Why do so many Americans think President Obama is a Muslim? Blame the press.
By John Romano
LOS ANGELES (YBH) -Many on the left are gleefully outraged (oddly, that isn’t “contradictio in terminis”, both sides revel in their political anger these days) over the results of a new Pew Research poll that indicates that 18% of Americans currently think that President Obama is actually a Muslim.
In reaction, Time magazine is running a piece today entitled, “Are One-Quarter of Americans Freakin’ Morons?” by writer Amy Sullivan.
To get a sense of where these “freakin’ morons” are coming from let’s look at some of the past coverage of the issue in the press. Two articles from 2007, in what conservatives call the “mainstream press”, stand out.
The Washington Post wrote in 2007 (emphasis ours):
Obama’s mother, divorced from Obama’s father, married a man from Indonesia named Lolo Soetoro, and the family relocated to the country from 1967-71. At first, Obama attended the Catholic school, Fransiskus Assisis, where documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim, the religion of his stepfather. The document required that each student choose one of five state-sanctioned religions when registering _ Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic or Protestant. [White House Press Secretary Robert] Gibbs said he wasn’t sure why the document had Obama listed as a Muslim.
Paul Watson wrote about the issue in the Los Angeles Times a few months later, select quotes from the piece:
JAKARTA, INDONESIA — As a boy in Indonesia, Barack Obama crisscrossed the religious divide. At the local primary school, he prayed in thanks to a Catholic saint. In the neighborhood mosque, he bowed to Allah.
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.
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.
Neighborhood Muslims worshiped in a nearby house, which has since been replaced by a larger mosque. Sometimes, when the muezzin sounded the call to prayer, Lolo and Barry would walk to the makeshift mosque together, Adi said.
“His mother often went to the church, but Barry was Muslim. He went to the mosque,” Adi said. “I remember him wearing a sarong.”
“At that time, Barry was also praying in a Catholic way, but Barry was Muslim,” Dharmawan said in Obama’s old classroom, where she still teaches 39 years later. “He was registered as a Muslim because his father, Lolo Soetoro, was Muslim.”
Bugs have eaten Obama’s file in the school’s archive, said Vice Principal Hardi Priyono. But two of his teachers, former Vice Principal Tine Hahiyari and third-grade teacher Effendi, said they remember clearly that at this school too, he was registered as a Muslim, which determined what class he attended during weekly religion lessons.
Robert Gibbs is also quoted in the article, (emphasis ours):
“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,” Gibbs’ Jan. 24 statement said. In a statement to The Times on Wednesday, the campaign offered slightly different wording, saying: “Obama has never been a practicing Muslim.” The statement added that as a child, Obama had spent time in the neighborhood’s Islamic center.
Clearly, many political enemies of Mr. Obama are having a field day making hay of the President’s perceived religious leanings, but the above shows that their is plenty of evidence in the mainstream available to confuse the issue. Add in Mr. Obama’s full name, which includes a middle name that is the last name of a Muslim leader whose country we invaded in the last ten years, and you have a recipe for confusion among people of goodwill. To further confuse folks, simply refer to statements like the one Mr. Obama made during his famous speech to the Islamic world in Cairo last year. The President stated that he considers it part of his “responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” Why exactly it that the responsibility of the President of a secular country?
Ironically, as the President is truly bi-racial he may also be truly bi-religious in the best sense of the term. His confessed faith is Christianity, but few if any people in positions of power have towed the line between two faiths as Mr. Obama has done. Inferring that anyone that thinks the President is a Muslim is a “moron” may make good political theater for Democrats (as the right-wing asserting the opposite also does), it fails to uncloud the issue.
Unfortunately, the President may have to deal with the private issue of his personal faith publicly at some point in the future, as Mr. Obama’s challenger in 2012 is sure to be emboldened by the uncertainty among the American public and from the figures above the “Muslim” perception is growing not declining. If he does deal with the issue, the President will have to tread very carefully on how and why he rejected Islam in favor of Christianity. A tightrope that Mr. Obama is capable of walking. The real question is: Is he willing to do so?
Lastly, a credible poll of the Muslim world would be enlightening on the issue of the President’s perceived faith. Do Muslims the world over believe that Mr. Obama is a Muslim by birth? And if so do they think that the current President is an apostate? Answers to those questions would really force the issue publicly. The tightrope would be even thinner for the President at that point.
Serious business indeed.
Thanks to Time Magazine blog commenter“jonatwork” for the idea for, and references in, this article.
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John Romano is the publisher and editor of Yes, But However!, a musician, a former political correspondent for BBC Radio London, and a serial web entrepreneur. Follow him on twitter: twitter.com/yesbuthowever or John Romano on Google+John Romano article archive.
