Byron York had a column yesterday and Jack Cashill today concerning the “re-energized” controversy over President Obama’s religious affiliation. First up, some response to York’s commentary The never-clearing fog around Obama’s religion in The Washington Examiner.
York is an excellent reporter and the main thrust of his column explains in some detail why there is so much controversy and suspicion on the part of many Americans that Obama is a Muslim.
Of late we’ve seen the subject come up in the Republican presidential race with Donald Trump getting all kinds of flak from the liberal press, and even from some on the right, for not “correcting” an attendee at one of his appearances who charged that the president is a Muslim.
(Much criticism is going to come the way of another currently leading GOP candidate, Ben Carson for saying that he did not believe America should elect a Muslim as president.)
York, in his usually thorough fact-filled fashion, takes on the issue, pointing out that much of the controversy is the president’s own making.
York, however, is in our opinion, uncharacteristically way off base in repeating the same mantra we’ve heard over and over across the entire political spectrum: Whenever speculation arises that questions whether Obama is a Muslim, it should always be met with the flat out pronouncement that he is not Muslim; Obama is a Christian!
If I am asked, the only truly honest and fair response to this question is, “I do not know, and what makes you think that you know?”
Mr. Trump’s current experience underscores that point.
The question is, “How do you know with such absolute certainty that Obama is a Christian?”, especially when the “proof” most often asserted is “because he says he is!”
Barack Obama has an indisputable record as a liar (admittedly, a very sad thing to say about a US president; provocative to all his supporters but an established fact nonetheless). It may be characterized by his supporters and timid Republicans as “misspoken”, or “mistakenly expressed”, or “insufficiently nuanced”, or only because his ‘thinking has ‘evolved'”, or as “merely ambiguous”, but Mr. Obama, the record is unequivocal, will say anything if it serves his political interest, even when he knows it is false and/or completely contradictory with what he said the day before!
Yet even Byron York is not immune to succumbing to the imposed position:
“The first thing Republican candidates should do when faced with the question — and they will be faced with it — is to say Obama is a Christian and a natural-born U.S. citizen. Then they should add that the question itself, while a near-obsession in some corners of the press, is not particularly important to today’s voters.”
Jack Cashill is probably the foremost authority on BO’s background, perhaps rivaled by Dinesh D’Souza. This is an excellent piece on the topic appearing in today’s American Thinker. So Is Barack Obama a Muslim or What? (excerpt)
“The fallacy that President Obama is a Muslim has tripped up many a politician,” said NPR’s Jessica Taylor hopefully on Friday, “and on Thursday night, GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump was its latest victim.”
Trump’s presumed faux pas was his failure to correct a questioner who asserted that Barack Obama was a Muslim. Taylor’s real error as a reporter, like that of all her mainstream colleagues, was to dismiss the questioner’s assertion as a “fallacy” without providing any evidence to the contrary.
Strange but true, reporters pride themselves on knowing nothing about Obama’s roots. Last month, for instance, Catherine Thompson of the popular progressive blog, Talking Points Memo, interviewed me about an article I had written on the subject of Republican presidential eligibility.
Weary of her obvious condescension, I asked her where Obama spent the first year of his life. “Indonesia?” she answered. “No,” I said, “Seattle.” I asked her to survey her colleagues on the same question. Not surprisingly, this was the one exchange she edited out of the interview.
Obama’s word, whether on his birth or his faith, is good enough for the center-left media. Although they have chosen to know as little as possible about Obama’s Muslim legacy, the legacy is real. “Barry was a Muslim,” his third grade teacher told the Los Angeles Times in 2007,” and he did, in fact, register in school in Indonesia as one.
In his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama gratuitously used the Arabic “Andalusia” when referring to Spain. In September 2008, in a conversation with George Stephanopoulos set up to quell such rumors, Obama slipped up and referred to “my Muslim faith” before Stephanopoulos quickly intervened to correct him. Slip up or no, Obama found it “deeply offensive” that the Republican camp was suggesting “that perhaps I’m not who I say I am when it comes to my faith.”
DLH
We are often asked if it is true that Muslims are allowed or encouraged to lie. We take advantage of a communication from Hugh Pries a retired Army Special Forces Lt. Colonel and former military adviser stationed in Iraq
This is the best definition I could find:
In Shi’a Islam, taqiya (تقیة taqiyyah/taqīyah) is a form of religious veil, or a legal dispensation whereby a believing individual can deny his faith or commit otherwise illegal or blasphemous acts, especially while they are in fear or at risk of significant persecution.
The whole Obama birth certificate matter I think is a diversion, allowed even encouraged to fester by Obama’s handlers. Creating or fostering suspicion there can be leveraged to denigrate other “controversial” inquiry as to his school matriculation — did he apply as a foreign student, his religious affiliation then, school records and more, all still denied to reporters.
R Mall
