The Irrelevance of Obama's Religion

The Irrelevance of Obama's Religion

According to Islamic law, if your father is a Muslim, so are you, and once a Muslim, always a Muslim.

That fact has become relevant in the campaign for the Republican nomination for the presidency ever since Sen. Rick Santorum called into question Barack Obama’s religion when Santorum alleged the president was motivated by “some phony theology, not a theology based on the Bible” and also referred to Obama’s “radical Islamic policies.”

First of all, let’s stipulate that religion has no place in American politics–with one important exception: If someone has misstated his religion and misled the electorate, the issue becomes not one of religion but of truth and honesty.

Barack Hussein Obama’s Muslim father, Barack Hussein Obama, Senior, conferred his Islamic middle name, derived from Hussein Ibn Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, on Barack Hussein Obama, Junior. At least in the eyes of Islam, our president is a Muslim, although he has said that “Hussein” is an African name and that he is a Christian.

The case should be closed but isn’t for a variety of reasons.

The president has said that his Kenyan father denied abandoned his Islamic faith before he abandoned his family. He was raised–in part–by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham Obama, an atheist.

Much of his upbringing was provided by his maternal grandparents after his mother married another Muslim, Lolo Soetero, took her son with her to live his formative years in Muslim Indonesia where he attended a Wahabi school in Jakarta and ultimately turned young Barry over to her parents while she pursued her education and career.

All that abandonment had to have warped her child but none of the above proves Obama is a closet Muslim or a religious hypocrite who followed in his father’s footsteps by turning his back on Islam.

The president’s collegiate life is still cloaked in mystery although it is known that he had Muslim roommates and travelled to Indonesia during his years at Columbia University and subsequently visited his father’s Muslim family in Kenya. And, of course, he fondly wrote of dreams inherited from the Marxist father he resented for dumping his family but, again, none of that proves he is really a Muslim and not a Christian.

Antagonizing America’s only ally in the Mideast, . . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=13822.)