Editor’s Note: In this first of a five-part series, Middle East and Islam specialist Daniel Pipes begins his inquiry into Barack Obama’s early Muslim connections by noting the president’s autobiographical inaccuracies. Future installments will establish his many connections to Islam.
President Obama has come out swinging against his Republican rival, sponsoring television advertisements that ask, “What is Mitt Romney hiding?” The allusion is to such relatively minor matters as Mr. Romney’s prior tax returns, the date he stopped working for Bain Capital and the nonpublic records from his service heading the Salt Lake City Olympics and as governor of Massachusetts. Mr. Obama has defended his demands that Mr. Romney release more information about himself, declaring in August that “the American people have assumed that if you want to be president of the United States that your life’s an open book when it comes to things like your finances.” Liberals such as Paul Krugman of the New York Times enthusiastically endorse this focus on Mr. Romney’s personal history.
If President Obama and his supporters wish to focus on biography, of course, that is a game two can play. Already, the temperate, mild-mannered Mr. Romney has criticized Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign as “based on falsehood and dishonesty,” and a television ad went further, asserting that Mr. Obama “doesn’t tell the truth.”
A focus on openness and honesty is likely to hurt Mr. Obama far more than Mr. Romney. Mr. Obama remains the mystery candidate with an autobiography full of gaps and even fabrications. For example, to sell his autobiography in 1991, Mr. Obama claimed that he “was born in Kenya.” He lied about never having been a member and candidate of the 1990s Chicago socialist New Party. When Stanley Kurtz produced evidence to establish that he was a member, Mr. Obama’s flacks smeared and dismissed Mr. Kurtz. Mr. Obama’s 1995 autobiography, “Dreams from My Father,” contains a torrent of inaccuracies and falsehoods about his maternal grandfather, his father, his mother, his parents’ wedding, his stepfather’s father, his high school friend, his girlfriend, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. As Victor Davis Hanson put it, “If a writer will fabricate the details about his own mother’s terminal illness and quest for insurance, then he will probably fudge on anything.”
Into this larger pattern of mendacity about his past life arises the question of Mr. Obama’s discussion of his faith, perhaps the most singular and outrageous of his lies.
Asked about the religion of his childhood and youth, Mr. Obama offers contradictory answers. He finessed a March 2004 question, “Have you always been a Christian?” by replying: “I was raised more by my mother and my mother was Christian.” But in December 2007, he belatedly decided to give a straight answer: “My mother was a Christian from Kansas. I was raised by my mother. So, I’ve always been a Christian.” In February 2009, however, he offered a completely different account:
“I was not raised in a particularly religious household. I had a father who was born a Muslim but became an atheist, grandparents who were non-practicing Methodists and Baptists, and a mother who was skeptical of organized religion. I didn’t become a Christian until I moved to the South Side of Chicago after college.”
He further elaborated on this answer in September 2010, saying, “I came to my Christian faith later in life.”
Which is it? Has Mr. Obama “always been a Christian” or did he “become a Christian” after college? Self-contradiction on so fundamental a matter of identity, when added to the general questioning about the accuracy of his autobiography, raises questions about veracity. Would someone telling the truth say such varied and opposite things about himself? Inconsistency is typical of fabrication: When making things up, it’s hard to stick with the same story. Mr. Obama appears to be hiding something. Was he the areligious child of irreligious parents? Or was he always a Christian? A Muslim? Or was he, in fact, something of his own creation — a Christian Muslim?
Mr. Obama provides some information on his Islamic background in his two books, “Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope” (2006). In 2007, when Hillary Rodham Clinton was still the favored Democratic candidate for president, a number of reporters dug up information about Mr. Obama’s time in Indonesia. His statements as president have provided important insights into his mentality. The major biographies of Mr. Obama, however, whether friendly (such as those by David Maraniss, David Mendell and David Remnick) or hostile (such as those by Jack Cashill, Jerome R. Corsi, Dinesh D’Souza, Aaron Klein, Edward Klein and Stanley Kurtz), devote little attention to this topic.
I shall establish his having been born and raised a Muslim, provide confirming evidence from recent years, survey the perceptions of him as a Muslim, and place this deception in the larger context of Mr. Obama’s autobiographical fictions.
To begin with, Barack Obama readily acknowledges that his paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, converted to Islam. Indeed, “Dreams” (Page 407) contains a long quote from his paternal grandmother explaining the grandfather’s reasons for doing so: Christianity’s ways appeared to be “foolish sentiment” to him, “something to comfort women,” and so he converted to Islam, thinking “its practices conformed more closely to his beliefs” (Page 104). Barack Obama readily told this to all comers: When asked by a barber (Page 149), “You a Muslim?” for example, he replied, “Grandfather was.”
Mr. Obama presents his parents and stepfather as nonreligious. He notes in “Audacity” (Pages 204-5), that his “father had been raised a Muslim” but was a “confirmed atheist” by the time he met Barack’s mother, who, in turn, “professed secularism.” His stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, “like most Indonesians, was raised a Muslim,” though he was a nonpracticing, syncretic one who “followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths” (“Dreams,” Page 37).
As for himself, Mr. Obama acknowledges numerous connections to Islam but denies being a Muslim. “The only connection I’ve had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father’s side came from that country,” he declared in Dec. 2007. “But I’ve never practiced Islam. For a while, I lived in Indonesia because my mother was teaching there. And that’s a Muslim country. And I went to school. But I didn’t practice.” Likewise, he said in February 2008: “I have never been a Muslim other than my name and the fact that I lived in a populous Muslim country for four years when I was a child, I have very little connection to the Islamic religion.” Note his unequivocal statement here: “I have never been a Muslim.” Under the headline, “Barack Obama is not and has never been a Muslim,” Mr. Obama’s first presidential campaign website was even more emphatic in November 2007, stating that “Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian.”
These emphatic statements notwithstanding, much points to Mr. Obama’s having been a Muslim.
Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum.
Hey Barack: it was you who told an Islamic dinner - "I am one of you."; it was you who on ABC News referenced - "My Muslim faith." it was you who gave $100 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to re-build foreign mosques: it was you who wrote that in the event of a conflict -"I will stand with the Muslims." ; it was you who assured the Egyptian Foreign Minister that - "I am a Muslim." it was you who bowed in submission before the Saudi king; it was you who sat for 20yrs in a Liberation Theology Church condemning Christianity and professing Marxism; it was you who exempted Muslims from penalties under Obamacare that the rest of us have to pay; it was you who purposefully omitted - "endowed by our Creator" - from your recitation of The Declaration Of Independence; it was you who mocked the Bible and Jesus Christ's Sermon On The Mount while repeatedly referring to the HOLY Quran; it was you who traveled the Islamic world denigrating the United States Of America; it was you who instantly threw the support of your administration behind the building of the Cordova Victory mosque overlooking the hallowed crater of the World Trade Center; it was you who refused to attend the National Prayer Breakfast, but hastened to host an Islamic prayer breakfast at the WH; it was you who ordered both Georgetown Univ. and Notre Dame to shroud all vestiges of Jesus Christ BEFORE you would agree to go there to speak, but in contrast, you have NEVER requested that the mosques you have visited adjust their decor; it was you who appointed anti-Christian fanatics to your Tsar Corps; it was you who appointed rabid Islamists to Homeland Security; it was you who said that NASA's "foremost mission" was an outreach to Muslim communities; it was you who as an Illinois Senator were the ONLY individual who would speak in favor of infanticide; it was you who were the first President not to give a Christmas Greeting from the WH, and went so far as to hang photos of Chairman Mao on the WH tree; it was you who curtailed the military tribunals of all Islamic terrorists; it was you who refused to condemn the Ft. Hood Islamic terrorist; it is you who has refused to speak-out concerning the horrific executions of women throughout the Muslim culture, but yet, have submitted Arizona to the UN for investigation of hypothetical human-rights abuses; it was you who when queried in India refused to acknowledge the true extent of radical global Jihadists, and instead profusely praised Islam in a country that is 82% Hindu and the victim of numerous Islamic terrorists assaults; it was you who funneled $900 Million in U.S. taxpayer $s to Hamas; it was you who ordered the USPS to honor the MUSLIM holiday with a new commemorative stamp; it was you who directed our UK Embassy to conduct outreach to help "empower" the British Muslim community; it was you who embraced the fanatical Muslim Brotherhood in your quest to overthrow the Egyptian President, Mubarak; it was you who funded mandatory Arabic language and culture studies in Grammar schools across our country; it is you who follows the Muslim custom of not wearing any form of jewelry during Ramadam; it is you who NOW departs for Hawaii over the Christmas season so as to avoid past criticism for NOT participating in seasonal WH religious events; it was you who were un-characteristically quick to join the chorus of the Muslim Brotherhood to depose Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, formerly America's strongest ally in North Africa; but, remain muted in your non-response to the Brotherhood led slaughter of Egyptian Christians; do we really need to go on! Barack, you may be a lot of things; but, for certainty, you are no Christian. Obama, who refers to himself as: "A man of Africa", is precisely the type of 'divided loyalties" individual that our Founders attempted to prohibit from ascendancy to the presidency when they constructed our Constitution. Greg Neubeck
Excellent commentary Greg, the only thing you left out is the fact that Muslims are encouraged to "Lie to the infidels" and that would be Obama lying to us Americans without guilt for the proliferation of Islam.
Wow! Point me in the direction of the ground you walk on so I can kiss it, if you will please! I've been fighting this battle for long, offering bits and pieces and even paragraphs but nothing so thorough! Nothing so complete! So much information, all true and verifiable, in one neat little package, thank you and BRAVO! Everyone needs to read this, so would you mind if I copied and pasted it into such sites as Breitbart, or would you?
As amazing (and amazingly accurate) as your post is, it is just as sickening! He's destroying our nation! He's undone near a hundred years of racial progress! He's helped to bring war to countries where there was no or far, far less war before and he's made friends of our enemies and enemies of our friends! He's lit the match and thrown the ember that's lit the fire and helped to further the global spread of terrorist Islam, yet he dares to deny that which he is! But more horrible than that is the fact that so many follow him still, blindly!
He and his position is proof positive of just how sick our nation is! How far so many millions have fallen from even the Rule of Law all in scrambling to support and please him, if not themselves, inasmuch as it is that he supports what many consider the most vile of all things, such as the slaughtering of Christians, now, in Egypt. How empowered he must feel to have played such an integral part in setting the entire Middle East on fire!
Knowing Daniel Pipes - much more to come in the next four parts. Stay tuned. Wouldn't it be interesting if the Los Angeles Times would release the audio tape of Barack Hussein Obama's remarks as the guest of honor at the dinner given for Rashid Khalidi five years ago? J. Edgar where are you when we need you the most? Taqiyya - with plenty of American enablers.
Little_Mush: nothing wrong with being Muslim if you acknowledge it from the start. Clint Eastwood got it right.... the biggest hoax ever is Barack Obama a.k.a Barry Soetoro. Obama's book is so full of lies it needs to be moved to the fiction section. Thank you Mr. President !!
Little_Mush: Substitute the word "abhorently" for "inherently" and the answer, whether you agree or not, is "everything." If you're a leftist, you probably won't understand that.
Little_Mush: The cutlery they use on the necks of infidels has not been approved by the UN. I also believe they do not use any anesthetic or pain killers...it almost seems they enjoy sawing the heads off of non-Muslims.
Rain: If he's been able to undo a hundred years of racial progress, I attribute that just as much to American apathy. We oughtn't require a "Pearl Harbor," or a "WTC-9/11" to wake us up! Freedom is being taken for granted, as if it'll always be here no matter how it's treated. Obama is not that effective without Americans being ineffective. You saw the Democrat floor delegate vote three times? At least 50% of them booed "God" and the question of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Of course, Jerusalem won't matter much if our government continues to appease Iran.
Illustration Muslim Obama by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times more >
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