TruthNews Commentary, 19 August 2010

A new public opinion poll shows 18 percent of Americans believe President Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim. The number of Americans with that idea has risen in the past year. The poll released Thursday by the Pew Research Center indicated that only 34 percent of people believe that the president is Christian. A larger number -- 43 percent -- say they are not certain what religion Obama practices.

The survey found that those who believe the President is a Muslim overwhelmingly disapprove of his job performance.

Obama's religion has long been the subject of rumors. Obama didn't help matters by making statements during the campaign claiming that he’d never been a Muslim. These assertions were later proved false.

Obama's Kenyan father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a Muslim. Under Islamic law, that made Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. a Muslim, with conversion to a different religion punishable by death.

Obama's mother later divorced Obama, Sr. and married an Indonesian man. The family relocated to Indonesia from 1967-71. Obama attended a Catholic school where documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim, the religion of his Indonesian stepfather. The document required that each student choose one of five state-sanctioned religions when registering -- Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic or Protestant.

Obama‘s middle name "Hussein" is only used by Muslims. Hussein (also spelled Husayn, Husein, , Husain, Hussain, Husayin, Hussayin, Huseyin, Husseyin, Huseyn, Hossain or Husseyn), is an Arabic name which is the diminutive of Hassan, meaning "good", "handsome" or "beautiful." It is commonly given as a male given name among Muslims, in honor of Husayn ibn Ali (626-680 AD), the son-in-law of Mohammed and the founder of the Shi'ite Islamic sect.

Obama's campaign released a statement in Nov. 12, 2007 with the headline, "Barack Obama Is Not and Has Never Been a Muslim." The statement claimed that "Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."

In 2007, Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times reported about Obama's time in Indonesia:

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. But as kids, we loved to meet our friends and went to the mosque together and played," said Zulfin Adi. ... Obama's younger sister, Maya Soetoro, said in a statement released by the campaign that the family attended the mosque only "for big communal events," not every Friday.

Writing in December 2007, Daniel Pipes concluded

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."

During Obama's time in Chicago, he attended the Trinity United Church of Christ, with Jeremiah Wright as the pastor. Wright became an embarrassment to Obama during the campaign when it was revealed that Wright had said in a televised sermon that the Islamic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were proof that "America's chickens are coming home to roost" and concluded with "not God Bless America. God damn America." When Obama resigned from Wright's church, Wright said that Obama "threw me under the bus."

Regarding the new Pew poll, Associated Press reporter Alan Fram wrote on August 19, 2010 that "Americans increasingly are convinced -- incorrectly -- that President Barack Obama is a Muslim, and a growing number are thoroughly confused about his religion." Fram fails to note that Obama himself has been the cause of the confusion, and that Obama had been identified as a Muslim during his childhood. If Obama had been upfront about his religion, the doubts about his religion might not be so persistent.

The Associated Press article states outright that people who believe Obama to be a Muslim are simply wrong. It might be more correct to conclude that the American people have a healthy skepticism about claims made by politicians, especially when this particular politician was caught lying about his childhood involvement with Islam.

The Pew poll was conducted before the president endorsed the building of a Muslim cultural center in New York only two blocks from Ground Zero, the site of the September 11 attacks by Islamic terrorists that destroyed the World Trade Center and killed nearly 3,000 people.

Obama's endorsement of the Ground Zero mosque during his annual Ramadan dinner angered opponents of the mosque who say it's offensive to build a mosque so close to the scene of an attack by Islamic terrorists that killed nearly 3,000 people.