain the (mis)perception of so many Americans.
Obama supporters point to his professed Christianity from his books. The problems with Obama’s professed Christianity is that he was “converted” by a racist, anti-Semitic bigot named Jeremiah Wright whose congregation was harangued with Liberation Theology rants that had more to do with racial hatred than with Christianity. Wright is a Christian like Fred Phelps is a Christian. In other words, they are bigots disguised as clergy.
The Right also states that Obama is a Christian based on exactly the same evidence … taking Obama’s word for it.
People in both camps suggest that Obama joined Wright’s church more for political reasons than religious reasons. I concur.
I am of the opinion that Obama has no personal faith in God. I also believe that in his youth he was culturally influenced by Islam. From York’ article…
As Obama said, his grandfather was a Muslim. His father was raised a Muslim before becoming, by Obama’s account, “a confirmed atheist.” Obama’s stepfather was a Muslim. His half-sister Maya told the New York Times that her “whole family was Muslim.”
Obama spent two years in a Muslim school in Indonesia and later, in a conversation with the Times’ Nicholas Kristof, described the Arabic call to prayer, the beginning of which he recited by heart, as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”
Most people are imprinted at a very early age into the religion that surrounds them. Many people will tell you they are Christians who never go to church. These people are “cultural Christians” but not people of faith. Obama’s personal antipathy toward Country America, his political radicalism and his childhood immersion in a Muslim culture, may not make him an adherent of the Muslim faith, but it may make him more of a cultural Muslim than a cultural Christian.
In the polls we are reading, that may be the driving force behind the way that people are responding to the question about his religion.
Josh @ 62: “We will know he is not a Moslem when he changes his name to Barry Hallelujah Oglethorpe.”
You gave me an audible, badly needed chortle. And I thank you.
The New Yorker got it right early on.
Do you remember the cover that briefly caused a stir? It portrayed the obamas in the Oval Office, with him in islamic garb & michelle as a black militant.
The left and the sophisticates knew what they were supporting and voting for all along. That is why they are still with him. Nothing that has been revealed is a surprise or a concern for those people. They agree; they also want to bring America down.
Francis W. Porretto 86: “High intelligence, as I’ve written before, is a tool… but low or no morality is that he can jigger “the System”
Hi intelligence quotient (IQ) is great, but is not the same as high moral quotient (MQ). Intelligence has to do with cognition of physically observable self-evident truths which enable a person to recognize mathematical or physical patterns and solve problems. Morality has to do with cognition of physically unobservable self-evident truths which enable a person to respect the equally infinite value of others – to respect the equal rights of others to their life, liberty and fruit of labor in pursuit of happiness – to love his neighbor as himself.
#53. HEREKNG
Obama’s grandpa & father may have been Muslim and yes, in the eyes of observant Muslims that means Obama is rightly a Muslim and I would not be surprised if there were letters in the Gulf News & Khaleej Times calling Obama an apostate. I’ll leave it to you understand the Islamic implications of that accusation.
Despite what Imans and other leaders have stated, Obama’s exact beliefs are known to him and him only. He is trying to charm the Islamic world by saying he knows something about them and knows he can not charm Christians opposed to him so why try.
Re: 96
“19. huxley
‘One can find lip service from Obama about Jesus, but the basis of his conversion experience in Obama’s own words said nothing about Jesus, love, forgiveness, resurrection or even God. Judging by Obama’s account, he converted to a liberation mishmash victim story of blacks as an oppressed chosen people based entirely on Old Testament allusions.’
I hesitate to tell you this but more and more “Old Testament” stories are being proven by archeologists and others every year. Yes, some are exaggerated or otherwise changed by the ancient writers or their editors in the past, much like stories and accounts of modern events. But that is just how it was and is.”
Allusion – noun
1. a passing or casual reference; an incidental mention of something, either directly or by implication: an allusion to Shakespeare.
2. the act of alluding.
3. Obsolete . a metaphor; parable.
As distinct from illusion
–noun
1. something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality.
2. the state or condition of being deceived; misapprehension.
3. an instance of being deceived.
definitions courtesy of dictionary.com
Papa Ray @ 96
By “allusion” I meant reference, not that the accounts in the Old Testament are historically untrue.
I took Obama’s conversion as an emotional experience using material from the Old Testament which validated his black liberation politics.
It may well have been a powerful, life-changing experience, but my point was that it had none of the hallmarks of a Christian conversion, e.g. Obama did not even mention Christ.
Obama had gone from the black power politics of Malcolm X to the black liberation theology of James Cone (whose writings are the acknowledged chief inspiration for Rev. Wright), both of which are about being black more than anything else.
Which is how I understand Obama — deep down he sees the world refracted through the prism of sixties black power. Obama is not Muslim or Christian; he is black.
Here are some quotes from James Cone on Obama’s church website explaining Black Theology. It’s extreme, even crazy, stuff.
* Black Theology is the theological arm of Black Power, and Black Power is the political arm of Black Theology.
* Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him.
* Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.
* Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man “the devil.”
* Black theology must say: ‘If the doctrine is compatible with or enhances the drive for black freedom, then it is the gospel of Jesus Christ. if the doctrine is against or indifferent to the essence of blackness as expressed in Black Power, then it is the work of the Anti-Christ.’ It is as simple as that.
Black Theology is an adaptation of Marxism.
* Marxist (Black) Theology is the theological arm of Proletariat (Black) Power, and Proletariat (Black) Power is the political arm of Marxist (Black) Theology.
* Marxist (Black) theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the proletariat (black) community. If God is not for us and against middle class (white) people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him.
* Marxist (Black) theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the middle class (white) enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Proletariat (Black) Power, which is the power of proletariat (black) people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.
* Theologically, Karl Marx (Malcom X) was not far wrong when he called the middle class (white) man “the devil.”
“The proletariat (lazy, tax-eating, non-disabled poor – the lazy animals in the barn) will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital (property) from the bourgeoisie (laboring, tax-paying middle class – the laboring animals in the field), to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state (lazy, tax-eating Marxist Government – the Pigs of Animal Farm)… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic (unequal) inroads on the rights of property. You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the (white) middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
anti-Christ. Yes, that about covers Barry Dunham Barack Hussein Soetoro Obama.
Storm-Rider @ 107
Yes, Black Theology is Marxism adapted with blacks as the proletariat and whites as the bourgeoisie. Obama’s church website included a charming piece:
Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness”
Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must keep the captive ignorant educationally, but trained sufficiently well to serve the system. Also, the captors must be able to identify the “talented tenth” of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control.
Those so identified as separated from the rest of the people by:
Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another.
Placing them in concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons….
This isn’t Christianity either.
If our media were worth a damm they would have shined a bright light on the pathology of Obama’s non-Christian church.
But instead, as we now know, they conspired on the Journolist email group to deflect attention from that church, that pastor and Obama’s heartfelt 20-year relationship with both, by slandering Republicans and conservatives with the charge of racism.
huxley: are you the same huxley that used to comment on neoneocon?
What is amazing about all this is how it happened in plain view. Same as 9/11, the financial crisis.
Not evil, just stupid. We are seeing the same thing with the NY mosque. Anyone who doesn’t see the symbolism is unqualified to posit an opinion.
It is similar to a dying corporation where the top 18 levels of management are incompetent idiots good at shining shoes and kissing butt. It works for a while, then reality has a nasty way of intruding.
November will shuffle some bodies. The power players refilled their coffers with printed money and are back.
This isn’t going to end well. I said to friends and maybe here back in 2008 that this will end when there is nothing left to lose and some semblance of sense is forced upon the survivors. I see nothing to change my opinion.
Derek
Gringo @ 110
Yes. neoneocon became too much of an ODS fever swamp for my taste. All the speculation over there that Obama & Co. were leading the US into a dictatorship struck me as hysterical and unhelpful.
Make no mistake, I consider Obama a bad actor and no friend of America or democracy, but he’s no Lenin or Hitler or even a Chavez. America and its people are more than a match for Obama, as we are seeing.
112. huxley
I’m not so sure I agree with you altogether. He is no Lenin or Hitler, but I think Obama does strive to be for the US what Chavez is for Venezuela. There are just too many structural impediments here for him to do so, but he is attempting to slowly tear them down.
“He was the blank canvas on which people projected their dreams; and to which they have now projected their fears.”
Excellent observation. It would work both ways, wouldn’t it.
huxley @ 112,
We aren’t seeing anything until November 2, and I’m afraid derek is correct.
The Gramschian march through the institutions has succeeded. Most Americans are now too illiterate and ignorant to understand how bad the situation is, and too cowardly to do anything about it even if they did know.
mariner @ 115
The American republic has been alive and well for over two hundred years without devolving into tyranny.
As far as I’m concerned the ball is in your court and others to make the point that it is about to do so, much less than that the matter is already settled in your favor.
…the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.
–Tom Wolfe
huxley, I am extremely worried about whether Republic has enough resilience left to spring back without something ugly happening in the meantime.
By the way: come home. We miss you.
The issue is that America is facing challenges that require real leadership not someone faking leadership.
Oblio @ 117
I’m not saying nothing ugly will happen. There’s been ugliness already.
But we’ve seen ugliness before and worse. The Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War to name a few. We struggled and recovered and laid the track for further troubles. Such is life.
But despite excessive rhetoric from all sides we’ve not come near tyranny.
I’ll take the house odds that we continue in our fractious, imperfect, yet democratic way.
Besides, as I have said, the trend lines since Obama started running amok have all been favorable. He and his supporters keep losing strength while we keep gaining strength. Obama has done some damage and he will likely do more but installing tyranny in America is not on that menu.
Oblio, I remember you as a fine fellow and I miss you too, but once a blogger starts censoring my posts and calling me names, I stop thinking of that blog as a comfortable place — much less home — and figure that he or she doesn’t need my hits, my attention, or my participation. I’ve not looked back.
It is not that the people are too ignorant to understand. That sounds like Leftist elitism. I reject it. There are a number of factors involved.
The people have become too immoral to understand. They just do not understand the difference between good and evil; right and wrong.
The Left has cloaked its objectives in a tangle of complex lies and false arguments.
There is no one on the right with the communication skills to explain it in terms they will understand.
There is a lack of moral clarity and leadership.
All the choices seem to be career politicians. You elect folks with the same background (politics), you will get the same results.
This is why Palin is so popular. While having served in government for some time now, she seems not to have the stink of the weaselly professional politician. Her values are clear. Her speech is simple… too simple for the erudite, but great for the folks.
Because of this, Palin shall be the next President. Folks will still be afraid that she might be as dumb as the Media make her out to be, but they will cross their fingers and vote for her. Better a decent Forrest Gump, than a brilliant weasel.
68 Wretcherd
” When the Big Tent collapses a lot of kicking and squirming figures will be seen wrestling under the collapsed expanse of blank canvas.”
That’s the least they can do is to provide some entertainment for the rest of us. It should be a lot of fun to watch.
65 Walt
I agree with all you’ve said, except when you say “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And that step begins this November.”
The first steps have already been taken, and we can’t expect the politicians to save us from ourselves. The problem will begin to be solved when the people stop believing much of the hogwash that’s come down as “conventional wisdom” over the years. This process has already started, and it’s success is a prereq for real change in the USA.
BTW I assume you’re poet Walt. I don’t know how you do it. Some great stuff.
“Hell has frozen over. The New York Times is reporting a Pew Research survey that suggests the Democratic Party is losing the Jewish vote — in droves.”
Hence the announcement of talks between Israelis and Palestinians.
“Hi intelligence quotient (IQ) is great, but is not the same as high moral quotient (MQ).”
You must be part of the cabal which has had the opportunity to review the secret archive containing Obama’s educational and travel records.
Obama: I have a deep faith
Barack Obama credits his multicultural upbringing for his theological point of view.
Obama is unapologetic in saying he has a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” As a sign of that relationship, he says, he walked down the aisle of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ in response to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s altar call one Sunday morning about 16 years ago.
These days, he says, he attends the 11 a.m. Sunday service at Trinity in the Brainerd neighborhood every week — or at least as many weeks as he is able. His pastor, Wright, has become a close confidant.
“I started working with both the ministers and the lay people in these churches on issues like creating job-training programs, or after-school programs for youth, or making sure that city services were fairly allocated to underserved communities,” he says. “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.”
Obama says he reads the Bible, though not as regularly as he’d like, now that he’s on the campaign trail. But he does find time to pray.
“It’s not formal, me getting on my knees,” he says. “I think I have an ongoing conversation with God…. I’m constantly asking myself questions about what I’m doing, why I am doing it.
“The biggest challenge, I think, is always maintaining your moral compass.”
Friends and advisers, such as the Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church in the Auburn- Gresham community on the South Side, who has known Obama for the better part of 20 years, help him keep that compass set, he says.
“I always have felt in him this consciousness that, at the end of the day, with all of us, you’ve got to face God,” Pfleger says of Obama. “Faith is key to his life, no question about it. It is central to who he is, and not just in his work in the political field, but as a man, as a black man, as a husband, as a father…. I don’t think he could easily divorce his faith from who he is.”
Another person Obama says he seeks out for spiritual counsel is state Sen. James Meeks, who is also the pastor of Chicago’s Salem Baptist Church. The day after Obama won the primary in March, he stopped by Salem for Wednesday-night Bible study.
—
Pfleger, Meeks, Wright, and Obama.
Feel the love!
… he has accepted Jesus Christ. That’s what he says he has done. I cannot say that he hasn’t. So I just have to believe that the president is what he has said.
Franklin Graham is no dummy, and certainly not when it comes to what Islam preaches. He is on record as saying that “True Islam cannot be practiced in this country” (it is incompatible with the US Constitution and US laws derived therefrom). He has also been branded an Islamophobe for such comments.
But the above quote is derelict on his part. Nowhere in the Bible does it command us to take someone at his word, especially on spiritual matters. “Be as wise as serpents, and as gentle as doves” means you MUST be cognizant of the cunning and deceptiveness of low-life sorts, although avoiding such behavior yourself. Be charitable but don’t be gullible.
Furthermore when it comes to ascertaining the spiritual condition of another person, Jesus Himself says, in a passage warning about false prophets, “By their fruit you will recognize them.” IOW by their behavior and by the repercussions of their behavior.
Obama’s behavior and the repercussions of his behavior fly in the face of just about every Christian principle there is. Read or listen to Jill Stanek recount her meeting with then Illinois state senator Obama after she (Stanek) had just finished testifying against partial birth abortion during the hearings for the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act (which O repeatedly voted against), and the sheer cold-dead-heartedness of Obama comes through so clearly it is blood-curdling. “Punished with a baby” was a Freudian slip on how this guy views innocent human life.
Look at whom he has surrounded himself with his entire life. Look at his appointments to SCOTUS, his Cabinet, his czars. Cass Sunstein, the Bobsy Twin to Peter Singer?
NBPP and the Department of Injustice, anyone? Chicago slums that are not one iota better off after the “community organizer” was done using them as a stepping stone to national power?
Obama oozes soul-crushing statism and culture of death. No wonder the White House has a fly problem.
If Obama renounced Islam, then in the eyes of the Muslim world he is far more evil than George Bush. Converts are routinely killed in Muslim countries with the approval of the governing authorities. How could he be expected to bring the Western world and Islam together if he is seen to have rejected the Islamic faith he was born into? It is one thing to be born an infidel but far worse in Islam to be one born into the faith who walks away from it.
النفاق ، هو اسمك أوباما
—
Hypocrisy, thy name is Obama.
Jeez, we all slept late today, Sissy our dog finally came in to my room and stuck her cold wet nose in my face and told me to get up and feed her. I apologized and went right to it and got her fed and flushed out her water outside because the damn birds not only drink out of it but poop in it.
We had a great time in Texas yesterday at a great, fantastic county fair, complete with…jeez, almost everything you could want except for the standard carnival rides. They did have pony rides for my girls and many other activities that they jumped right in.
I had many revealing and heartfelt talks with fellow Texans and a few with ignorant lefties who you could not convince of any truths if you hit them over the head with them [which I did verbally]. I gave away all my propaganda and as the evening progressed, I kept an eye out for any that was discarded or thrown in the trash cans.
NOT one did I see.
We topped the evening off with a visit to a very large [great] Mexican restaurant who one of my long lost friends [who I ran into at the fair] treated us to. We can’t afford this kind of eating anymore and it was a treat for us to be invited along with his wife and daughter. We ate and ate and ate some more, until I was almost embarrassed.
Anyway we came home happy and tired and thankful.
I have a couple of links for this Sunday morning. After Church today we talked about [as we always do] what we learned. My oldest grand daughter said she learned that in times past Christians had been murdered and ran out of their places of worship but that it didn’t stop them from loving Jesus. My youngest grand daughter said that she had learned that God and good men protect children from the bad men that would do them harm.
I told them that I had learned that my beliefs in God had to sustain and help me get through each day and that in bad times they had to enable me to not only get by but to protect my family and my country [Republic].
Sorry if discussion of religion offends anyone. I can only hope that you have something very powerful in your life to sustain you if you don’t have religion. Be aware that our Islamic enemies have an overpowering influence in their lives to push them to enable Islam to prevail over non-muslims [infidels].
And please, please be also be aware that our enemies within our Nation have their own religion. A very selfish and ignorant religion that encompasses socialism, communism and statism. That they do not love America and Americans should make your blood run hot and your desire to protect America from them be foremost in your mind and your life.
Because if we average, middle of the road, ignored and distained Americans don’t stop them no one will.
It is up to you and me. Don’t leave this fight for our lives and our Republic’s life for your children and grand children to suffer and fight
Make it your fight now and until you die, I will be there with you as well as millions of other Americans who vow to protect and preserve our Republic.
Papa Ray
The trouble with the idea that Barack is a Muslim by definition because his father was Muslim, is that the Qur’an actually teaches that all human beings are born Muslim. That’s right, you, me, Wretchard and everyone else here at BC, and even Whiskey… we’re all Muslims by birth, just like Barack Hussein Obama! So, if Obama’s Muslim lineage is all Islamic supremacists have to go by, it seems to me that they are no more likely to specifically target Obama for apostasy than they are to target, say, the Prime Minister of Japan for the same reason.
What just might prompt Islamic supremacists to put Obama in their crosshairs, on the other hand, is if he has ever recited the shahada (i.e. the public declaration of one’s Islamic faith, “There is no deity except Allah, and Mohammed is Allah’s prophet” though the exact formulation may vary – something I presume none of us has ever done) before he started claiming to be a Christian. Being born Muslim without ever embracing the One True Religion is one thing, actually declaring one’s Islamic faith and then rejecting it is something else altogether.
Is there a record, or even someone’s half-remembered recollection, somewhere of Obama as a youth reciting the shahada? If there is, (1) that is all the evidence of apostasy a supremacist needs to get a fatwa going against him, and (2) my hunch is that it will come to light sooner rather than later.
Now it’s obvious that the president has renounced the prophet Mohammed, and he has renounced Islam, and he has accepted Jesus Christ.
Is the Reverend Franklin Graham really trying to attack President Obama on the grounds that he has converted to Christianity?
I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.
– Barack Obama, “The Audacity of Hope”
He who lives by the blank screen, dies by the blank screen.
If Americans are now projecting Muslim/not-Christian on Obama by what they can discern or suspect by all his evasions, contradictions, slights and pandering, neither Obama nor any of his sycophants (i.e. the mainstream media, the Dem leadership and much of the party) have any right to complain.
One cannot have faith unless one has a creed. Obama’s maternal grandparents were members of the post Christian Unitarian church. Unitarians maintain that creeds are for cretins but in practice most Unitarians do have a creed: they almost all beleive in left wing political causes. Unitarians also say spirituality is a journey not a destination, but a better analogy as to how they act may be huge a buffet line at a Vegas casino where they gorge on bits and pieces of religions from all over the world.
I see a lot of this influence in Obama. He often talks about religion in terms of culture and politics rather than faith and dogma. He gorged on Wright’s United Chruch of Christ congregation because it gave him contacts in the polical community. When Wright became a liability, he moved on.
ad @ 130 -
It is indeed possible that Graham is playing a chess game here … that he knows (as far as anyone can know) Obama is not a Christian but that all he has to do is use Obama’s own words against him. To wit, Graham is not lying if you parse his words very carefully (i.e. on the Clintonian level). It’s one thing to say, “I believe that the president is what he has said.” It’s another to say, “I *have to* believe that the president is what he has said.” The latter doesn’t actually profess belief, merely an obligation.
And if Graham “the Islamophobe” comes out & says that he has to take Obama at Obama’s word that Obama is a Christian, how does this play in the Muslim world? Is Graham trying to use Obama’s own words as a wedge against him in the eyes of Muslims? This would be a clever strategy, unless the majority of Muslims tacitly believe Obama is engaging in taqiyya, in which case Graham comes across to Muslims as just another Christian dupe.
I don’t know for certain what Graham’s intention is, but my hunch is that his words can be taken much more straightforwardly than Obama’s. I think he wants to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, but at the same time, he wants to put the onus on Obama’s own words. Note what Graham does NOT say, which is the standard boilerplate “Who are we to judge what’s in another man’s heart?” or Burton’s preposterous formulation that TOTUS is “obviously” a Christian because “he prays every day” (as if Muslims & Jews & others don’t?). What I mean is, Graham does not point a finger back at the American public for not believing what Obama has claimed. Graham keeps the spotlight right where it should be, on Obama’s claim itself, not people’s reception thereof.
Graham is still too generous by half for me, but like I said above, he is no dummy. He is seeing, hearing, and reading the same things we are.
Josh, it seems the most informative article written on Obama’s childhood religous acitivities was:http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=29425 by Daniel Pipes.
In it Pipes says:
• Obama attended a Catholic school for first, second grade and maybe third grade registered as a muslim.
• Obama attended a public school registered as a muslim for at least fourth grade where he was required to study the Koran, with the other muslim kids. (Buraq mentions studying the Koran at school in Dreams of my Father.) His public school has a small mosque built off the playground, where apparently the kids study. Given the dogmatic nature of Islam, I would be surprised if Obama was not required to recite the Shahada during Koran study.
• Buraq occasionally attended Friday Prayers with Lolo, who apparently was not devout.
While these events don’t reveal what Obama truly believes, they would seem to give ample evidence for the muslim faithful that Obama was sufficiently raised as a muslim, because during this brief time he was treated as if he were a muslim.
Once a muslim, always a muslim. He can’t go back or he’s an apostate.
Here are the links I mentioned above. I got involved in a telcom and my edit time ran out before I noticed I had forgot to include them. Old age and distractions I blame.
“Conservative Christian football coach fired for writing, emailing anti-Obama song”
Please listen to the song. It is very, very well done. You might want to spend the dollar and change and get it, he might need the money now, since he got fired.
“With a Whimper or a Bang — or Not at All?”
VDH hits a home run again and many of the comments are great in themselves.
Have a restful Sunday evening. I am and looking forward to another week of trying to convince people to vote and get involved. To try and educate them about what is going on and what the results will be if we don’t step up and protect and defend our Republic.
Papa Ray
Come on Mr. Fernandez, a little minimal research is due here. Graham, as usual, is wrong. The Talmudic rule that one is a Jew by virtue of having a Jewish mother has been responsible for imagining the Jewish people as a race as well as a religion. They are not actually a race, of course, and most Jewish women are descended from a Gentile ancestor.
But Muslims are not a race even in the imagining, but rather a world-religion to which belong people of virtually every ethnic group in the world. Thus, unlike in Judaism, one is not born a Muslim. Rather, children of Muslim parents who embrace Islam typically recite the confession of faith around puberty and undertake to fulfill the obligations of Islamic law at that time. Until that time, they are not mukallaf or obliged to perform the rituals of the religion. Franklin’s allegation would imply that children are Muslim by birth and have to fast the month of Ramadan when they are 5. It is ridiculous.
#136
Ivan, that is Crazy.
Jewish religious identity has always come from the mother. Tribal affiliation and inheritance from the father. Recently, Jews attempting to modernize have conflated the two concepts.
Your allegation most Jewish women are really Gentile is contrary to historical reality and genetic testing.
I don’t know your source for your knowledge of Islam, but I have met a few Muslims in varying degrees of practice who universally regarding their offspring as being Muslim from birth.
Akiva, you misinterpret. I’m saying that most Jewish women have at least one Gentile ancestor, and from genetic testing that is indisputable. Genetics have revealed a tremendous degree of interbreeding within populations in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Western, Central and Eastern Europe.
Islam is not a tribal affiliation, it is a religion that one adheres to through orthopraxy, through the assumption of religious obligations. My source is my degree in theology.