This is a bit of an oldie, but still a goodie.
About a year and a half ago, in late February of 2007, Senator Obama was interviewed by columnist Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times. In this interview, Obama made a rather startling confession that rocked much of the right-wing blogosphere, which naturally lead to deeper digging into Obama’s “supposed” Islamist roots.
While his statement were never debunked as the “myth” of Obama’s “madrassah” in Jakarta, unfortunately, this still does not line up with The Official™ Narrative issued by the Department of Information Assurance™… which states emphatically that Obama is a Christian:
http://www.barackobama.com/factcheck/2007/11/12/obama_has_never_been_a_muslim_1.php
According to Mr. Kristof’s article in the New York Times on 27 February 2007, he wrote that Sen. Obama:
… recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”
Note, that Mr. Kristof calls this the “Arabic Call to Prayer”, which is what most people will think of: the muzzein, or the little guy up in the tower (or some fellow using a loudspeaker mounted in a tall spire) five times a day in Muslim neighbourhoods.
If in fact, Obama’s twenty years at a race-baiting, black majority church (Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, IL) pastored by the now particularly infamous, radical left wing black-liberation theologian, the very Left Reverend Jeremiah Wright … if this can be characterized as being anywhere near the mainstream of Christianity (much less evangelical or Fundamentalist Christianity)… then he simply *must* be a Christian, right?
But the Master warned us:
“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:15-16a, KJV)
Much has been said about Obama’s religious heritage: born of a “Christian” mother turned to atheism/socialist agnosticism and a father who was born a Muslim turned and committed to outright African communism… and exposed to Islam as a young boy when he lived with his Muslim stepfather in Jakarta, and ultimately lost in a world of secularism and hedonism in the 1970s as a student at various elite leftist universities… finally coming to a rest at the Left Rev. Wright’s church.
Although in the great majority of Islamic cultures, a son born to a Muslim father is automatically considered a Muslim, with the expectation that the father will raise up the son according to the teachings of Islam. However, the true litmus test for any Muslim, (or true, Bible-believing Christians, for that matter - one of the very few things Islam and Christianity share in common) is the profession of faith.
For a Christian, it is as simple as confessing the Lord Jesus Christ as one’s Lord and Saviour:
8 But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;
9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
11 For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
12 For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.
13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
(Romans 10:8-12, KJV)
Of course, this confession is also made by faith, and by the testimony and the sealing of the believer by the Holy Spirit. (Ephesians 1:13-14; 1 John 5:7-8, 12, 20; KJV)
In deceptively like manner, Islam sets no great bar upon those wishing to identify themselves to the Ummah as fellow believers, requiring only that they say a prayer/affirmation known as the Shahadah.
Now listen very carefully to the audio of the following YouTube video - particularly between the time marker from 0:28 to 1:01, and compare it to this transcription of the Shahadah prayer:
Or this one - with subtitles (about the first 30sec of the video:
Romanised Version:
ašhadu ʾan lā ilāha illā-llāh, wa ʾašhadu ʾanna muḥammadan rasūlu-llāh
Arabic Version:
أشهد أن لا إله إلاَّ الله و أشهد أن محمد رسول الله
Another audio format that is much shorter - cutting out the theatrical singing - is here:
http://www.livinghalal.com/audio/release/released_shahada_arabic_basic.mp3
It transliterates (according to Wikipedia - the usual standard disclaimers apply) as:
“There is no god but [Allah], Muhammad is the Messenger of [Allah]”
The longer format as referenced by Grand Old Partisan comes out as:
“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… “
As I said, the recitation of this prayer is very much a proof to any Muslims hearing it, that the reciter thereof is identifying himself as a fellow traveller - a citizen in the Islamic Ummah.
Can there be doubt then Senator Obama is a self-professed Muslim…?
Um, who cares? Really who cares. - Jefferson was an Atheist, and? - Caesar and Octavian were pagans and?
It’s funny to note that the longest peace in world history (pax romana) was created by a pagan… (Augusts/Octavian)
Obama is a muslim - oh noes! run for the hills people he’s a muslim oh noes!
Spare us.
Comment by Thomas — 22 December 2008 @ 2:42 am
Hi Thomas!
For what it is worth, Jefferson was very much a product of his times - a classical Deist. Although it is possible that some of his ideas concerning “deity” did border on what we today would call “atheist”, he did appear to have believed in the existence of the person of Jesus Christ at the very least, and had compiled a sort of a New Testament canon of his own, largely excluding the Pauline epistles and Johannine works.
It would seem that he was certainly disinclined to accept the supernatural workings of God, and limited Jesus to the role of merely being a great teacher, at best a humanist.
As for the Romans:
Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
(To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace).
- Gaius Cornelius Tacitus, Agricola, chap. 30
The so-called Pax Romana was no product of religion, pagan or otherwise; it was a period of peace often punctuated by brutal wars of suppression and economic hardship that affected the provinces, and at times touched Rome itself. Essentially, it was no more or less different than any other empires that have since come and gone from the pages of history, and its more outstanding contributions that remain (engineering and governmental constructs in particular) have lasted far longer than its pagan religions. And if anything, the form of Christianity that flourished in Byzantium (Eastern Roman Empire) and guided that Eastern Empire far outlasted the Pagan (Western) Rome, by nearly 1000 years, and remains to this day as Orthodox Christianity.
But this is all really beside the point, as there is hardly anything that has come of the sort of extremist interpretation of Islam offered by Al-Qaeda and its Wahabbist and Salafist co-agitators to modern civilization, short of a “peace” at the point of either sword or gun.
The point is, Mr. Obama has no problems and little qualms of associating himself with a “religion” whose very own holy texts and cetral dogma call for the murder of unbelievers, and the oppression of the conquered peoples who do submit to being “dhimmi” subjects.
That isn’t to say that institutionalised Christianity (largely the Roman Catholic Church, and to a much lesser extent, the various Protestant state churches in various eras) is without guilt; however, the core values of these two faiths are as far apart as night is from day, and especially so when one takes care to see what the fruits of true, heartfelt obedience to their core values is seen in its ripened state.
Comment by seekeronos — 30 December 2008 @ 9:52 pm