Franklin Graham peppered Obama about ties to Islam

JERUSALEM – At a meeting with Christian leaders last month, Sen. Barack Obama reportedly was peppered with questions by Franklin Graham – son of evangelist Billy Graham – about the presidential candidate's ties to Islam, his Christian baptism and whether he accepts Jesus as his savior, it has emerged.

The new accounts, published by the Religion News Service and by the left-leaning magazine The Nation, contrast with major media reports describing Obama's closed-door meeting June 10 with Christian A-listers as friendly.

"I can confirm Rev. Graham did indeed ask Obama about his personal faith. Because it was a private meeting, it is up to Obama if he wants to release any more information," Graham's spokesman, Jeremy Blume, told WND.

Obama's meeting with about 30 Christian leaders took place at a downtown Chicago law office. According to The Nation's Max Blumenthal, quoting sources inside the meeting, Graham, who serves as chief of the Christian aid organization Samaritan's Purse, sat next to Obama.

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One meeting attendee, Rev. Eugene Rivers, pastor of Boston's Azusa Christian Community, told the Religion News Service that Graham asked about Obama's Christian beliefs and the senator's family connections to Islam.

Obama's father, described in some reports as an atheist, polygamist and alcoholic, was buried in Kenya as a Muslim. Barack Obama Sr. had three sons with another woman who reportedly all are Muslim. The Illinois senator's brother, Roy, is described as a practicing Muslim.

Rivers said Obama told Graham of this father: "the least of the things he was was Islamic."

According to River's account, Graham went on to ask Obama whether he believed Jesus is the only way to salvation.

Rivers, a declared Obama supporter, recalled: "Obama said, brilliantly, 'Jesus is the only way for me. I'm not in a position to judge other people.'"

Rivers said he was disappointed by some of Graham's questioning, explaining he thought the meeting would focus on domestic policy.

"They focused on abortion, gay marriage, and then Franklin Graham tried to get Senator Obama saved," said Rivers.

Another Obama meeting participant, Stephen Strang, publisher of the evangelical magazine Charisma, told The Nation several participants, not just Graham, expressed concern about the Muslim background of some of Obama's family members.

Strang, a member of Pastor John Hagee's Christians United For Israel organization, said Obama replied he had hardly known his father, who left his family when Obama was 2 years old.

Strang quoted Obama stating he never attended mosque while a child in Indonesia, a contention contradicted by quotes to reporters from Obama's childhood friends.

"I remember [Obama] saying, 'We never went to the mosque when we lived in Indonesia,'" Strang said.

The new accounts of the Christian leaders' meeting with Obama follow media reports characterizing it as friendly. One report had Obama and Graham hugging after the meeting, although a Graham spokesman later told the Christian Broadcasting Network it was a handshake, not a hug.

Obama 'quote religious in Islam'

Obama has long denied he was ever a Muslim. His campaign site states: "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."

But as WND reported, public records in Indonesia listed Obama as a Muslim during his early years, and a number of childhood friends claimed to the media Obama was once a mosque-attending Muslim.

Obama's campaign several times has wavered in response to reporters queries regarding the senator's childhood faith.

Commenting on a recent Los Angeles Times report quoting a childhood friend stating Obama prayed in a mosque – something the presidential candidate said he never did – Obama's campaign released a statement explaining the senator "has never been a practicing Muslim."

Widely distributed reports have noted that in January 1968, Obama was registered as a Muslim at Jakarta's Roman Catholic Franciscus Assisi Primary School under the name Barry Soetoro. He was listed as an Indonesian citizen whose stepfather, listed on school documents as "L Soetoro Ma," worked for the topography department of the Indonesian Army.

Catholic schools in Indonesia routinely accept non-Catholic students but exempt them from studying religion. Obama's school documents, though, wrongly list him as being Indonesian.

After attending the Assisi Primary School, Obama was enrolled – also as a Muslim, according to documents – in the Besuki Primary School, a public school in Jakarta.

The Loatze blog, run by an American expatriate in Southeast Asia who visited the Besuki school, noted "All Indonesian students are required to study religion at school, and a young 'Barry Soetoro,' being a Muslim, would have been required to study Islam daily in school. He would have been taught to read and write Arabic, to recite his prayers properly, to read and recite from the Quran and to study the laws of Islam."

Indeed, in Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," he acknowledged studying the Quran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school."

"In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Quranic studies," wrote Obama.

The Indonesian media have been flooded with accounts of Obama's childhood Islamic studies, some describing him as a religious Muslim .

Speaking to the country's Kaltim Post, Tine Hahiyary, who was principal of Obama's school while he was enrolled there, said she recalls he studied the Quran in Arabic.

"At that time, I was not Barry's teacher, but he is still in my memory" claimed Tine, who is 80 years old.

The Kaltim Post said Obama's teacher, named Hendri, died.

"I remember that he studied 'mengaji (recitation of the Quran)," Tine said, according to an English translation by Loatze.

Mengaji, or the act of reading the Quran with its correct Arabic punctuation, is usually taught to more religious pupils and is not known as a secular study.

Also, Loatze documented the Indonesian daily Banjarmasin Post interviewed Rony Amir, an Obama classmate and Muslim, who described Obama as "previously quite religious in Islam."

"We previously often asked him to the prayer room close to the house. If he was wearing a sarong (waist fabric worn for religious or casual occasions) he looked funny," Amir said.

The Los Angeles Times, which sent a reporter to Jakarta, quoted Zulfin Adi, who identified himself as among Obama's closest childhood friends, stating the presidential candidate prayed in a mosque, something Obama's campaign claimed he never did.

"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 Adi.

Friday prayers

Aside from a new website to fight purported smears, Obama's official campaign site has a page titled "Obama has never been a Muslim, and is a committed Christian." The page states, "Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ."

But the campaign changed its tune when it issued a "practicing Muslim" clarification to the Los Angeles Times.

An article in March by the Chicago Tribune apparently disputes Adi's statements to the L.A. paper. The Tribune caught up with Obama's declared childhood friend, who now describes himself as only knowing Obama for a few months in 1970 when his family moved to the neighborhood. Adi said he was unsure about his recollections of Obama

But the Tribune found Obama did attend mosque.

"Interviews with dozens of former classmates, teachers, neighbors and friends show that Obama was not a regular practicing Muslim when he was in Indonesia," states the Tribune article.

It quotes the presidential candidate's former neighbors and third-grade teacher recalling Obama "occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers."

Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, notes the Tribune article – cited by liberal blogs as refuting claims Obama is Muslim – actually implies Obama was an irregularly practicing Muslim and twice confirms Obama attended mosque services.

In a free-ranging interview with the New York Times, Obama described the Muslim call to prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset."

The Times' Nicholos Kristof wrote Obama recited, "with a first-class [Arabic] accent," the opening lines of the Muslim call to prayer.

The first few lines of the call to prayer state:

Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that Muhammad is his prophet...

Some attention also has been paid to Obama's paternal side of the family, including his father and his brother, Roy.

Writing in a chapter of his book describing his 1992 wedding, the presidential candidate stated: "The person who made me proudest of all was Roy. Actually, now we call him Abongo, his Luo name, for two years ago he decided to reassert his African heritage. He converted to Islam and has sworn off pork and tobacco and alcohol."

Still, Obama says he was raised by his Christian mother and repeatedly has labeled as "smears" several reports attempting to paint him as a Muslim.

"Let's make clear what the facts are: I am a Christian. I have been sworn in with a Bible. I pledge allegiance [to the American flag] and lead the Pledge of Allegiance sometimes in the United States Senate when I'm presiding," he told the Times of London earlier this year.

SheikBen wrote:TerryRC,

The immediate difference is that Jesus Christ is God incarnate. You would never have a Muslim claiming that Muhammad was Allah.

An interesting test of tolerance would be to go to the most fundamentalist Christian area on earth, which is most likely somewhere in the deep south. Yell at the top of your lungs something blasphemous about Jesus, and you will find that while people will tell you to stop, you will likely escape with your life. If for some reason someone does you harm, it will be most likely punished by the governing authorities of that area.

Now try doing the same thing at Mecca.

And then tell me that fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam are not so different.

SheikBen wrote:When has a fundamentalist Christian rule been established?

By my count twice. The Puritans and Calvin's Geneva. While neither was completely without religious persecution, you see a considerably light degree of things (18 witches, though 18 too many, in the former, and one person in the latter).

ziggy wrote:

SheikBen wrote:When has a fundamentalist Christian rule been established?

By my count twice. The Puritans and Calvin's Geneva. While neither was completely without religious persecution, you see a considerably light degree of things (18 witches, though 18 too many, in the former, and one person in the latter).

A had both excesses not eventually been replaced by more secular government authorirty, who knows how much more hell on earth they may have created in the name of their God-given purity.

shermangeneral wrote:Well if Jesus reigned in everyone's heart there would be no need for laws, right?