“Oi!”, as my Jewish grandmother would say. “This guy, Obama was a Muslim? How could I vote for him?”
Oi indeed – if my grandmother believed all that the Internet provides. Recently, I got an email from another friend of mine showing me this assertion – suggesting that because Obama’s father was Muslim and was Islamic, that meant that Obama naturally was – and that the Senator was potentially lying! When you read the stories that are being propagated on the web:
- Tracking Down Obama in Indonesia – a site by an American Expat currently living in Indonesia who suggests (paradoxically) that “Looking at the school, it is easy to see how someone could confuse it with a madrassa with it’s domed roof and Islamic architecture, but SD Besuki is indeed a government primary school and not a madrassa.”
- World Net Daily – seems to suggest that due to his father’s actions and his relatives religious practices that he would have to have been a Muslim.
PLEEZE – get a life!
Frustratingly, these assertions are ones that are not particularly relevant to the issues that we need a strong leader for (IMHO), especially since they seem to be assertions, not statements of fact. I personal worry that the discussion of these assertions give them life (since others see them and will not take time to read the details), But, for the sake of free discourse to occur, lets discuss the assertions:
Assertion: Obama was (at one time in his life) a Muslim
Okay – this one I have been searching for details to fight – especially the concept that if the father is Islamic, then the sons are automatically Islamic. In the Jewish faith, the children of a Jewish woman are considered Jewish, but the father has no official determination in the Orthodoxy in this matter. But, what is amazing to me is that the decision of a parent is assumed to automatically become the mark on a child.
In my upbringing, I was raised Jewish and attended nursery school at a Jewish temple until I moved to another school for my education. But, while I was growing up, my mother introduced me to various other religions – I even remember attending a Midnight Mass when I was very little. I remember some of the lyrics of the hymns when I was there (I have a decent memory for lyrics), and could more than likely recite them quite well today. I also remember the Sh’Ma that I heard in temple and could easily sing those lyrics as far back as when I was not in Hebrew School because I thought the music of hundreds of people singing the songs were beautiful as well.
But just because my mother was Jewish, it did not mean that I was “automatically” Jewish. Even though I had never been Bar Mitzvah’ed, I took it upon myself to go to services, to pray during Yom Kippur, to stand up at the be’ma and become part of the Jewish Community wherever I was, since I grew to accept the Jewish faith as my own. Tuthfully, it was a personal decision – and one I chose for myself – not because my mother might have been Jewish.
Senator Obama seems to have chosen a different path from his family – while he may have been exposes to Islam at an early age (even the video on the FightTheSmears website discusses that there is a religious class taught there), Senator Obama made his choice on religion and has been a committed Christian with his wife and children. Does this mean he is any less a Christian from being from a Muslim father? Is not Christianity about the acceptance of others and the strong belief in the acceptance of Jesus as the savior the metric in which we are part of that faith?
FACT: Obama is a committed Christian and it is HIS choice to be one.
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While I have been in China this past week, I have been shuttling between hotels and conference rooms – while I see all sorts of people running back and forth to events, dinners, friends and such. I see a country of diversity and similarity and one that is more concerned with the life of today in China and their families.
