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Dr. Jai Maharaj
Guest
Barack Obama a Muslim? Yes
Was Barack Obama a Muslim?
Original title: "Obama and Islam"
By Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
December 24, 2007
"If I were a Muslim I would let you know," Barack Obama has
said, and I believe him. In fact, he is a practicing
Christian, a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ.
He is not now a Muslim.
But was he ever a Muslim or seen by others as a Muslim?
More precisely, might Muslims consider him a murtadd
(apostate), that is, a Muslim who converted to another
religion and, therefore, someone whose blood may be shed?
The candidate for president of the United States has
delivered two principal statements in reply. His campaign
website carries a statement dated Nov. 12 with the
headline, "Barack Obama Is Not and Has Never Been a
Muslim," followed by: "Obama never prayed in a mosque. He
has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a
committed Christian."
Then, on Dec. 22, in the unlikely setting of the Smoky Row
Coffee Shop in Oskaloosa, Iowa, as he munched on pumpkin
pie and drank tea with four locals, Obama provided more
detail took on this topic than before. When asked to
explain his Muslim heritage, he replied:
My father was from Kenya, and a lot of people in his
village were Muslim. He didn't practice Islam. Truth is he
wasn't very religious. He met my mother. My mother was a
Christian from Kansas, and they married and then divorced.
I was raised by my mother. So, I've always been a
Christian. The only connection I've had to Islam is that my
grandfather on my father's side came from that country. But
I've never practiced Islam. ? For a while, I lived in
Indonesia because my mother was teaching there. And that's
a Muslim country. And I went to school. But I didn't
practice. But what I do think it does is it gives me
insight into how these folks think, and part of how I think
we can create a better relationship with the Middle East
and that would help make us safer is if we can understand
how they think about issues.
These statements raise two questions: What is Obama's true
connection to Islam and what implications might this have
for an Obama presidency?
Was Obama Ever a Muslim?
"I've always been a Christian," said Obama, focusing on his
own personal lack of practice of Islam as a child to deny
any connection to Islam. But Muslims do not see practice as
key. For them, that he was born to a line of Muslim males
makes him born a Muslim. Further, all children born with an
Arabic name based on the H-S-N trilateral root (Hussein,
Hassan, and others) can be assumed to be Muslim, so they
will understand Obama's full name, Barack Hussein Obama, to
proclaim him a born Muslim.
More: family and friends considered him as a child to be
Muslim. In " Obama Debunks Claim About Islamic School,"
Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press wrote on January 24,
2007, that Obama's mother, divorced from Obama's father,
married a man from Indonesia named Lolo Soetoro, and the
family relocated to the country from 1967-71. At first,
Obama attended the Catholic school, Fransiskus Assisis,
where documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim, the
religion of his stepfather. The document required that each
student choose one of five state-sanctioned religions when
registering ? Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic or
Protestant.
Asked about this, Obama communications director Robert
Gibbs responded by indicating to Pickler that he wasn't
sure why the document had Obama listed as a Muslim.
"Senator Obama has never been a Muslim."
Two months later, Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times
(available online in a Baltimore Sun reprint) reported that
the Obama campaign had retreated from that absolute
statement and instead issued a more nuanced one: "Obama has
never been a practicing Muslim." The Times looked into the
matter further and learned more about his Indonesian
interlude:
his former Roman Catholic and Muslim teachers, along with
two people who were identified by Obama's grade-school
teacher as childhood friends, say Obama was registered by
his family as a Muslim at both schools he attended. That
registration meant that during the third and fourth grades,
Obama learned about Islam for two hours each week in
religion class.
The childhood friends say Obama sometimes went to Friday
prayers at the local mosque. "We prayed but not really
seriously, just following actions done by older people in
the mosque," Zulfin Adi said. "But as kids, we loved to
meet our friends and went to the mosque together and
played." Obama's younger sister, MMaya Soetoro, said in a
statement released by the campaign that the family attended
the mosque only "for big communal events," not every
Friday.
Recalling Obama's time in Indonesia, the Times account
contains quotes that Obama "went to the mosque," and that
he "was Muslim."
Summarized, available evidence suggests Obama was born a
Muslim to a non-practicing Muslim father and for some years
had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of
his Indonesian step-father. At some point, he converted to
Christianity. It appears false to state, as Obama does,
"I've always been a Christian" and "I've never practiced
Islam." The campaign appears to be either ignorant or
fabricating when it states that "Obama never prayed in a
mosque."
Implications of Obama's Conversion
Obama's conversion to another faith, in short, makes him a
murtadd.
That said, the punishment for childhood apostasy is less
severe than for the adult version. As Robert Spencer points
out, "according to Islamic law an apostate male is not to
be put to death if he has not reached puberty (cf. 'Umdat
al-Salik o8.2; Hidayah vol. II p. 246). Some, however, hold
that he should be imprisoned until he is of age and then
'invited' to accept Islam, but officially the death penalty
for youthful apostates is ruled out."
On the positive side, were Obama prominently charged with
apostasy, that would uniquely raise the issue of a Muslim's
right to change religion, taking a topic on the perpetual
back-burner and placing it front and center, perhaps to the
great future benefit of those Muslims who seek to declare
themselves atheists or to convert to another religion.
But would Muslims seeing Obama as a murtadd significantly
affect an Obama presidency? The only precedent to judge by
is that of Carlos Sal Menem, the president of Argentina
from 1989 to 1999. The son of two Muslim Syrian immigrants
and husband of another Syrian-Argentine, Zulema Fatima
Yoma, Menem converted to Roman Catholicism. His wife said
publicly that Menem left Islam for political
reasons...because Argentinean law until 1994 required the
president of the country to be a member of the Church. From
a Muslim point of view, NYT 8 Jan 89, Menem's conversion is
worse than Obama's, having been done as an adult.
Nonetheless, Menem was not threatened or otherwise made to
pay a price for his change of religion, even during his
trips to majority-Muslim countries, Syria in particular.
It is one thing to be president of Argentina in the 1990s,
however, and another to be president of the United States
in 2009. One must assume that some Islamists would renounce
him as a murtadd and would try to execute him. Given the
protective bubble surrounding an American president,
though, this threat presumably would not make much
difference to his carrying out his duties.
More significantly, how would more mainstream Muslims
respond to him, would they be angry at what they would
consider his apostasy? That reaction is a real possibility,
one that could undermine his initiatives toward the Muslim
world.
More at:
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5286
Obama's Church: Cauldron of Division
By Jim Davis
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Presidential candidate Barack Obama preaches on the
campaign trail that America needs a new consensus based on
faith and bipartisanship, yet he continues to attend a
controversial Chicago church whose pastor routinely refers
to "white arrogance" and "the United States of White
America."
In fact, Obama was in attendance at the church when these
statements were made on July 22.
Obama has spoken and written of his special relationship
with that pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.
The connection between the two goes back to Obama's days as
a young community organizer in Chicago's South Side when he
first met the charismatic Wright. Obama credited Wright
with converting him, then a religious skeptic, to
Christianity.
"It was ... at Trinity United Church of Christ on the South
Side of Chicago that I met Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who
took me on another journey and introduced me to a man named
Jesus Christ. It was the best education I ever had," Obama
described his spiritual pilgrimage to a group of church
ministers this past June.
Since the 1980s, Obama has not only remained a regular
attendee at Wright's services in his inner city mega
church, Trinity United Church of Christ, along with its
other 8,500 members, he's been a close disciple and
personal friend of Wright.
Wright conducted Obama's marriage to his wife Michelle,
baptized his two daughters, and blessed Obama's Chicago
home. Obama's best-selling book, "The Audacity of Hope,"
takes its title from one of Wright's sermon.
Because of this close relationship, questions have been
raised as to the influence the divisive pastor will have on
the consensus-building potential president.
Obama and Wright appear, at first blush, an unlikely pair.
Wright is Chicago's version of the Rev. Al Sharpton.
It was no surprise that Sharpton recently announced that
with Wright's backing, he was setting up a chapter of his
New York-based National Action Network in Chicagoland. The
chapter will be headed by Wright's daughter, Jeri Wright.
Minister of Controversy
Obama was not the only national African-American figure to
cozy up to Wright. TV host Oprah Winfrey once described
herself as a congregant, but in recent years has
disassociated herself from the controversial minister.
A visit to Wright's Trinity United is anything but Oprah-
style friendly.
As I approached the entrance of the church before a recent
Sunday service, a large young man in an expensive suit
stepped out to block the doorway.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"I came to hear Dr. Wright," I replied.
After an uncomfortable pause, the gentleman stepped aside.
On this particular July Sabbath morning, only a handful of
white men -- aside from a few members of Obama's Secret
Service detail -- were present among a congregation of
approximately 2,500 people.
The floral arrangements were extravagant. Wright, his
associate pastors, choir members, and many of the gentlemen
in the congregation were attired in traditional African
dashiki robes. African drums accompanied the organist.
Trinity United bears the motto "Unashamedly Black and
Unapologetically Christian."
Wright says its doctrine reflects black liberation
theology, which views the Bible in part as a record of the
struggles of "people of color" against oppression.
A skilled and fiery orator, Wright's interpretation of the
Scriptures has been described as "Afrocentric."
When referring to the Romans, for example, he refers to
"European oppression" -- not addressing the fact that the
Egyptians, who were also a slave society, were people of
Africa.
The Trinity United Web site tells of a "commitment to the
black community, commitment to the black family, adherence
to the black work ethic, pledge to make all the fruits of
developing acquired skills available to the black
community."
"Some white people hear it as racism in reverse," Dwight
Hopkins, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity
School, a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ,
tells The New York Times. Blacks tend to hear a different
message, Hopkins says: "Yes, we are somebody; we're also
made in God's image."
Controversy Abounds
Several prior remarks by Obama's pastor have caught the
media's attention:
o Wright on 9/11: "White America got their wake-up call
after 9/11. White America and the Western world came to
realize people of color had not gone away, faded in the
woodwork, or just disappeared as the Great White West kept
on its merry way of ignoring black concerns." On the Sunday
after the attacks, Dr. Wright blamed America.
o Wright on the disappearance of Natalee Holloway:
"Black women are being raped daily in Africa. One white
girl from Alabama gets drunk at a graduation trip to Aruba,
goes off and gives it up while in a foreign country and
that stays in the news for months."
o Wright on Israel: "The Israelis have illegally
occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now.
Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to
wake the business community and wake up Americans
concerning the injustice and the racism under which the
Palestinians have lived because of Zionism."
o Wright on America: He has used the term
"middleclassness" in a derogatory manner; frequently
mentions "white arrogance" and the "oppression" of African-
Americans today; and has referred to "this racist United
States of America."
Bush's Bulls--t
Wright's strong sentiments were echoed in the Sunday
morning service attended by NewsMax.
Wright laced into America's establishment, blaming the
"white arrogance" of America's Caucasian majority for the
woes of the world, especially the oppression suffered by
blacks.
To underscore the point he refers to the country as the
"United States of White America."
Many in the congregation, including Obama, nodded in
apparent agreement as these statements were made.
The sermon also addressed the Iraq war, a frequent area of
Wright's fulminations.
"Young African-American men," Wright thundered, were "dying
for nothing." The "illegal war," he shouted, was "based on
Bush's lies" and is being "fought for oil money."
In a sermon filled with profanity, Wright also blamed the
war on "Bush administration bulls--t."
Those are the types of statements that have led to MSNBC's
Tucker Carlson describing Wright as "a full-blown hater."
Wright first came to national attention in 1984, when he
visited Castro's Cuba and Col. Muammar Gaddafi's Libya.
Wright's Libyan visit came three years after a pair of
Libyan fighter jets fired on American aircraft over
international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, and four
years before the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over
Lockerbie, Scotland ? which resultted in the deaths of 259
passengers and crew. The U.S. implicated Gaddafi and his
intelligence services in the bombing.
In recent years, Wright has focused his diatribe on
America's war on terror and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
For a February 2003 service, Wright placed a "War on Iraq
IQ Test" on the Pastor's Page of the church Web site. The
test consisted of a series of questions and answers that
clearly portrayed America as the aggressor, and the war as
unjustified and illegal. Marginally relevant issues
regarding Israel received attention.
The test also portrayed the Iraqi people as victims of
trade sanctions, but Saddam Hussein's propensity for using
"oil for food" proceeds to build palaces rather than buy
medicine was never mentioned.
At the end of the test, the pastor wrote, "Members of
Trinity are asked to think about these things and be
prayerful as we sift through the 'hype' being poured on by
the George Bush-controlled media." Obama's campaign staff
did not respond to a NewsMax request for the senator's
response to Wright's statements.
In April, however, Obama spoke to The New York Times about
Wright, and appeared to be trying to distance himself from
his spiritual mentor. He said, "We don't agree on
everything. I've never had a thorough conversation with him
about all aspects of politics."
More specifically, Obama told the Times, "The violence of
9/11 was inexcusable and without justification," adding "It
sounds like [Wright] was trying to be provocative."
Obama attributed Wright's controversial views to Wright
being "a child of the '60s" who Obama said "expresses
himself in that language of concern with institutional
racism, and the struggles the African-American community
has gone through."
"It is hard to imagine, though, how Mr. Obama can truly
distance himself from Mr. Wright," writes Jodi Kantor of
The New York Times. On the day Sen. Obama announced his
presidential quest in February of this year, Wright was set
to give the invocation at the Springfield, Ill. rally. At
the last moment, Obama's campaign yanked the invite to
Wright.
Wright's camp was apparently upset by the slight, and
Obama's campaign quickly issued a statement "Senator Obama
is proud of his pastor and his church."
Since that spat, there is little evidence, indeed, that
Sen. Obama has sought to distance himself from the angry
Church leader. In June, when Obama appeared before a
conference of ministers from his religious denomination,
Wright appeared in a videotaped introduction.
One of Obama's campaign themes has been his claim that
conservative evangelicals have "hijacked" Christianity,
ignoring issues like poverty, AIDS, and racism.
This past June, in an effort to build a new consensus
between his new politics and faith, Obama's campaign
launched a new Web page,
http://www.faith.barackobama.com/
On the day the page appeared on his campaign site, it
offered testimonials from Wright and two other ministers
supporting Obama. The inclusion of Wright drew a sharp
rebuke from the Catholic League. Noting that Obama had
rescinded Wright's invitation to speak at his announcement
ceremony, Catholic League President Bill Donohue declared
that Obama "knew that his spiritual adviser was so divisive
that he would cloud the ceremonies."
He noted that Wright "has a record of giving racially
inflammatory sermons and has even said that Zionism has an
element of 'white racism.' He also blamed the attacks of
9/11 on American foreign policy."
Donohue acknowledged that Obama may have different views
than Wright and the other ministers on his Web site, but
"he is responsible for giving them the opportunity to
prominently display their testimonials on his religious
outreach Web site."
Political pundits have suggested that Obama's problems with
Wright are not ones based on faith, but pure politics. The
upstart presidential candidate needs to pull most of the
black vote to have any chance of snagging the Democratic
nomination. Obama's ties to Wright and the activist African
American church helps in that effort.
But the same experts same those same ties may come to haunt
him if he were to win the nomination and face a Republican
in the general election.
The worry is not lost on Wright. "If Barack gets past the
primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from
me," Wright told The New York Times with a shrug. "
I said it to Barack personally, and he said 'yeah, that
might have to happen.'"
Obama's Farrakhan Test
By Richard Cohen
The Washington Post
Tuesday, January 15, 2008; A13
Barack Obama is a member of Chicago's Trinity United Church
of Christ. Its minister, and Obama's spiritual adviser, is
the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church
launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright's daughters serve as
publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine
makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the
Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said
"truly epitomized greatness." That man is Louis Farrakhan.
Maybe for Wright and some others, Farrakhan "epitomized
greatness." For most Americans, though, Farrakhan
epitomizes racism, particularly in the form of anti-
Semitism. Over the years, he has compiled an awesome record
of offensive statements, even denigrating the Holocaust by
falsely attributing it to Jewish cooperation with Hitler --
"They helped him get the Third Reich on the road." His
history is a rancid stew of lies.
It's important to state right off that nothing in Obama's
record suggests he harbors anti-Semitic views or agrees
with Wright when it comes to Farrakhan. Instead, as Obama's
top campaign aide, David Axelrod, points out, Obama often
has said that he and his minister sometimes disagree.
Farrakhan, Axelrod told me, is one of those instances.
Fine. But where I differ with Axelrod and, I assume, Obama
is that praise for an anti-Semitic demagogue is not a minor
difference or an intrachurch issue. The Obama camp takes
the view that its candidate, now that he has been told
about the award, is under no obligation to speak out on the
Farrakhan matter. It was not Obama's church that made the
award but a magazine. This is a distinction without much of
a difference. And given who the parishioner is, the
obligation to speak out is all the greater. He could be the
next American president. Where is his sense of outrage?
Any praise of Farrakhan heightens the prestige of the
leader of the Nation of Islam. For good reasons and bad, he
is already admired in portions of the black community,
sometimes for his efforts to rehabilitate criminals. His
anti-Semitism is either not considered relevant or is
shared, particularly his false insistence that Jews have
played an inordinate role in victimizing African Americans.
In this, Farrakhan stands history on its head. It was Jews
who disproportionately marched for civil rights and, in
Mississippi, died for that cause. Farrakhan and, in effect,
Wright, despoil the graves of Michael Schwerner, Andrew
Goodman and, of course, their black colleague James Chaney.
I can even see how someone, maybe even Obama, could dismiss
Farrakhan as a pest, a silly man pushing a silly cause that
poses no real threat to the Jewish community. Still,
history tells us that anti-Semitism is not to be trifled
with. It is a botulism of the mind.
The Obama and Clinton campaigns are involved in a tasteless
tussle over the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. What is
clear from rereading King's celebrated "I Have a Dream"
speech of Aug. 28, 1963, is how inclusive that dream was --
"all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and
Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join
hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,
'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are
free at last!' "
This, though, is not Farrakhan's dream. He has vilified
whites and singled out Jews to blame for crimes large and
small, either committed by others as well or not at all. (A
dominant role in the slave trade, for instance.) He has
talked of Jewish conspiracies to set a media line for the
whole nation. He has reviled Jews in a manner that brings
Hitler to mind.
And yet Wright heaped praise on Farrakhan. According to
Trumpet, he applauded his "depth of analysis when it comes
to the racial ills of this nation." He praised "his
integrity and honesty." He called him "an unforgettable
force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is
sincere about his faith and his purpose." These are the
words of a man who prayed with Obama just before the
Illinois senator announced his run for the presidency. Will
he pray with him just before his inaugural?
I don't for a moment think that Obama shares Wright's views
on Farrakhan. But the rap on Obama is that he is a fog of a
man. We know little about him, and, for all my admiration
of him, I wonder about his mettle. The New York Times
recently reported on Obama's penchant while serving in the
Illinois legislature for merely voting "present" when faced
with some tough issues. Farrakhan, in a strictly political
sense, may be a tough issue for him. This time, though,
"present" will not do.
Barack Obama and White Guilt
By Joseph Puder
Shelby Steele, an African-American research fellow at
Stanford University Hoover Institute and author of White
Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise
of the Civil Rights Era pointed out that, "By the mid-
sixties White Guilt was eliciting an entirely new kind of
Black leadership, not selfless men like Martin Luther King
who appealed to the nation's moral character but smaller
men, bargainers, bluffers, and haranguers -- not moralists
but specialists in moral indignation -- who would set up a
trade with White Guilt."
Barack Hussein Obama is different from previous African-
American presidential contenders -- he understands that the
key to the U.S. presidency and power is making deals with
the White-American establishment. Unlike Al Sharpton and
Jesse Jackson, characterized by Shelby Steele as "bluffers
and haranguers," and, one might add, extortionists who
trade in White guilt for personal gain, Obama is more of a
"bargainer." His appeal to White America is that he is not
overtly trading on White guilt but at the same time he and
his aides know that White America seeks moral legitimacy,
and his bargain is in promising to provide such legitimacy
in exchange for power. It is far more sophisticated a
bargain than previous Black leaders have had with White
America.
To the adoring eyes of the liberal mass media, Obama is the
closest expression of a rock star, if not a "black
messiah." While every white candidate is scrutinized and
criticized, Obama remains "beyond criticism."
Had any white candidate, with less than three years
experience in the national arena declared himself a
candidate for the presidency, especially at the tender age
of 46, he/she would have been ridiculed and reviled. The
media's collective white guilt with its derivative of
"political correctness," does not seek articulation on
policy or substance from Obama.
It does not demand answers as to how he would tackle Iran's
terrorist aggression and nuclear pursuits, or ideas on how
to grow the U.S. economy? His generalized "vision" is
sufficient for the liberal media. The white liberal media
would love a black president in order to end the perceived
stigma of white institutional racism -- a way to cleanse
the soul and regain moral legitimacy.
There is little difference between the Democrat party
rhetoric of Obama and that of the white candidates. They
all speak of hope and change so why then should Obama's
words be more believable, legitimate or acceptable? The
answer is obviously white guilt.
American institutions tainted with white guilt are ready to
dispense with justice for what they perceive as the higher
goal of attaining moral legitimacy. The charge of racism in
contemporary America is probably the most intimidating, if
not the most ruinous, to white people's careers. The case
of O.J. Simpson illustrated to perfection how America has
gone from one extreme to the other. Shelby Steele writes,
"In 1955 the murderers of Emmet Till, a black Mississippi
youth, were acquitted of their crime, undoubtedly because
they were white. Forty years later, O.J. Simpson, who many
thought would be charged with the murder of his white wife
and Ron Goldman, by virtue of the DNA evidence against him,
was also acquitted after his black attorney (Johnny
Cochran) portrayed him as a victim of racism."
Steele observed that, "Because white guilt is a vacuum of
moral authority, it makes the moral authority of whites and
the legitimacy of American institutions contingent on
proving a negative: that they are not racist?
Whites and American institutions are stigmatized as racist
until proven otherwise." Political parties and universities
"not only declare their devotion to diversity but also use
racial preferences to increase the visibility of minorities
so as to refute the racist stigma," Steele added.
This is especially apparent within the Democrat party where
support for racial preferences is widespread and pandering
to African-Americans votes is routine.
The blind support and almost universal cheering of college
students for Obama is a by-product of years of
indoctrination on college campuses (especially Ivy League
universities) under the stern eyes of faculty and
administrative "political correctors," who suppress any
vestige of white pride as racist, and who bar the teaching
of Western Civilization with a sense of pride, conversely
engaging in the bashing of the western (white) Europeans as
imperialists, oppressors and racists. It seems as if
American college students have been groomed to cheer a
black presidential candidate thereby providing them with a
small measure of ablution from their "racist sins."
Unfortunately, they were not trained to apply universal
moral standards and sound judgment when analyzing issues
and individuals.
Rather, their worldview is seen through the limited prism
of white guilt. The outcome of which is that white America,
Europe and Israel are tainted with sin, and blacks, Muslims
and those of the third-world are victims, and therefore
virtuous.
America, it appears to Shelby Steele, is governed by this
"white guilt" and, it is destructive to blacks and whites
alike. "Whites and American institutions" he argues, "live
by a simple formula: lessening responsibility for
minorities equals moral authority; increasing it equals
racism.
This is a formula that locks whites into publicly
supporting affirmative action even as they privately
dislike it." It also stigmatizes black excellence.
Can you imagine proclamations posted on the church websites
of the white presidential candidates (Protestant or
Catholic), proclaiming that they are "unashamedly white?"
Seems Obama's pastor; Rev. Jeremiah Wright of the Chicago
Trinity United Church (of which Obama has been a member of
since 1988) is quoted as stating that he is "Unashamedly
Black and Unapologetically Christian." Rev. Wright, whom
Obama credits with being the inspiration for his book, "The
Audacity of Hope," subscribes to what he calls the "Black
Value System." Does Obama also subscribe to this value
system? And if not, why hasn't Obama dissociated himself
from his black radical pastor who refers to America as "our
racist competitive society," and disavows the pursuit of
"middle-classness." Rev. Wright endorses allegiance to "all
black leadership who espouse and embrace the Black Value
System."
Obama's revered pastor considers "Middle Classness" (which
Obama claims to extol) a way for American (white) society
to "snare" blacks rather than "killing them off directly or
placing them in concentration camps." In sermons and
interviews, Wright has claimed that Zionism equals racism
and, has equated Israel with Apartheid South Africa.
Following 9/11 Wright charged that the attack on America
was a consequence of violent American policies, and later
suggested that the murder of 3000 Americans was
"retribution for America's racism." At the kick-off of
Obama's presidential campaign on February 10, 2007, Wright
was asked to stay away. He responded:
"When Obama's enemies find out that in 1984 I went to
Tripoli to visit Col. Muammer el-Qaddafi with the Nation of
Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support
will dry up quicker than a snowball in Hell."
Obama's pastor Rev. Wright is a race-monger, but you will
not discover that from the mainstream liberal media. What
you will find in the liberal media is a politically
incorrect, unrestrained, attack on Mitt Romney's Mormon
religion, but little about the racism and anti-Semitism of
Rev. Wright or about Obama's Muslim background. Obama's
brilliant academic background will be extolled, while, for
example, Romney's extensive experience in government and
business will be underplayed.
In the final analysis one must ask the simple question: In
a color-blind society, devoid of white guilt, does an
inexperienced, untried, albeit bright contender like Obama,
deserve to be president in contrast to Hillary Clinton,
John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Rudi Giuliani ? candidates
who are equally as brighht and have far greater experience.
Barack Obama's Middle East Expert
By Ed Lasky
American Thinker
January 23, 2008
Barack Obama's real thinking about Israel and the Middle
East continues to be an enigma. The words he chose in an
address to AIPAC create a different impression than the
composition of his foreign policy advisory team.
Several advisors have evidenced a history of suspicion and
worse toward Israel. One of his advisors in particular,
Robert Malley, clearly warrants attention, as does the
reasoning that led him to being chosen by Barack Obama.
A little family history may be in order to understand the
genesis of Robert Malley's views. Normally, one should be
reluctant in exploring a person's family background --
after all, who would want to be held responsible for the
sins of one's father? However, when close relatives share a
strong current of ideological affinity, and when a father
has a commanding persona, it behooves a researcher to
inquire a bit into the role of family in forming views.
That said, Robert Malley has a very interesting father.
His father Simon Malley was born to a Syrian family in
Cairo and at an early age found his m?tier in political
journalism. He participated in the wave of anti-imperialist
and nationalist ideology that was sweeping the Third World.
He wrote thousands of words in support of struggle against
Western nations.
In Paris, he founded the journal Afrique Asie; he and his
magazine became advocates for "liberation" struggles
throughout the world, particularly for the Palestinians.
Simon Malley loathed Israel and anti-Israel activism became
a crusade for him-as an internet search would easily show.
He spent countless hours with Yasser Arafat and became a
close friend of Arafat. He was, according to Daniel Pipes,
a sympathizer of the Palestinian Liberation Organization --
-and this was when it was at the height of its terrorism
wave against the West . His efforts were so damaging to
France that President Valerie d'Estaing expelled him from
the country.
Malley has seemingly followed in his father's footsteps: he
represents the next generation of anti-Israel activism.
Through his writings he has served as a willing
propagandist, bending the truth (and more) to serve an
agenda that is marked by anti-Israel bias; he heads a group
of Middle East policy advisers for a think-tank funded (in
part) by anti-Israel billionaire activist George Soros; and
now is on the foreign policy staff of a leading
Presidential contender. Each step up the ladder seems to be
a step closer towards his goal of empowering radicals and
weakening the ties between American and our ally Israel.
Robert Malley's writings strike me as being akin to
propaganda. One notable example is an op-ed that was
published in the New York Times (Fictions About the Failure
at Camp David). The column indicted Israel for not being
generous enough at Camp David and blamed the failure of the
talks on the Israelis.
Malley has repeated this line of attack in numerous op-eds
over the years, often co-writing with Hussein Agha, a
former adviser to Yasser Arafat (see, for example, Camp
David: The Tragedy of Errors ). He was also believed to be
the chief source for an article by Deborah Sontag that
whitewashed Arafat's role in the collapse of the peace
process, an article that has been widely criticized as
riddled with errors and bias.
Malley is a revisionist and his views are sharply at odds
with the views of others who participated at Camp David,
including Ambassador Dennis Ross and President Bill
Clinton. Malley's myth-making has been peddled in the
notably anti-Israel magazine, Counterpunch and by Norman
Finkelstein, the failed academic recently denied tenure at
DePaul University . Malley's Camp David propaganda has also
become fodder for Palestinians, Arab rejectionists, and
anti-Israel activists across the world.
His story of the talks is also plain wrong.
Dennis Ross had this to say regarding the failure of Camp
David when he laid the blame on Yasser Arafat and
Palestinian leadership:
....Fundamentally I do not believe he can end the conflict.
We had one critical clause in this agreement, and that
clause was, this is the end of the conflict. Arafat's whole
life has been governed by struggle and a cause... for him
to end the conflict is to end himself.
...Barak was able to reposition Israel internationally.
Israel was seen as having demonstrated unmistakably it
wanted peace, and the reason it wasn't... achievable was
because Arafat wouldn't accept it.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,50830,00.html
President Clinton echoed these remarks, elsewhere:
So a couple of days before I leave office, Arafat says,
calls to tell me what a great man I am. And I just said,
"No, I'm not. On this I'm a failure, and you made me a
failure."
At the conclusion of Camp David, Clinton made these points,
stressing that Israeli leader Ehud Barak had gone the extra
mile to reach peace with the Palestinians:
-Prime Minister Barak showed particular courage, vision,
and an understanding of the historical importance of this
moment. Chairman Arafat made it clear that he too remains
committed to the path of peace.
- Prime Minister Barak took some very bold decisions...
- I will say again, we made progress on all the core
issues; we made really significant progress on many of
them. The Palestinian teams worked hard on a lot of these
areas. But I think it is fair to say that at this moment in
time, maybe because they had been preparing for it longer,
maybe because they had thought through it more, that the
prime minister moved forward more from his initial position
than Chairman Arafat on -- particularly surrounding the
questions of Jerusalem...
- ... not so much as a criticism of Chairman Arafat,
because this is really hard and had never been done before,
but in praise of Barak. He came in knowing that he was
going to have to take bold steps and he did it, and I think
you should look at it more as a positive toward him than as
a condemnation of the Palestinian side...
- I would be making a mistake not to praise Barak, because
I think he took a big risk, and I think it's sparked
already in Israel a real debate, which is moving Israeli
public opinion toward the conditions that will make peace.
And so I thought that was important, and I think it
deserves to be acknowledged. (Clinton press conference,
July 25, 2000)
Was Malley so central to the peace process that he knew
something that escaped the attention of our Middle East
Envoy and our President?
When one reads Dennis Ross's account of his years of trying
to bring peace to the region, The Missing Peace: The Inside
Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, one can question
just how central Malley was to the Camp David
negotiations.
Malley has written a range of pieces over the years that
reveal an agenda at work that should give pause to those
Obama supporters who truly care about peace in the Middle
Peace and the fate of our ally Israel.
Playing Into Sharon's Hands: which absolves Arafat of the
responsibility to restrain terrorists and blames Israel for
terrorism. He defends Arafat and hails him as ... the first
Palestinian leader to recognize Israel, relinquish the
objective of regaining all of historic Palestine and
negotiate for a two-state solution based on the pre-1967
boundaries. And he remains for now the only Palestinian
with the legitimacy to sell future concessions to his
people.
Rebuilding a Damaged Palestine: which blames Israel's
security operations for weakening Palestinian security
forces (absurd on its face: terrorists filled the ranks of
so-called Palestinian security forces-which, in any case,
never tried to prevent terrorism) and calls for
international forces to restrain the Israelis
Making the Best of Hamas's Victory: which called for
international aid to be showered upon a Hamas-led
government and for international engagement with Hamas (a
group that makes clear in its Charter, its schools, and its
violence its intent to destroy Israel). Malley also makes
an absurd assertion: that Hamas' policies and Israeli
policies are mirror images of each other.
Avoiding Failure with Hamas: which again calls for aid to
flow to a Hamas-led government and even goes so far as to
suggest that failure to extend aid could cause an
environmental or health catastrophe-such as a human strain
of the avian flu virus!
How to Curb the Tension in Gaza: which criticizes Israel's
for its actions to recover Gilad Shalit who was kidnapped
and is being held hostage in the Gaza Strip. He and co-
writer Gareth Evans call Israel's actions 'collective
punishment" in "violation of international law".
Forget Pelosi: What About Syria?: where Malley calls for
outreach to Syria, despite its ties to Hezbollah, Hamas,
and the terrorists committing murder in Iraq; believes it
is unreasonable to call for Syria to cut ties with
Hezbollah, break with Hamas, or alienate Iran before
negotiations; he believes a return of the Golan Heights and
engagement with the West will somehow miraculously lead the
Syrian regime to take these steps --after they get all they
want.
Containing a Shiite Symbol of Hope: that advocated
engagement with the fiercely anti-American Iraqi Moqtada
al-Sadr, who has been responsible for the murder of many
Americans and Iraqis as the leader of the terrorist group,
the Mahdi Army. He also has very close ties to Iran.
Middle East Triangle: (co-written with former Arafat
advisor Hussein Agha) calls for Hamas and Fatah to
reconcile, join forces, and to frustrate, in their words,
Israel's attempts to "perpetuate Palestinian geographic and
political division". Then Hamas will grant Abbas power to
make a political deal with Israel that will bring peace.
Noah Pollack of Commentary Magazine noting, as Malley
habitually fails to do, Hamas intends to destroy Israel,
eviscerated this op-ed.
The U.S. Must Look to its Own Mideast Interests: (co-
written with Aaron David Miller) which advocates a
radically different approach towards the Middle East which,
in their words, does not "follow Israel's lead" and
encompasses engagement with Syria (despite problems with
Lebanon and their support for Hezbollah) and Hamas
(regardless of its failure to recognize Israel or renounce
violence).
A New Middle East: which asserted Hezbollah's attacks on
Israel and the kidnapping of Israelis, which sparked the
Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006, were motivated by Hezbollah's
desire to retrieve Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails and
were a response to pressure being exerted on its allies-
Syria and Iran.
Robert Malley also testified before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee in February, 2004. In that appearance
he called for the Road Map to be cast aside because
incremental measures intended to build trust were
unworkable.
He advocated that a comprehensive settlement plan be
imposed on the parties with the backing of the
international community, including Arab and Moslem states.
He anticipated that Israel would object with "cries of
unfair treatment" but counseled the plan be put in place
regardless of such objections; he also suggested that
waiting for a "reliable Palestinian partner' was
unnecessary.
This is merely a sample of Malley's views -- which are
focused on disengaging from our ally Israel (whose lead
America should not "follow") and engaging with and, in some
cases financially supporting, the likes of Syria, Moqtada
al-Sadr, Hezbollah and Hamas. His ideology is radically at
odds with American foreign policy as it has been practiced
by two generations of Presidents -- both Democrats and
Republicans -- over the years. This is the type of advocacy
Robert Malley has been pursuing in the years since the end
of the Clinton Administration and from his perch at the
International Crisis Group -- an organization that may
share his agenda.
The International Crisis Group
Robert Malley is the Director of the Middle East/North
Africa Program at the International Crisis Group (ICG).
Given the impressive title of the group, one might expect
it to have along and impressive pedigree -- say long the
lines of the well-regarded Council of Foreign Relations. In
fact, the group is rather small and it has a short
pedigree. More importantly, it has ties to George Soros.
Soros is a man who has supported a wide variety of groups
that have shown a propensity to criticize America and
Israel; a man who has made clear his goal is to break the
close bonds between America and Israel; supported the views
of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer whose work on the
issue of the "Israel Lobby" has been widely criticized for
factual inaccuracies, shoddy research, and has been called
"anti-Semitic" in the Washington Post; a man who has taken
steps to counter the supposed political influence of the
pro-Israel community in America; a man who has also been a
key financial backer of Senator Obama's; and a man who can
activate a wide variety of 527 (c) and other activist
groups for any politician he supports.
Soros is a funder of the ICG through his Open Society
Institute; he serves on its Board and on its Executive
Committee. Other members of the Board include Zbigniew
Brzezinski (whose anti-Israel credentials are impeccable)
and Wesley Clark (who called US support for Israel during
the Hezbollah War a " serious mistake"; who has flirted
with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; and who has been the
direct beneficiary of donations made by Soros; Wesley Clark
has defended the actions of George Soros.
But let's return to George Soros.
While it is true that the ICG receives funding from other
sources, none of these donors are on the board; and a
billionaire on the Executive Committee of the Board can
wield a great deal of influence. Soros is a man who is
legendary for his investment prowess. In this case, he
again seems to have invested well -- as he is proud to
trumpet. When the ICG gave him a Founders Award, he spoke
of how pleased he was with the work the group does ("my
money is very well spent"), and he took particular pride in
the work done "on the Palestinian question".
As he should be, given his goals. Malley, as the Director
of the Middle East/ North African program at the ICG, has
assembled a group of "analysts" who reflect his (and
Soros's) views and who share their goals: a radical
reshaping of decades of American foreign policy and a
shredding of the role of morality in the formulation of
American policy. These policies would strengthen our
enemies, empower dictatorships, and harm our allies.
This small cast of characters at the ICG:
Issandr el Amrani has accused the Bush Administration of
fanning the flames of sectarian strife by rallying support
against Iran. He absurdly claims that the goal of this
alliance is to create, "a new regional security arrangement
with the Jewish state firmly as its center -- the holy
grail of the neo-conservatives who, despite reports to the
contrary, continue to craft U.S. Middle East policy.
(Otherwise, why would Elliott Abrams still have his job?"
Peter Harling: who has co-written numerous op-eds with
Malley that advocate outreach toward Iraqi extremist leader
Moqtada al-Sadr; talks with Iran and Syria; and numerous
op-eds critical of American actions in Iraq.
Nicholas Pelham who advocates outreach toward Hamas.
Other analysts and their opinions can be found here.
They are uniformly passive on dealing with terrorism and
terrorists; critical of US efforts in Iraq and American-led
efforts to constrain Iran; advocate aid be given to Hamas
despite its record of terrorism; endorse engagement with
Syria despite its links with Hezbollah, its role in
oppressing Lebanon and its involvement in the
assassinations that have helped to destroy Lebanon. They
also seemingly have no qualms about advocating outreach to
Iran, regardless of its role in the killing of American and
Iraqis in Iraq and its proclaimed goal of destroying
Israel.
No wonder Soros is happy with his investment in the
International Crisis Group and in Robert Malley.
Question remain
Why would Barack Obama have on his foreign policy staff a
man who has been widely criticized for a revisionist
history of the Middle East peace process sharply at odds
with all other accounts of the proceedings?
Why would Barack Obama give credibility to a man who seems
to have an agenda that includes empowering our enemies and
weakening our friends and allies?
How did Robert Malley, with a record of writing that
reveals a willingness to twist facts to serve a political
agenda, come to be appointed by Obama to his foreign staff?
Was it a recommendation of Zbigniew Brzezinski to bring on
board another anti-Israel foreign policy expert?
What role did the left-wing anti-Israel activist George
Soros play in placing Robert Malley (or for that matter,
Brzezinski himself) in a position to influence the future
foreign policy of America?
What does it say about Senator Obama's judgment that he
appointed a man like Malley to be a top foreign policy
advisor?
Or does it speak more to his true beliefs?
A digression, if I may, regarding Malley and impressive
sounding titles. A Washington Post article on Senator
Obama's foreign policy advisors described him as having
been President Clinton's Middle East envoy. Now this would
come as a surprise to Ambassador Dennis Ross who actually
was Clinton's Middle East envoy. Indeed, there is a paucity
of mentions of Malley in Ross's exhaustive history of the
Middle East peace process during the Clinton years, The
Missing Peace, where more often than not he is described as
a note-taker-once serving as Yasser Arafat's stenographer.
Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/barack_obamas_middle_east_expe.html
Obama and Israel, continued
Noah Pollak -- 01.26.2008 -- 09:47
There has been an awakening in recent days to the presence
of a disturbing number of foreign policy advisers to the
Obama campaign who harbor hostile views of Israel. Ed Lasky
of the American Thinker has been doing serious work on the
subject, and his two pieces -- here and here -- are must-
reads.
Caroline Glick adds to the discussion here.
But there is another Obama foreign policy adviser-a
prominent one-who has so far escaped criticism. This is
Samantha Power, a Harvard professor, journalist, and human
rights specialist who of late has become a high-profile
liberal critic of American foreign policy.
For one, Power is an advocate of the Walt-Mearsheimer view
of the American relationship with Israel. In a recent
interview published on the Harvard Kennedy School's
website, Power was asked to explain "long-standing
structural and conceptual problems in U.S. foreign policy."
She gave a two-part answer: the first problem, she said, is
"the US historic predisposition to go it alone." A standard
reply, of course. The second problem, though, should give
us pause:
Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to
which special interests dictate the way in which the
"national interest" as a whole is defined and pursued . . .
America's important historic relationship with Israel has
often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer
reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to
replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon
last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-
productive.
So greater regard for international institutions along with
less automatic deference to special interests-especially
when it comes to matters of life and death and war and
peace-seem to be two take-aways from the war in Iraq.
Power is not just assenting to the Israel Lobby view of
American foreign policy, but is also arguing that Israel
had something to do with the Bush administration's decision
to invade Iraq in 2003-an appalling slander, and a telling
one.
Also of note is a recent opinion piece Power wrote for TIME
magazine, titled "Rethinking Iran," the thrust of which
rethinking involves the need to engage diplomatically the
mullahs and pretend that the Iranian nuclear program is a
figment of the paranoid imagination of the Bush
administration.
She writes:
The war scare that wasn't [the recent incident between
Iranian speedboats and the U.S. Navy in the Straight of
Hormuz] stands as a metaphor for the incoherence of our
policy toward Iran: the Bush Administration attempts to gin
up international outrage by making a claim of imminent
danger, only to be met with international eye rolling when
the claim is disproved.
Sound familiar? The speedboat episode bore an uncanny
resemblance to the Administration's allegations about the
advanced state of Iran's weapons program-allegations
refuted in December by the National Intelligence Estimate.
Does Power actually believe that the NIE put to rest
concerns about the Iranian nuclear program? If she actually
thinks that -- and it appears she does -- she deserves
voluminous ridicule from thinking people everywhere.
Does anyone think that if the time comes that Power has
President Obama's ear, she will advise him to do anything
other than repudiate America's greatest ally in the Middle
East in favor of appeasing its greatest enemy?
And here's an even better question: Does Barack Obama have
a single adviser who would tell him to do anything else?
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/pollak/2085
Obama and Israel-It Gets Worse
Noah Pollak -- 01.27.2008 -- 14:56
A follow-up to my post yesterday about the troubling views
of one of Barack Obama's top foreign policy advisers,
Samantha Power. In 2002 she sat for an interview with Harry
Kreisler, the director of the Institute for International
Studies at Berkeley. Kreisler asked her the following
question:
Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the
following: without addressing the Palestine -- Israel
problem, let's say you were an advisor to the President of
the United States, how would you respond to current events
there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to
monitor that situation, at least if one party or another
[starts] looking like they might be moving toward genocide?
Get a load of Power's response:
What we don't need is some kind of early warning mechanism
there, what we need is a willingness to put something on
the line in helping the situation.
Putting something on the line might mean alienating a
domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial
import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing -- or
investing, I think, more than sacrificing -- billions of
dollars, not in servicing Israel's military, but actually
investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the
billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to
support what will have to be a mammoth protection force,
not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military
presence.
Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of
actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights
abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if
you're serious, you have to put something on the line.
Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling
parties is dreadful.
It's a terrible thing to do, it's fundamentally
undemocratic. But, sadly, we don't just have a democracy
here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain
sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant
to, anyway. It's essential that some set of principles
becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders]
who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the
lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom
Freidman has called "Sharafat." [Sharon-Arafat; this is
actually an Amos Oz construction -- NP] I do think in that
sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully
irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external
intervention.
Just so we're clear here: Power said that her advice to the
President would be to 1) "Alienate" the American Jewish
community, and indeed all Americans, such as evangelical
Christians, who support the state of Israel, because 2)
Israeli leaders are "destroying the lives of their own
people." 3) Pour billions of dollars of the taxpayers'
money into "the new state of Palestine"; 4) Stage an
American ground invasion of Israel and the Palestinian
territories -- what else can she mean by a "mammoth
protection force" and a "military presence" that will be
"imposed" by "external intervention"? -- in order to do the
exact same thing that she considers the height of arrogance
and foolishness in Iraq: an American campaign to remake an
Arab society.
Note that this wasn't her response to a question about her
personal views of the conflict, or about what she envisions
might be a utopian solution to the conflict; it was a
response to a question about what she would tell the
President of the United States if she was his adviser.
Yesterday Barack Obama took a large stride toward the
presidency-helped in some small measure by the speeches on
behalf of the Obama campaign that Power has delivered-and
it is time that someone asked him, while he is still a
candidate, what he thinks of the perverse things his many
foreign policy advisers have said about Israel and the
Middle East.
As Samantha Power herself acknowledged, there is "a
domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial
import" that would like to know where Obama stands on these
matters.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/pollak/2093
End of forwarded message
Jai Maharaj
http://tinyurl.com/24fq83
http://www.mantra.com/jai
http://www.mantra.com/jyotish
Om Shanti
Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
Hindu life, principles, spirituality and philosophy
http://www.hindu.org
http://www.hindunet.org
The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
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Was Barack Obama a Muslim?
Original title: "Obama and Islam"
By Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
December 24, 2007
"If I were a Muslim I would let you know," Barack Obama has
said, and I believe him. In fact, he is a practicing
Christian, a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ.
He is not now a Muslim.
But was he ever a Muslim or seen by others as a Muslim?
More precisely, might Muslims consider him a murtadd
(apostate), that is, a Muslim who converted to another
religion and, therefore, someone whose blood may be shed?
The candidate for president of the United States has
delivered two principal statements in reply. His campaign
website carries a statement dated Nov. 12 with the
headline, "Barack Obama Is Not and Has Never Been a
Muslim," followed by: "Obama never prayed in a mosque. He
has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a
committed Christian."
Then, on Dec. 22, in the unlikely setting of the Smoky Row
Coffee Shop in Oskaloosa, Iowa, as he munched on pumpkin
pie and drank tea with four locals, Obama provided more
detail took on this topic than before. When asked to
explain his Muslim heritage, he replied:
My father was from Kenya, and a lot of people in his
village were Muslim. He didn't practice Islam. Truth is he
wasn't very religious. He met my mother. My mother was a
Christian from Kansas, and they married and then divorced.
I was raised by my mother. So, I've always been a
Christian. The only connection I've had to Islam is that my
grandfather on my father's side came from that country. But
I've never practiced Islam. ? For a while, I lived in
Indonesia because my mother was teaching there. And that's
a Muslim country. And I went to school. But I didn't
practice. But what I do think it does is it gives me
insight into how these folks think, and part of how I think
we can create a better relationship with the Middle East
and that would help make us safer is if we can understand
how they think about issues.
These statements raise two questions: What is Obama's true
connection to Islam and what implications might this have
for an Obama presidency?
Was Obama Ever a Muslim?
"I've always been a Christian," said Obama, focusing on his
own personal lack of practice of Islam as a child to deny
any connection to Islam. But Muslims do not see practice as
key. For them, that he was born to a line of Muslim males
makes him born a Muslim. Further, all children born with an
Arabic name based on the H-S-N trilateral root (Hussein,
Hassan, and others) can be assumed to be Muslim, so they
will understand Obama's full name, Barack Hussein Obama, to
proclaim him a born Muslim.
More: family and friends considered him as a child to be
Muslim. In " Obama Debunks Claim About Islamic School,"
Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press wrote on January 24,
2007, that Obama's mother, divorced from Obama's father,
married a man from Indonesia named Lolo Soetoro, and the
family relocated to the country from 1967-71. At first,
Obama attended the Catholic school, Fransiskus Assisis,
where documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim, the
religion of his stepfather. The document required that each
student choose one of five state-sanctioned religions when
registering ? Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic or
Protestant.
Asked about this, Obama communications director Robert
Gibbs responded by indicating to Pickler that he wasn't
sure why the document had Obama listed as a Muslim.
"Senator Obama has never been a Muslim."
Two months later, Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times
(available online in a Baltimore Sun reprint) reported that
the Obama campaign had retreated from that absolute
statement and instead issued a more nuanced one: "Obama has
never been a practicing Muslim." The Times looked into the
matter further and learned more about his Indonesian
interlude:
his former Roman Catholic and Muslim teachers, along with
two people who were identified by Obama's grade-school
teacher as childhood friends, say Obama was registered by
his family as a Muslim at both schools he attended. That
registration meant that during the third and fourth grades,
Obama learned about Islam for two hours each week in
religion class.
The childhood friends say Obama sometimes went to Friday
prayers at the local mosque. "We prayed but not really
seriously, just following actions done by older people in
the mosque," Zulfin Adi said. "But as kids, we loved to
meet our friends and went to the mosque together and
played." Obama's younger sister, MMaya Soetoro, said in a
statement released by the campaign that the family attended
the mosque only "for big communal events," not every
Friday.
Recalling Obama's time in Indonesia, the Times account
contains quotes that Obama "went to the mosque," and that
he "was Muslim."
Summarized, available evidence suggests Obama was born a
Muslim to a non-practicing Muslim father and for some years
had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of
his Indonesian step-father. At some point, he converted to
Christianity. It appears false to state, as Obama does,
"I've always been a Christian" and "I've never practiced
Islam." The campaign appears to be either ignorant or
fabricating when it states that "Obama never prayed in a
mosque."
Implications of Obama's Conversion
Obama's conversion to another faith, in short, makes him a
murtadd.
That said, the punishment for childhood apostasy is less
severe than for the adult version. As Robert Spencer points
out, "according to Islamic law an apostate male is not to
be put to death if he has not reached puberty (cf. 'Umdat
al-Salik o8.2; Hidayah vol. II p. 246). Some, however, hold
that he should be imprisoned until he is of age and then
'invited' to accept Islam, but officially the death penalty
for youthful apostates is ruled out."
On the positive side, were Obama prominently charged with
apostasy, that would uniquely raise the issue of a Muslim's
right to change religion, taking a topic on the perpetual
back-burner and placing it front and center, perhaps to the
great future benefit of those Muslims who seek to declare
themselves atheists or to convert to another religion.
But would Muslims seeing Obama as a murtadd significantly
affect an Obama presidency? The only precedent to judge by
is that of Carlos Sal Menem, the president of Argentina
from 1989 to 1999. The son of two Muslim Syrian immigrants
and husband of another Syrian-Argentine, Zulema Fatima
Yoma, Menem converted to Roman Catholicism. His wife said
publicly that Menem left Islam for political
reasons...because Argentinean law until 1994 required the
president of the country to be a member of the Church. From
a Muslim point of view, NYT 8 Jan 89, Menem's conversion is
worse than Obama's, having been done as an adult.
Nonetheless, Menem was not threatened or otherwise made to
pay a price for his change of religion, even during his
trips to majority-Muslim countries, Syria in particular.
It is one thing to be president of Argentina in the 1990s,
however, and another to be president of the United States
in 2009. One must assume that some Islamists would renounce
him as a murtadd and would try to execute him. Given the
protective bubble surrounding an American president,
though, this threat presumably would not make much
difference to his carrying out his duties.
More significantly, how would more mainstream Muslims
respond to him, would they be angry at what they would
consider his apostasy? That reaction is a real possibility,
one that could undermine his initiatives toward the Muslim
world.
More at:
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5286
Obama's Church: Cauldron of Division
By Jim Davis
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Presidential candidate Barack Obama preaches on the
campaign trail that America needs a new consensus based on
faith and bipartisanship, yet he continues to attend a
controversial Chicago church whose pastor routinely refers
to "white arrogance" and "the United States of White
America."
In fact, Obama was in attendance at the church when these
statements were made on July 22.
Obama has spoken and written of his special relationship
with that pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.
The connection between the two goes back to Obama's days as
a young community organizer in Chicago's South Side when he
first met the charismatic Wright. Obama credited Wright
with converting him, then a religious skeptic, to
Christianity.
"It was ... at Trinity United Church of Christ on the South
Side of Chicago that I met Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who
took me on another journey and introduced me to a man named
Jesus Christ. It was the best education I ever had," Obama
described his spiritual pilgrimage to a group of church
ministers this past June.
Since the 1980s, Obama has not only remained a regular
attendee at Wright's services in his inner city mega
church, Trinity United Church of Christ, along with its
other 8,500 members, he's been a close disciple and
personal friend of Wright.
Wright conducted Obama's marriage to his wife Michelle,
baptized his two daughters, and blessed Obama's Chicago
home. Obama's best-selling book, "The Audacity of Hope,"
takes its title from one of Wright's sermon.
Because of this close relationship, questions have been
raised as to the influence the divisive pastor will have on
the consensus-building potential president.
Obama and Wright appear, at first blush, an unlikely pair.
Wright is Chicago's version of the Rev. Al Sharpton.
It was no surprise that Sharpton recently announced that
with Wright's backing, he was setting up a chapter of his
New York-based National Action Network in Chicagoland. The
chapter will be headed by Wright's daughter, Jeri Wright.
Minister of Controversy
Obama was not the only national African-American figure to
cozy up to Wright. TV host Oprah Winfrey once described
herself as a congregant, but in recent years has
disassociated herself from the controversial minister.
A visit to Wright's Trinity United is anything but Oprah-
style friendly.
As I approached the entrance of the church before a recent
Sunday service, a large young man in an expensive suit
stepped out to block the doorway.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"I came to hear Dr. Wright," I replied.
After an uncomfortable pause, the gentleman stepped aside.
On this particular July Sabbath morning, only a handful of
white men -- aside from a few members of Obama's Secret
Service detail -- were present among a congregation of
approximately 2,500 people.
The floral arrangements were extravagant. Wright, his
associate pastors, choir members, and many of the gentlemen
in the congregation were attired in traditional African
dashiki robes. African drums accompanied the organist.
Trinity United bears the motto "Unashamedly Black and
Unapologetically Christian."
Wright says its doctrine reflects black liberation
theology, which views the Bible in part as a record of the
struggles of "people of color" against oppression.
A skilled and fiery orator, Wright's interpretation of the
Scriptures has been described as "Afrocentric."
When referring to the Romans, for example, he refers to
"European oppression" -- not addressing the fact that the
Egyptians, who were also a slave society, were people of
Africa.
The Trinity United Web site tells of a "commitment to the
black community, commitment to the black family, adherence
to the black work ethic, pledge to make all the fruits of
developing acquired skills available to the black
community."
"Some white people hear it as racism in reverse," Dwight
Hopkins, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity
School, a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ,
tells The New York Times. Blacks tend to hear a different
message, Hopkins says: "Yes, we are somebody; we're also
made in God's image."
Controversy Abounds
Several prior remarks by Obama's pastor have caught the
media's attention:
o Wright on 9/11: "White America got their wake-up call
after 9/11. White America and the Western world came to
realize people of color had not gone away, faded in the
woodwork, or just disappeared as the Great White West kept
on its merry way of ignoring black concerns." On the Sunday
after the attacks, Dr. Wright blamed America.
o Wright on the disappearance of Natalee Holloway:
"Black women are being raped daily in Africa. One white
girl from Alabama gets drunk at a graduation trip to Aruba,
goes off and gives it up while in a foreign country and
that stays in the news for months."
o Wright on Israel: "The Israelis have illegally
occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now.
Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to
wake the business community and wake up Americans
concerning the injustice and the racism under which the
Palestinians have lived because of Zionism."
o Wright on America: He has used the term
"middleclassness" in a derogatory manner; frequently
mentions "white arrogance" and the "oppression" of African-
Americans today; and has referred to "this racist United
States of America."
Bush's Bulls--t
Wright's strong sentiments were echoed in the Sunday
morning service attended by NewsMax.
Wright laced into America's establishment, blaming the
"white arrogance" of America's Caucasian majority for the
woes of the world, especially the oppression suffered by
blacks.
To underscore the point he refers to the country as the
"United States of White America."
Many in the congregation, including Obama, nodded in
apparent agreement as these statements were made.
The sermon also addressed the Iraq war, a frequent area of
Wright's fulminations.
"Young African-American men," Wright thundered, were "dying
for nothing." The "illegal war," he shouted, was "based on
Bush's lies" and is being "fought for oil money."
In a sermon filled with profanity, Wright also blamed the
war on "Bush administration bulls--t."
Those are the types of statements that have led to MSNBC's
Tucker Carlson describing Wright as "a full-blown hater."
Wright first came to national attention in 1984, when he
visited Castro's Cuba and Col. Muammar Gaddafi's Libya.
Wright's Libyan visit came three years after a pair of
Libyan fighter jets fired on American aircraft over
international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, and four
years before the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over
Lockerbie, Scotland ? which resultted in the deaths of 259
passengers and crew. The U.S. implicated Gaddafi and his
intelligence services in the bombing.
In recent years, Wright has focused his diatribe on
America's war on terror and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
For a February 2003 service, Wright placed a "War on Iraq
IQ Test" on the Pastor's Page of the church Web site. The
test consisted of a series of questions and answers that
clearly portrayed America as the aggressor, and the war as
unjustified and illegal. Marginally relevant issues
regarding Israel received attention.
The test also portrayed the Iraqi people as victims of
trade sanctions, but Saddam Hussein's propensity for using
"oil for food" proceeds to build palaces rather than buy
medicine was never mentioned.
At the end of the test, the pastor wrote, "Members of
Trinity are asked to think about these things and be
prayerful as we sift through the 'hype' being poured on by
the George Bush-controlled media." Obama's campaign staff
did not respond to a NewsMax request for the senator's
response to Wright's statements.
In April, however, Obama spoke to The New York Times about
Wright, and appeared to be trying to distance himself from
his spiritual mentor. He said, "We don't agree on
everything. I've never had a thorough conversation with him
about all aspects of politics."
More specifically, Obama told the Times, "The violence of
9/11 was inexcusable and without justification," adding "It
sounds like [Wright] was trying to be provocative."
Obama attributed Wright's controversial views to Wright
being "a child of the '60s" who Obama said "expresses
himself in that language of concern with institutional
racism, and the struggles the African-American community
has gone through."
"It is hard to imagine, though, how Mr. Obama can truly
distance himself from Mr. Wright," writes Jodi Kantor of
The New York Times. On the day Sen. Obama announced his
presidential quest in February of this year, Wright was set
to give the invocation at the Springfield, Ill. rally. At
the last moment, Obama's campaign yanked the invite to
Wright.
Wright's camp was apparently upset by the slight, and
Obama's campaign quickly issued a statement "Senator Obama
is proud of his pastor and his church."
Since that spat, there is little evidence, indeed, that
Sen. Obama has sought to distance himself from the angry
Church leader. In June, when Obama appeared before a
conference of ministers from his religious denomination,
Wright appeared in a videotaped introduction.
One of Obama's campaign themes has been his claim that
conservative evangelicals have "hijacked" Christianity,
ignoring issues like poverty, AIDS, and racism.
This past June, in an effort to build a new consensus
between his new politics and faith, Obama's campaign
launched a new Web page,
http://www.faith.barackobama.com/
On the day the page appeared on his campaign site, it
offered testimonials from Wright and two other ministers
supporting Obama. The inclusion of Wright drew a sharp
rebuke from the Catholic League. Noting that Obama had
rescinded Wright's invitation to speak at his announcement
ceremony, Catholic League President Bill Donohue declared
that Obama "knew that his spiritual adviser was so divisive
that he would cloud the ceremonies."
He noted that Wright "has a record of giving racially
inflammatory sermons and has even said that Zionism has an
element of 'white racism.' He also blamed the attacks of
9/11 on American foreign policy."
Donohue acknowledged that Obama may have different views
than Wright and the other ministers on his Web site, but
"he is responsible for giving them the opportunity to
prominently display their testimonials on his religious
outreach Web site."
Political pundits have suggested that Obama's problems with
Wright are not ones based on faith, but pure politics. The
upstart presidential candidate needs to pull most of the
black vote to have any chance of snagging the Democratic
nomination. Obama's ties to Wright and the activist African
American church helps in that effort.
But the same experts same those same ties may come to haunt
him if he were to win the nomination and face a Republican
in the general election.
The worry is not lost on Wright. "If Barack gets past the
primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from
me," Wright told The New York Times with a shrug. "
I said it to Barack personally, and he said 'yeah, that
might have to happen.'"
Obama's Farrakhan Test
By Richard Cohen
The Washington Post
Tuesday, January 15, 2008; A13
Barack Obama is a member of Chicago's Trinity United Church
of Christ. Its minister, and Obama's spiritual adviser, is
the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church
launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright's daughters serve as
publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine
makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the
Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said
"truly epitomized greatness." That man is Louis Farrakhan.
Maybe for Wright and some others, Farrakhan "epitomized
greatness." For most Americans, though, Farrakhan
epitomizes racism, particularly in the form of anti-
Semitism. Over the years, he has compiled an awesome record
of offensive statements, even denigrating the Holocaust by
falsely attributing it to Jewish cooperation with Hitler --
"They helped him get the Third Reich on the road." His
history is a rancid stew of lies.
It's important to state right off that nothing in Obama's
record suggests he harbors anti-Semitic views or agrees
with Wright when it comes to Farrakhan. Instead, as Obama's
top campaign aide, David Axelrod, points out, Obama often
has said that he and his minister sometimes disagree.
Farrakhan, Axelrod told me, is one of those instances.
Fine. But where I differ with Axelrod and, I assume, Obama
is that praise for an anti-Semitic demagogue is not a minor
difference or an intrachurch issue. The Obama camp takes
the view that its candidate, now that he has been told
about the award, is under no obligation to speak out on the
Farrakhan matter. It was not Obama's church that made the
award but a magazine. This is a distinction without much of
a difference. And given who the parishioner is, the
obligation to speak out is all the greater. He could be the
next American president. Where is his sense of outrage?
Any praise of Farrakhan heightens the prestige of the
leader of the Nation of Islam. For good reasons and bad, he
is already admired in portions of the black community,
sometimes for his efforts to rehabilitate criminals. His
anti-Semitism is either not considered relevant or is
shared, particularly his false insistence that Jews have
played an inordinate role in victimizing African Americans.
In this, Farrakhan stands history on its head. It was Jews
who disproportionately marched for civil rights and, in
Mississippi, died for that cause. Farrakhan and, in effect,
Wright, despoil the graves of Michael Schwerner, Andrew
Goodman and, of course, their black colleague James Chaney.
I can even see how someone, maybe even Obama, could dismiss
Farrakhan as a pest, a silly man pushing a silly cause that
poses no real threat to the Jewish community. Still,
history tells us that anti-Semitism is not to be trifled
with. It is a botulism of the mind.
The Obama and Clinton campaigns are involved in a tasteless
tussle over the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. What is
clear from rereading King's celebrated "I Have a Dream"
speech of Aug. 28, 1963, is how inclusive that dream was --
"all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and
Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join
hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,
'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are
free at last!' "
This, though, is not Farrakhan's dream. He has vilified
whites and singled out Jews to blame for crimes large and
small, either committed by others as well or not at all. (A
dominant role in the slave trade, for instance.) He has
talked of Jewish conspiracies to set a media line for the
whole nation. He has reviled Jews in a manner that brings
Hitler to mind.
And yet Wright heaped praise on Farrakhan. According to
Trumpet, he applauded his "depth of analysis when it comes
to the racial ills of this nation." He praised "his
integrity and honesty." He called him "an unforgettable
force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is
sincere about his faith and his purpose." These are the
words of a man who prayed with Obama just before the
Illinois senator announced his run for the presidency. Will
he pray with him just before his inaugural?
I don't for a moment think that Obama shares Wright's views
on Farrakhan. But the rap on Obama is that he is a fog of a
man. We know little about him, and, for all my admiration
of him, I wonder about his mettle. The New York Times
recently reported on Obama's penchant while serving in the
Illinois legislature for merely voting "present" when faced
with some tough issues. Farrakhan, in a strictly political
sense, may be a tough issue for him. This time, though,
"present" will not do.
Barack Obama and White Guilt
By Joseph Puder
Shelby Steele, an African-American research fellow at
Stanford University Hoover Institute and author of White
Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise
of the Civil Rights Era pointed out that, "By the mid-
sixties White Guilt was eliciting an entirely new kind of
Black leadership, not selfless men like Martin Luther King
who appealed to the nation's moral character but smaller
men, bargainers, bluffers, and haranguers -- not moralists
but specialists in moral indignation -- who would set up a
trade with White Guilt."
Barack Hussein Obama is different from previous African-
American presidential contenders -- he understands that the
key to the U.S. presidency and power is making deals with
the White-American establishment. Unlike Al Sharpton and
Jesse Jackson, characterized by Shelby Steele as "bluffers
and haranguers," and, one might add, extortionists who
trade in White guilt for personal gain, Obama is more of a
"bargainer." His appeal to White America is that he is not
overtly trading on White guilt but at the same time he and
his aides know that White America seeks moral legitimacy,
and his bargain is in promising to provide such legitimacy
in exchange for power. It is far more sophisticated a
bargain than previous Black leaders have had with White
America.
To the adoring eyes of the liberal mass media, Obama is the
closest expression of a rock star, if not a "black
messiah." While every white candidate is scrutinized and
criticized, Obama remains "beyond criticism."
Had any white candidate, with less than three years
experience in the national arena declared himself a
candidate for the presidency, especially at the tender age
of 46, he/she would have been ridiculed and reviled. The
media's collective white guilt with its derivative of
"political correctness," does not seek articulation on
policy or substance from Obama.
It does not demand answers as to how he would tackle Iran's
terrorist aggression and nuclear pursuits, or ideas on how
to grow the U.S. economy? His generalized "vision" is
sufficient for the liberal media. The white liberal media
would love a black president in order to end the perceived
stigma of white institutional racism -- a way to cleanse
the soul and regain moral legitimacy.
There is little difference between the Democrat party
rhetoric of Obama and that of the white candidates. They
all speak of hope and change so why then should Obama's
words be more believable, legitimate or acceptable? The
answer is obviously white guilt.
American institutions tainted with white guilt are ready to
dispense with justice for what they perceive as the higher
goal of attaining moral legitimacy. The charge of racism in
contemporary America is probably the most intimidating, if
not the most ruinous, to white people's careers. The case
of O.J. Simpson illustrated to perfection how America has
gone from one extreme to the other. Shelby Steele writes,
"In 1955 the murderers of Emmet Till, a black Mississippi
youth, were acquitted of their crime, undoubtedly because
they were white. Forty years later, O.J. Simpson, who many
thought would be charged with the murder of his white wife
and Ron Goldman, by virtue of the DNA evidence against him,
was also acquitted after his black attorney (Johnny
Cochran) portrayed him as a victim of racism."
Steele observed that, "Because white guilt is a vacuum of
moral authority, it makes the moral authority of whites and
the legitimacy of American institutions contingent on
proving a negative: that they are not racist?
Whites and American institutions are stigmatized as racist
until proven otherwise." Political parties and universities
"not only declare their devotion to diversity but also use
racial preferences to increase the visibility of minorities
so as to refute the racist stigma," Steele added.
This is especially apparent within the Democrat party where
support for racial preferences is widespread and pandering
to African-Americans votes is routine.
The blind support and almost universal cheering of college
students for Obama is a by-product of years of
indoctrination on college campuses (especially Ivy League
universities) under the stern eyes of faculty and
administrative "political correctors," who suppress any
vestige of white pride as racist, and who bar the teaching
of Western Civilization with a sense of pride, conversely
engaging in the bashing of the western (white) Europeans as
imperialists, oppressors and racists. It seems as if
American college students have been groomed to cheer a
black presidential candidate thereby providing them with a
small measure of ablution from their "racist sins."
Unfortunately, they were not trained to apply universal
moral standards and sound judgment when analyzing issues
and individuals.
Rather, their worldview is seen through the limited prism
of white guilt. The outcome of which is that white America,
Europe and Israel are tainted with sin, and blacks, Muslims
and those of the third-world are victims, and therefore
virtuous.
America, it appears to Shelby Steele, is governed by this
"white guilt" and, it is destructive to blacks and whites
alike. "Whites and American institutions" he argues, "live
by a simple formula: lessening responsibility for
minorities equals moral authority; increasing it equals
racism.
This is a formula that locks whites into publicly
supporting affirmative action even as they privately
dislike it." It also stigmatizes black excellence.
Can you imagine proclamations posted on the church websites
of the white presidential candidates (Protestant or
Catholic), proclaiming that they are "unashamedly white?"
Seems Obama's pastor; Rev. Jeremiah Wright of the Chicago
Trinity United Church (of which Obama has been a member of
since 1988) is quoted as stating that he is "Unashamedly
Black and Unapologetically Christian." Rev. Wright, whom
Obama credits with being the inspiration for his book, "The
Audacity of Hope," subscribes to what he calls the "Black
Value System." Does Obama also subscribe to this value
system? And if not, why hasn't Obama dissociated himself
from his black radical pastor who refers to America as "our
racist competitive society," and disavows the pursuit of
"middle-classness." Rev. Wright endorses allegiance to "all
black leadership who espouse and embrace the Black Value
System."
Obama's revered pastor considers "Middle Classness" (which
Obama claims to extol) a way for American (white) society
to "snare" blacks rather than "killing them off directly or
placing them in concentration camps." In sermons and
interviews, Wright has claimed that Zionism equals racism
and, has equated Israel with Apartheid South Africa.
Following 9/11 Wright charged that the attack on America
was a consequence of violent American policies, and later
suggested that the murder of 3000 Americans was
"retribution for America's racism." At the kick-off of
Obama's presidential campaign on February 10, 2007, Wright
was asked to stay away. He responded:
"When Obama's enemies find out that in 1984 I went to
Tripoli to visit Col. Muammer el-Qaddafi with the Nation of
Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support
will dry up quicker than a snowball in Hell."
Obama's pastor Rev. Wright is a race-monger, but you will
not discover that from the mainstream liberal media. What
you will find in the liberal media is a politically
incorrect, unrestrained, attack on Mitt Romney's Mormon
religion, but little about the racism and anti-Semitism of
Rev. Wright or about Obama's Muslim background. Obama's
brilliant academic background will be extolled, while, for
example, Romney's extensive experience in government and
business will be underplayed.
In the final analysis one must ask the simple question: In
a color-blind society, devoid of white guilt, does an
inexperienced, untried, albeit bright contender like Obama,
deserve to be president in contrast to Hillary Clinton,
John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Rudi Giuliani ? candidates
who are equally as brighht and have far greater experience.
Barack Obama's Middle East Expert
By Ed Lasky
American Thinker
January 23, 2008
Barack Obama's real thinking about Israel and the Middle
East continues to be an enigma. The words he chose in an
address to AIPAC create a different impression than the
composition of his foreign policy advisory team.
Several advisors have evidenced a history of suspicion and
worse toward Israel. One of his advisors in particular,
Robert Malley, clearly warrants attention, as does the
reasoning that led him to being chosen by Barack Obama.
A little family history may be in order to understand the
genesis of Robert Malley's views. Normally, one should be
reluctant in exploring a person's family background --
after all, who would want to be held responsible for the
sins of one's father? However, when close relatives share a
strong current of ideological affinity, and when a father
has a commanding persona, it behooves a researcher to
inquire a bit into the role of family in forming views.
That said, Robert Malley has a very interesting father.
His father Simon Malley was born to a Syrian family in
Cairo and at an early age found his m?tier in political
journalism. He participated in the wave of anti-imperialist
and nationalist ideology that was sweeping the Third World.
He wrote thousands of words in support of struggle against
Western nations.
In Paris, he founded the journal Afrique Asie; he and his
magazine became advocates for "liberation" struggles
throughout the world, particularly for the Palestinians.
Simon Malley loathed Israel and anti-Israel activism became
a crusade for him-as an internet search would easily show.
He spent countless hours with Yasser Arafat and became a
close friend of Arafat. He was, according to Daniel Pipes,
a sympathizer of the Palestinian Liberation Organization --
-and this was when it was at the height of its terrorism
wave against the West . His efforts were so damaging to
France that President Valerie d'Estaing expelled him from
the country.
Malley has seemingly followed in his father's footsteps: he
represents the next generation of anti-Israel activism.
Through his writings he has served as a willing
propagandist, bending the truth (and more) to serve an
agenda that is marked by anti-Israel bias; he heads a group
of Middle East policy advisers for a think-tank funded (in
part) by anti-Israel billionaire activist George Soros; and
now is on the foreign policy staff of a leading
Presidential contender. Each step up the ladder seems to be
a step closer towards his goal of empowering radicals and
weakening the ties between American and our ally Israel.
Robert Malley's writings strike me as being akin to
propaganda. One notable example is an op-ed that was
published in the New York Times (Fictions About the Failure
at Camp David). The column indicted Israel for not being
generous enough at Camp David and blamed the failure of the
talks on the Israelis.
Malley has repeated this line of attack in numerous op-eds
over the years, often co-writing with Hussein Agha, a
former adviser to Yasser Arafat (see, for example, Camp
David: The Tragedy of Errors ). He was also believed to be
the chief source for an article by Deborah Sontag that
whitewashed Arafat's role in the collapse of the peace
process, an article that has been widely criticized as
riddled with errors and bias.
Malley is a revisionist and his views are sharply at odds
with the views of others who participated at Camp David,
including Ambassador Dennis Ross and President Bill
Clinton. Malley's myth-making has been peddled in the
notably anti-Israel magazine, Counterpunch and by Norman
Finkelstein, the failed academic recently denied tenure at
DePaul University . Malley's Camp David propaganda has also
become fodder for Palestinians, Arab rejectionists, and
anti-Israel activists across the world.
His story of the talks is also plain wrong.
Dennis Ross had this to say regarding the failure of Camp
David when he laid the blame on Yasser Arafat and
Palestinian leadership:
....Fundamentally I do not believe he can end the conflict.
We had one critical clause in this agreement, and that
clause was, this is the end of the conflict. Arafat's whole
life has been governed by struggle and a cause... for him
to end the conflict is to end himself.
...Barak was able to reposition Israel internationally.
Israel was seen as having demonstrated unmistakably it
wanted peace, and the reason it wasn't... achievable was
because Arafat wouldn't accept it.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,50830,00.html
President Clinton echoed these remarks, elsewhere:
So a couple of days before I leave office, Arafat says,
calls to tell me what a great man I am. And I just said,
"No, I'm not. On this I'm a failure, and you made me a
failure."
At the conclusion of Camp David, Clinton made these points,
stressing that Israeli leader Ehud Barak had gone the extra
mile to reach peace with the Palestinians:
-Prime Minister Barak showed particular courage, vision,
and an understanding of the historical importance of this
moment. Chairman Arafat made it clear that he too remains
committed to the path of peace.
- Prime Minister Barak took some very bold decisions...
- I will say again, we made progress on all the core
issues; we made really significant progress on many of
them. The Palestinian teams worked hard on a lot of these
areas. But I think it is fair to say that at this moment in
time, maybe because they had been preparing for it longer,
maybe because they had thought through it more, that the
prime minister moved forward more from his initial position
than Chairman Arafat on -- particularly surrounding the
questions of Jerusalem...
- ... not so much as a criticism of Chairman Arafat,
because this is really hard and had never been done before,
but in praise of Barak. He came in knowing that he was
going to have to take bold steps and he did it, and I think
you should look at it more as a positive toward him than as
a condemnation of the Palestinian side...
- I would be making a mistake not to praise Barak, because
I think he took a big risk, and I think it's sparked
already in Israel a real debate, which is moving Israeli
public opinion toward the conditions that will make peace.
And so I thought that was important, and I think it
deserves to be acknowledged. (Clinton press conference,
July 25, 2000)
Was Malley so central to the peace process that he knew
something that escaped the attention of our Middle East
Envoy and our President?
When one reads Dennis Ross's account of his years of trying
to bring peace to the region, The Missing Peace: The Inside
Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, one can question
just how central Malley was to the Camp David
negotiations.
Malley has written a range of pieces over the years that
reveal an agenda at work that should give pause to those
Obama supporters who truly care about peace in the Middle
Peace and the fate of our ally Israel.
Playing Into Sharon's Hands: which absolves Arafat of the
responsibility to restrain terrorists and blames Israel for
terrorism. He defends Arafat and hails him as ... the first
Palestinian leader to recognize Israel, relinquish the
objective of regaining all of historic Palestine and
negotiate for a two-state solution based on the pre-1967
boundaries. And he remains for now the only Palestinian
with the legitimacy to sell future concessions to his
people.
Rebuilding a Damaged Palestine: which blames Israel's
security operations for weakening Palestinian security
forces (absurd on its face: terrorists filled the ranks of
so-called Palestinian security forces-which, in any case,
never tried to prevent terrorism) and calls for
international forces to restrain the Israelis
Making the Best of Hamas's Victory: which called for
international aid to be showered upon a Hamas-led
government and for international engagement with Hamas (a
group that makes clear in its Charter, its schools, and its
violence its intent to destroy Israel). Malley also makes
an absurd assertion: that Hamas' policies and Israeli
policies are mirror images of each other.
Avoiding Failure with Hamas: which again calls for aid to
flow to a Hamas-led government and even goes so far as to
suggest that failure to extend aid could cause an
environmental or health catastrophe-such as a human strain
of the avian flu virus!
How to Curb the Tension in Gaza: which criticizes Israel's
for its actions to recover Gilad Shalit who was kidnapped
and is being held hostage in the Gaza Strip. He and co-
writer Gareth Evans call Israel's actions 'collective
punishment" in "violation of international law".
Forget Pelosi: What About Syria?: where Malley calls for
outreach to Syria, despite its ties to Hezbollah, Hamas,
and the terrorists committing murder in Iraq; believes it
is unreasonable to call for Syria to cut ties with
Hezbollah, break with Hamas, or alienate Iran before
negotiations; he believes a return of the Golan Heights and
engagement with the West will somehow miraculously lead the
Syrian regime to take these steps --after they get all they
want.
Containing a Shiite Symbol of Hope: that advocated
engagement with the fiercely anti-American Iraqi Moqtada
al-Sadr, who has been responsible for the murder of many
Americans and Iraqis as the leader of the terrorist group,
the Mahdi Army. He also has very close ties to Iran.
Middle East Triangle: (co-written with former Arafat
advisor Hussein Agha) calls for Hamas and Fatah to
reconcile, join forces, and to frustrate, in their words,
Israel's attempts to "perpetuate Palestinian geographic and
political division". Then Hamas will grant Abbas power to
make a political deal with Israel that will bring peace.
Noah Pollack of Commentary Magazine noting, as Malley
habitually fails to do, Hamas intends to destroy Israel,
eviscerated this op-ed.
The U.S. Must Look to its Own Mideast Interests: (co-
written with Aaron David Miller) which advocates a
radically different approach towards the Middle East which,
in their words, does not "follow Israel's lead" and
encompasses engagement with Syria (despite problems with
Lebanon and their support for Hezbollah) and Hamas
(regardless of its failure to recognize Israel or renounce
violence).
A New Middle East: which asserted Hezbollah's attacks on
Israel and the kidnapping of Israelis, which sparked the
Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006, were motivated by Hezbollah's
desire to retrieve Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails and
were a response to pressure being exerted on its allies-
Syria and Iran.
Robert Malley also testified before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee in February, 2004. In that appearance
he called for the Road Map to be cast aside because
incremental measures intended to build trust were
unworkable.
He advocated that a comprehensive settlement plan be
imposed on the parties with the backing of the
international community, including Arab and Moslem states.
He anticipated that Israel would object with "cries of
unfair treatment" but counseled the plan be put in place
regardless of such objections; he also suggested that
waiting for a "reliable Palestinian partner' was
unnecessary.
This is merely a sample of Malley's views -- which are
focused on disengaging from our ally Israel (whose lead
America should not "follow") and engaging with and, in some
cases financially supporting, the likes of Syria, Moqtada
al-Sadr, Hezbollah and Hamas. His ideology is radically at
odds with American foreign policy as it has been practiced
by two generations of Presidents -- both Democrats and
Republicans -- over the years. This is the type of advocacy
Robert Malley has been pursuing in the years since the end
of the Clinton Administration and from his perch at the
International Crisis Group -- an organization that may
share his agenda.
The International Crisis Group
Robert Malley is the Director of the Middle East/North
Africa Program at the International Crisis Group (ICG).
Given the impressive title of the group, one might expect
it to have along and impressive pedigree -- say long the
lines of the well-regarded Council of Foreign Relations. In
fact, the group is rather small and it has a short
pedigree. More importantly, it has ties to George Soros.
Soros is a man who has supported a wide variety of groups
that have shown a propensity to criticize America and
Israel; a man who has made clear his goal is to break the
close bonds between America and Israel; supported the views
of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer whose work on the
issue of the "Israel Lobby" has been widely criticized for
factual inaccuracies, shoddy research, and has been called
"anti-Semitic" in the Washington Post; a man who has taken
steps to counter the supposed political influence of the
pro-Israel community in America; a man who has also been a
key financial backer of Senator Obama's; and a man who can
activate a wide variety of 527 (c) and other activist
groups for any politician he supports.
Soros is a funder of the ICG through his Open Society
Institute; he serves on its Board and on its Executive
Committee. Other members of the Board include Zbigniew
Brzezinski (whose anti-Israel credentials are impeccable)
and Wesley Clark (who called US support for Israel during
the Hezbollah War a " serious mistake"; who has flirted
with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; and who has been the
direct beneficiary of donations made by Soros; Wesley Clark
has defended the actions of George Soros.
But let's return to George Soros.
While it is true that the ICG receives funding from other
sources, none of these donors are on the board; and a
billionaire on the Executive Committee of the Board can
wield a great deal of influence. Soros is a man who is
legendary for his investment prowess. In this case, he
again seems to have invested well -- as he is proud to
trumpet. When the ICG gave him a Founders Award, he spoke
of how pleased he was with the work the group does ("my
money is very well spent"), and he took particular pride in
the work done "on the Palestinian question".
As he should be, given his goals. Malley, as the Director
of the Middle East/ North African program at the ICG, has
assembled a group of "analysts" who reflect his (and
Soros's) views and who share their goals: a radical
reshaping of decades of American foreign policy and a
shredding of the role of morality in the formulation of
American policy. These policies would strengthen our
enemies, empower dictatorships, and harm our allies.
This small cast of characters at the ICG:
Issandr el Amrani has accused the Bush Administration of
fanning the flames of sectarian strife by rallying support
against Iran. He absurdly claims that the goal of this
alliance is to create, "a new regional security arrangement
with the Jewish state firmly as its center -- the holy
grail of the neo-conservatives who, despite reports to the
contrary, continue to craft U.S. Middle East policy.
(Otherwise, why would Elliott Abrams still have his job?"
Peter Harling: who has co-written numerous op-eds with
Malley that advocate outreach toward Iraqi extremist leader
Moqtada al-Sadr; talks with Iran and Syria; and numerous
op-eds critical of American actions in Iraq.
Nicholas Pelham who advocates outreach toward Hamas.
Other analysts and their opinions can be found here.
They are uniformly passive on dealing with terrorism and
terrorists; critical of US efforts in Iraq and American-led
efforts to constrain Iran; advocate aid be given to Hamas
despite its record of terrorism; endorse engagement with
Syria despite its links with Hezbollah, its role in
oppressing Lebanon and its involvement in the
assassinations that have helped to destroy Lebanon. They
also seemingly have no qualms about advocating outreach to
Iran, regardless of its role in the killing of American and
Iraqis in Iraq and its proclaimed goal of destroying
Israel.
No wonder Soros is happy with his investment in the
International Crisis Group and in Robert Malley.
Question remain
Why would Barack Obama have on his foreign policy staff a
man who has been widely criticized for a revisionist
history of the Middle East peace process sharply at odds
with all other accounts of the proceedings?
Why would Barack Obama give credibility to a man who seems
to have an agenda that includes empowering our enemies and
weakening our friends and allies?
How did Robert Malley, with a record of writing that
reveals a willingness to twist facts to serve a political
agenda, come to be appointed by Obama to his foreign staff?
Was it a recommendation of Zbigniew Brzezinski to bring on
board another anti-Israel foreign policy expert?
What role did the left-wing anti-Israel activist George
Soros play in placing Robert Malley (or for that matter,
Brzezinski himself) in a position to influence the future
foreign policy of America?
What does it say about Senator Obama's judgment that he
appointed a man like Malley to be a top foreign policy
advisor?
Or does it speak more to his true beliefs?
A digression, if I may, regarding Malley and impressive
sounding titles. A Washington Post article on Senator
Obama's foreign policy advisors described him as having
been President Clinton's Middle East envoy. Now this would
come as a surprise to Ambassador Dennis Ross who actually
was Clinton's Middle East envoy. Indeed, there is a paucity
of mentions of Malley in Ross's exhaustive history of the
Middle East peace process during the Clinton years, The
Missing Peace, where more often than not he is described as
a note-taker-once serving as Yasser Arafat's stenographer.
Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/barack_obamas_middle_east_expe.html
Obama and Israel, continued
Noah Pollak -- 01.26.2008 -- 09:47
There has been an awakening in recent days to the presence
of a disturbing number of foreign policy advisers to the
Obama campaign who harbor hostile views of Israel. Ed Lasky
of the American Thinker has been doing serious work on the
subject, and his two pieces -- here and here -- are must-
reads.
Caroline Glick adds to the discussion here.
But there is another Obama foreign policy adviser-a
prominent one-who has so far escaped criticism. This is
Samantha Power, a Harvard professor, journalist, and human
rights specialist who of late has become a high-profile
liberal critic of American foreign policy.
For one, Power is an advocate of the Walt-Mearsheimer view
of the American relationship with Israel. In a recent
interview published on the Harvard Kennedy School's
website, Power was asked to explain "long-standing
structural and conceptual problems in U.S. foreign policy."
She gave a two-part answer: the first problem, she said, is
"the US historic predisposition to go it alone." A standard
reply, of course. The second problem, though, should give
us pause:
Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to
which special interests dictate the way in which the
"national interest" as a whole is defined and pursued . . .
America's important historic relationship with Israel has
often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer
reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to
replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon
last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-
productive.
So greater regard for international institutions along with
less automatic deference to special interests-especially
when it comes to matters of life and death and war and
peace-seem to be two take-aways from the war in Iraq.
Power is not just assenting to the Israel Lobby view of
American foreign policy, but is also arguing that Israel
had something to do with the Bush administration's decision
to invade Iraq in 2003-an appalling slander, and a telling
one.
Also of note is a recent opinion piece Power wrote for TIME
magazine, titled "Rethinking Iran," the thrust of which
rethinking involves the need to engage diplomatically the
mullahs and pretend that the Iranian nuclear program is a
figment of the paranoid imagination of the Bush
administration.
She writes:
The war scare that wasn't [the recent incident between
Iranian speedboats and the U.S. Navy in the Straight of
Hormuz] stands as a metaphor for the incoherence of our
policy toward Iran: the Bush Administration attempts to gin
up international outrage by making a claim of imminent
danger, only to be met with international eye rolling when
the claim is disproved.
Sound familiar? The speedboat episode bore an uncanny
resemblance to the Administration's allegations about the
advanced state of Iran's weapons program-allegations
refuted in December by the National Intelligence Estimate.
Does Power actually believe that the NIE put to rest
concerns about the Iranian nuclear program? If she actually
thinks that -- and it appears she does -- she deserves
voluminous ridicule from thinking people everywhere.
Does anyone think that if the time comes that Power has
President Obama's ear, she will advise him to do anything
other than repudiate America's greatest ally in the Middle
East in favor of appeasing its greatest enemy?
And here's an even better question: Does Barack Obama have
a single adviser who would tell him to do anything else?
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/pollak/2085
Obama and Israel-It Gets Worse
Noah Pollak -- 01.27.2008 -- 14:56
A follow-up to my post yesterday about the troubling views
of one of Barack Obama's top foreign policy advisers,
Samantha Power. In 2002 she sat for an interview with Harry
Kreisler, the director of the Institute for International
Studies at Berkeley. Kreisler asked her the following
question:
Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the
following: without addressing the Palestine -- Israel
problem, let's say you were an advisor to the President of
the United States, how would you respond to current events
there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to
monitor that situation, at least if one party or another
[starts] looking like they might be moving toward genocide?
Get a load of Power's response:
What we don't need is some kind of early warning mechanism
there, what we need is a willingness to put something on
the line in helping the situation.
Putting something on the line might mean alienating a
domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial
import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing -- or
investing, I think, more than sacrificing -- billions of
dollars, not in servicing Israel's military, but actually
investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the
billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to
support what will have to be a mammoth protection force,
not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military
presence.
Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of
actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights
abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if
you're serious, you have to put something on the line.
Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling
parties is dreadful.
It's a terrible thing to do, it's fundamentally
undemocratic. But, sadly, we don't just have a democracy
here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain
sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant
to, anyway. It's essential that some set of principles
becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders]
who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the
lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom
Freidman has called "Sharafat." [Sharon-Arafat; this is
actually an Amos Oz construction -- NP] I do think in that
sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully
irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external
intervention.
Just so we're clear here: Power said that her advice to the
President would be to 1) "Alienate" the American Jewish
community, and indeed all Americans, such as evangelical
Christians, who support the state of Israel, because 2)
Israeli leaders are "destroying the lives of their own
people." 3) Pour billions of dollars of the taxpayers'
money into "the new state of Palestine"; 4) Stage an
American ground invasion of Israel and the Palestinian
territories -- what else can she mean by a "mammoth
protection force" and a "military presence" that will be
"imposed" by "external intervention"? -- in order to do the
exact same thing that she considers the height of arrogance
and foolishness in Iraq: an American campaign to remake an
Arab society.
Note that this wasn't her response to a question about her
personal views of the conflict, or about what she envisions
might be a utopian solution to the conflict; it was a
response to a question about what she would tell the
President of the United States if she was his adviser.
Yesterday Barack Obama took a large stride toward the
presidency-helped in some small measure by the speeches on
behalf of the Obama campaign that Power has delivered-and
it is time that someone asked him, while he is still a
candidate, what he thinks of the perverse things his many
foreign policy advisers have said about Israel and the
Middle East.
As Samantha Power herself acknowledged, there is "a
domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial
import" that would like to know where Obama stands on these
matters.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/pollak/2093
End of forwarded message
Jai Maharaj
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Om Shanti
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