{"id":403,"date":"2008-03-03T00:11:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-03T00:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/03\/is-obama-blameless-in-false-ru.html"},"modified":"2008-03-03T00:11:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-03T00:11:00","slug":"is-obama-blameless-in-false-ru","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/03\/is-obama-blameless-in-false-ru.html","title":{"rendered":"Has Obama Made Himself Vulnerable to False Rumors?*"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"obama3.jpg\"Last week saw Barack Obama\u2019s enemies begin to exploit the previously latent \u201cMuslim factor\u201d against him, with Hillary Clinton aides reportedly feeding the Drudge Report a photo of Obama in Somali garb<\/a> and a conservative radio host repeatedly invoking Obama\u2019s middle name<\/a>\u2014Hussein\u2014in an apparent attempt to paint him as a Muslim at a John McCain rally. A press release issued by the Tennessee Republican party incorporated both the photo and Obama\u2019s middle name, though both components were removed from the release by week\u2019s end.
\nThe efforts to portray Obama, a longtime active member of the United Church of Christ, as a Muslim, have been decried by pols and pundits of all stripes, as well they should. At the same time, there\u2019s a question about whether Obama deserves some of the blame for aiding the smear campaign against him, and God-o-Meter is surprised it hasn\u2019t been asked yet elsewhere. In keeping mum about his very real experiences with Islam as a child, has Obama made himself vulnerable to charges that he\u2019s been hiding his connections to the religion?
\nIf voters suspect that\u2019s the case, they\u2019ll be much more susceptible to the false rumors about Obama being Muslim today.
\nA \u201cfactcheck\u201d memo about the false Muslim rumors<\/a> on Obama\u2019s official campaign web site rejects any suggestion that there\u2019s ever been a tie between Obama and Islam. Citing a March 2007 Los Angeles Times story<\/a>, the memo quotes Obama chief spokesman Robert Gibbs: “To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago.\u201d
\nBut the Obama campaign factcheck leaves out the ensuing paragraphs from the L.A. Times piece, which sketch out Obama\u2019s early experiences with Islam:<\/p>\n

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 of the schools he attended.
\nThat registration meant that during the third and fourth grades, Obama learned about Islam for two hours each week in religion class.
\nThe 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, who describes himself as among Obama’s closest childhood friends.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The campaign has also kept a lid on Obama\u2019s father\u2019s polygamy, a fact reported by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof<\/a> just last month.
\nCan the campaign continue to stay quiet about these experiences in Obama’s life when its enemies are beginning to latch onto them? Should Obama have been more forthright about his childhood experiences with Islam–by way of his Kenyan father and Indonesian stepfather–earlier on in his campaign, or would that have stopped him out of the gates? There\u2019s never a good time to talk about the so-called \u201cMuslim factor,\u201d God-o-Meter knows, but the question is whether Obama is actually fanning the false rumor campaign by appearing to conceal his very real exposure to Islam as a youth.
\nEditor’s Note: God-o-Meter changed the original title for this post–Is Obama Blameless in False Rumors?–because it implied Obama deserved blame for the rumors themselves, rather than for making himself more vulnerable to them.<\/em><\/p>\n


\n9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week saw Barack Obama\u2019s enemies begin to exploit the previously latent \u201cMuslim factor\u201d against him, with Hillary Clinton aides reportedly feeding the Drudge Report a photo of Obama in Somali garb and a conservative radio host repeatedly invoking Obama\u2019s middle name\u2014Hussein\u2014in an apparent attempt to paint him as a Muslim at a John McCain…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama"],"yoast_head":"\nHas Obama Made Himself Vulnerable to False Rumors?* - God-O-Meter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/03\/is-obama-blameless-in-false-ru.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Has Obama Made Himself Vulnerable to False Rumors?* - 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