OBAMA'S MUSLIN CHILDHOOD

Click on the image to enlarge it. Illustration Muslim Obama by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times

Transcrevo trecho inicial de artigo de Daniel Pipes, um dos maiores experts do mundo em Oriente Médio, no original em inglês. Para quem quiser ler a tradução para o português completa - A INFÂNCIA MUÇULMANA DE OBAMA deve clicar AQUI. A postagem em inglês deve-se ao fato de que é o idioma planetário. O português, infelizmente, é lido apenas em países como o Brasil pertecentes à área compreendida pelo "lixo ocidental". Além disso, este blog dedica-se à análise política não apenas no que diz respeito ao Brasil, mas também em nível internacional, razão pela qual o blog é muito lido nos Estados Unidos, Europa, na América Latina além de outros continentes. Por isso faço também, às vezes, postagens em espanhol, pelos inúmeros leitores latino-americanos e, particularmente, da Venezuela.

Este artigo de Daniel Pipes é minucioso, instigante e demolidor, remetendo o leitor a dezenas de links. Aborda uma questão que continua gerando muita polêmica nos Estados Unidos. Afinal, permanece a dúvida se Obama é realmente americano. Alude-se com frequência que Obama é muçulmano. O título do post é o mesmo do original do artigo.

Barack Obama has come out swinging against his Republican rival, sponsoring television advertisements that ask, "What is Mitt Romney hiding?" The allusion is to such relatively minor matters as Romney's prior tax returns, the date he stopped working for Bain Capital, and the non-public records from his service heading the Salt Lake City Olympics and as governor of Massachusetts. Obama defended his demands that Romney release more information about himself, declaring in Aug. 2012 that "The American people have assumed that if you want to be president of the United States that your life's an open book when it comes to things like your finances." Liberals like Paul Krugman of the New York Times enthusiastically endorse this focus on Mitt Romney's personal history.

If Obama and his supporters wish to focus on biography, of course, this is a game two can play. Already, the temperate, mild-mannered Romney criticized Obama's reelection campaign as "based on falsehood and dishonesty" and a television ad went further, asserting that Obama "doesn't tell the truth."

A focus on openness and honesty are likely to hurt Obama far more than Romney. Obama remains the mystery candidate with an autobiography full of gaps and even fabrications. For example, to sell his autobiography in 1991, Obama falsely claimed that he "was born in Kenya." He lied about never having been a member and candidate of the 1990s Chicago socialist New Party; and when Stanley Kurtz produced evidence to establish that he was a member, Obama's flacks smeared and dismissed Kurtz. Obama's 1995 autobiography, Dreams from My Father, contains a torrent of inaccuracies and falsehoods about such his maternal grandfather, his father, his mother, his parents' wedding, his stepfather's father, his high school friend, his girlfriend, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. As Victor Davis Hanson puts it, "If a writer will fabricate the details about his own mother's terminal illness and quest for insurance, then he will probably fudge on anything."
Into this larger pattern of mendacity about his past life arises the question of Obama's discussion of his faith, perhaps the most singular and outrageous of his lies.
Contradictions

Asked about the religion of his childhood and youth, Obama offers contradictory answers. He finessed a Mar. 2004 question, "Have you always been a Christian?" by replying: "I was raised more by my mother and my mother was Christian." But in Dec. 2007 he belatedly decided to give a straight answer: "My mother was a Christian from Kansas. … I was raised by my mother. So, I've always been a Christian." In Feb. 2009, however, he offered a completely different account:

I was not raised in a particularly religious household. I had a father who was born a Muslim but became an atheist, grandparents who were non-practicing Methodists and Baptists, and a mother who was skeptical of organized religion. I didn't become a Christian until … I moved to the South Side of Chicago after college.

He further elaborated this answer in Sept. 2010, saying: "I came to my Christian faith later in life."

Which is it? Has Obama "always been a Christian" or did he "become a Christian" after college? Self-contradiction on so fundamental a matter of identity, when added to the general questioning about the accuracy of his autobiography, raises questions about veracity; would someone telling the truth say such varied and opposite things about himself? Inconsistency is typical of fabrication: when making things up, it's hard to stick with the same story. Obama appears to be hiding something. Was he the areligious child of irreligious parents? Or was he always a Christian? A Muslim? Or was he, in fact, something of his own creation – a Christian/Muslim?

Obama provides some information on his Islamic background in his two books, Dreams and The Audacity of Hope (2006). In 2007, when Hillary Clinton was still the favored Democratic candidate for president, a number of reporters dug up information about Obama's time in Indonesia. Obama's statements as president have provided important insights into his mentality. The major biographies of Obama, however, whether friendly (such as those by David Maraniss, David Mendell, and David Remnick) or hostile (such as those by Jack Cashill, Jerome R. Corsi, Dinish D'Souza, Aaron Klein, Edward Klein, and Stanley Kurtz), devote little attention to this topic.

I shall establish his having been born and raised a Muslim, provide confirming evidence from recent years, survey the perceptions of him as a Muslim, and place this deception in the larger context of Obama's autobiographical fictions. CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE