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PrintAugust 19, 2010
Growing number of Americans believe Obama a Muslim
There is a lot of media handwringing this morning over a poll indicating 18 percent of the American public (up from 11 percent in March, 2009) believe President Obama is a Muslim. The AP's headline on its article about the poll sets the tone: "Poll: Growing number incorrectly call Obama Muslim." The Washington Post puts its disapproval in the lead of its story on the poll:
The number of Americans who believe -- wrongly -- that President Obama is a Muslim has increased significantly since his inauguration and now account for nearly 20 percent of the nation's population.Of course, blame for this is easy to identify for the worried WaPo journos:
The president's religion, like his place of birth, has been the subject of Internet-spread rumors and falsehoods since before he began his presidential campaign, and the poll indicates that those rumors have gained currency since Obama took office. The number of people who now correctly identify Obama as a Christian has dropped to 34 percent, down from nearly half when he took office.The AP journos offer another explanation:
His full name, Barack Hussein Obama, sounds Muslim to many.
"To many"? Are there people who think this sounds like a Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hundu name?
None of the above journos mention the memorable moment when Obama spoke of "my Muslim faith."
Nor his striking bow before the Saudi King -- the protector of Mecca and Medina.
Then there is the small matter of Obama's ditching any Christian religious observance since leaving Trinity United Church, headed by Louis Farrakhan-honoring, America-hating pastor Jeremiah Wright. And his skipping of the National Prayer Breakfast. The poll was taken before the President's hosting of an Iftar (Ramadan) dinner at the White House, endorsing the Ground Zero Mosque.
What nobody on the left will acknowledge is that the systematic cover-up of Obama's documents -- his long form birth certificate, his academic records, his travel records (that curious trip to Pakistan while a college student that nobody in the press is the least bit curious about) -- has led to deep skepticism about the biographical narrative ginned up by his campaign.
As J.R. Dunn notes today, a cumulative picture of the president has been built by his actions. His first interview was with an Arab television network, his first major speech was an address to the Muslim world in Cairo.
I am agnostic on the president's faith. He says he is a Christian, but the version of Christianity he embraces, Black Liberation Theology, does not strike many people as genuine Christianity so much as genuine Marxism.
In other words, like me, many Americans are skeptical that the version of Barack Obama presented to us by his campaign, his media claque, and his carefully crafted rhetoric, is not the genuine story of the man. His own obfuscation of large parts of his past is the fundamerntal reason why so many of us are skeptical.
