His Teachers Confirmed Obama Was a Registered Muslim

It really shouldn’t matter to Americans that Barry Soetoro (aka: Barack Obama) was once registered as a Muslim when he was a mere child living in Indonesia. So why is his campaign still going out of its way to dispel the truth??? Perhaps it’s because radical Muslims believe that “once a Muslim always a Muslim,” and that spells “OBAMA IS A BIG SECURITY RISK.” Not that any radical Muslims would ever conceive of doing harm to an American president who has disavowed his Muslim faith and converted to Christianity.

I actually discovered this heart-warming account of Obama’s time as a registered Muslim while living in Indonesia from a link on the Roman Catholics for Obama 08 web page. And I quote . . .

“As his own campaign website and numerous media reports outline, Barack Obama is a committed Christian. He attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago and, for the record, has never been a Muslim. . .”

Really??? Perhaps the good Catholics for Obama need to check their links more carefully?

Here’s the excerpt from Paul Watson’s March 16, 2007 report in the LA Times I found by using that link.

Islam an unknown factor in Obama bid

. . .Obama's four years as a child in Indonesia underscore how dramatically his background differs from that of past presidential hopefuls, most of whom spent little, if any, time in other countries. No one knows how voters will react to a candidate with an early exposure to Islam, a religion that remains foreign to many Americans. 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. 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.

The campaign's national press secretary, Bill Burton, said Wednesday that the friends were recalling events "that are 40 years old and subject to four decades of other information." Obama's younger sister, Maya Soetoro, said in a statement released by the campaign that the family attended the mosque only "for big communal events," not every Friday . . .

In his autobiography, Dreams From My Father, Obama briefly mentions Koranic study and describes his public school, which accepted students of all religions, as "a Muslim school."

"In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during Koranic studies," Obama wrote. "My mother wasn't overly concerned. 'Be respectful,' she'd say. In the Catholic school, when it came time to pray, I would close my eyes, then peek around the room. Nothing happened. No angels descended. Just a parched old nun and 30 brown children, muttering words."

Obama was born in Honolulu. When he was 2, his father, Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan, and his Kansas-born mother, Ann Dunham, separated and later divorced. Dunham later married Lolo Soetoro, who was a Muslim. In 1967, the family moved to Jakarta, where Obama lived from ages 6 to 10. People there knew him as Barry Soetoro.

Adi said he often visited the Soetoro family at their home, a small flat-roofed bungalow at 16 Haji Ramli St. Today, he runs an Internet cafe and purified water business from the same small Jakarta house where he grew up near Obama.

Theirs was a middle-class neighborhood, but Haji Ramli Street was a dirt lane where Obama used to while away the hours kicking a soccer ball. In the long rainy season, it turned to thick, mucky soup; Obama and his friends wore plastic bags over their shoes to walk though it, said Adi, who at 46 is the same age as Obama.

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."

In her statement, Obama's sister, who was born after the family moved to Indonesia, said: "My father saw Islam as a way to connect with the community. He never went to prayer services except for big communal events. I am absolutely certain that my father did not go to services every Friday. He was not religious."

In 1968, Obama began first grade at St. Francis Assisi Foundation School, just around the corner from his home.

The Catholic elementary school had opened the previous year and wanted to enroll as many students as possible, so it welcomed children of any religion, said Israella Dharmawan, 63, his first-grade teacher.

"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."

Like all pupils, Obama had to pray before and after each class, and cross himself in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Dharmawan said.

After St. Francis, Obama completed third and fourth grades in what is now called Model Primary School Menteng 1 in central Jakarta. Opened by Indonesia's former Dutch colonial rulers, the public school screens for the best students with writing tests and interviews. Several of its students have gone on to join Indonesia's elite.

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.

"Muslim students were taught by a Muslim teacher, and Christian students were taught by a Christian teacher," said Effendi, who, like many Indonesians, uses only one name.

Obama spent most his spare time hanging out with Adi and other friends at the home of Yunaldi Askiar, a classmate. They used to play a kind of fencing game using sticks, kick a ball up and down the narrow dirt lanes or go swimming in the river behind the school, said Askiar, 42, a car mechanic.

Obama was taller and better dressed than most kids in classes where shoes and socks were still luxuries, so he stood out from the start. As an African-American, and the only foreigner, he suffered racial taunts and teasing but never turned to violence. . .

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/bal-te.obama16mar16,1,7181735,full.story?cset=true&ctrack=3&coll=la-headlines-nation

Th above account from the LA Times has been constantly disputed as false by the Obama camp , but here's Danial Pipes January 7, 2008 response in Confirmed: Barack Obama Practiced Islam

. . . It raises questions about two details in the Los Angeles Times account (the accuracy of the Catholic school's registration form and the reliability of Zulfan Adi as a source on Obama). But on the larger issue of Obama's religious practices during his Jakarta years, it confirms the Times account. Note in particular three excerpts from Barker's article:

"Interviews with dozens of former classmates, teachers, neighbors and friends show that Obama was not a regular practicing Muslim when he was in Indonesia" – implying he was an irregularly practicing Muslim.

"Obama occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers, a few neighbors said" – confirming that he did pray in the mosque.

"Obama's 3rd-grade teacher at the Catholic school, who lived near the family [said that] ‘Rarely, Barry went to the mosque with Lolo'" – confirming that Obama attended mosque services.

All this matters, for if Obama once was a Muslim, he is now what Islamic law calls a murtadd (apostate), an ex-Muslim converted to another religion who must be executed. Were he elected president of the United States, this status, clearly, would have large potential implications for his relationship with the Muslim world.

In sum: Obama was an irregularly practicing Muslim who rarely or occasionally prayed with his step-father in a mosque. This precisely substantiates my statement that he "for some years had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of his Indonesian step-father."

Therefore, what MMfA calls the "Obama-Muslim falsehood" is in fact confirmed by both articles as truthful and accurate.

Calling this a falsehood is in itself a falsehood.

Source: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5354

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rosemary's Thoughts, Maggie's Notebook, Right Truth, Adam's Blog, Shadowscope, third world county, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.