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Re: اسلام باراك اوباما................. (Re: Abdulrahman Eldaw)
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Quote: January 24, 2007, 12:43 pm Obama’s Religion and Schooling By Kate Phillips
For the past several days, charges and rumors — which appear to have been debunked — have been flying around that Senator Barack Obama attended a radical Muslim school as a child in Indonesia. CNN sent a journalist to Jakarta to check out the reports and determined that the school was a public one unaffiliated with Islamic fundamentalism. We linked to the CNN story and a Washington Post critique on Tuesday. (Officials told CNN and other news media that the public school doesn’t focus on religion at all.) In addition, The Times’s Bill Carter weighed in today on the feud between Fox News and CNN. That hasn’t stopped a war of words; in fact, we keep seeing references to the reports in comments on our web site. Even last night, while Mr. Obama was doing interviews following President Bush’s national address, he was asked about the rumors. Senator Obama scoffed at them. He was asked about it again on the “Today” show. Afterward, his staff released a fullblown offensive –perhaps a few days too late — to the media. From Robert Gibbs, the senator’s spokesman, a statement slams Insight magazine and Fox News for reporting unsubstantiated, false information: “If (Steve) Doocy or the staff at Fox and Friends had taken to check their facts, or simply made a call to his office, they would have learned that Senator Obama was not educated in a Madrassa, was not raised as a Muslim, and was not raised by his father – an atheist Obama met once in his life before he died. Mr. Gibbs continued: All of the claims about Senator Obama’s faith and education raised in the Insight Magazine story and repeated on Fox News are false. Senator Obama was raised in a secular household in Indonesia by his stepfather and mother. Obama’s stepfather worked for a U.S. oil company, and sent his stepson to two years of Catholic school, as well as two years of public school. As Obama described it, “Without the money to go to the international school that most expatriate children attended, I went to local Indonesian schools and ran the streets with the children of farmers, servants, tailors, and clerks.” [The Audacity of Hope, p. 274] 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. Furthermore, the Indonesian school Obama attended in Jakarta is a public school that is not and never has been a Madrassa. These malicious, irresponsible charges are precisely the kind of politics the American people have grown tired of, and that Senator Obama is trying to change by focusing on bringing people together to solve our common problems. |
The senator’s staff attached a letter from religious leaders objecting to this attack on Mr. Obama.
Quote: January 23, 2007 An Open Letter to the Religious Community: Many of you have seen hateful emails, blog postings and reports circulating on the Internet and in the media about Senator Barack Obama and his religious upbringing. These outrageous charges began as reports of his potential candidacy for President emerged and, as has become a shameful custom of modern politics, it has swirled through cyberspace with a vengeance and now has been picked up as fact by Fox News and some partisan commentators. We are writing to deplore this despicable tactic and set the record straight. We have had enough of the slash and burn politics calculated to divide us as children of God. We must come together as one nation, and see our stake in each other as Americans. The bitter, destructive politics that have so riven our country in recent years cannot stand. As American leaders of different faiths who have worked cooperatively and greatly respect all of the 2008 candidates in both parties, we do not offer this statement as an endorsement of any individual candidate. However, certain moral standards should infuse our national dialogue, and the recent attacks on Sen. Obama violate values at the heart of this dialogue. The false and malicious attacks levied at him are anathema to all of our faith traditions, and we condemn them outright. The facts below are no mystery. Senator Obama wrote openly about his life in his autobiography, Dreams from my Father. We take Senator Obama’s long-cited and uncontested description of his educational and faith journey at face value. ! Senator Obama never attended a radical Madrassa nor was he ever educated in a wahabi school. In the years he lived in Indonesia as a child, from ages 6 to 10, he attended a neighboring Catholic school for two years and then a public school. ! Senator Obama was not raised in a religious household. ! Senator Obama became a Christian long before he entered politics. While working as a young community organizer in the mid-1980s, working with a consortium of churches in a depressed neighborhood of Chicago, he became a Christian and became active in Trinity United Church of Christ. He, his wife and family are still active members of Trinity today. It is important that we take a stand today against this willful, malicious attempt to mislead and inflame - and against any further attempts to use political attacks to divide the religious community. We ask that you share this letter widely, and help us beat back these hideous tactics, whatever their source. As people of faith, we cannot allow divisive attacks like these to stand. Dr. Robert W. Edgar General Secretary National Council of Churches USA Rabbi JonahDov Pesner Salam Al-Marayati Executive Director Muslim Public Affairs Council Rev. Stephen J. Thurston President National Baptist Convention of America The Rt. Rev. Preston W. Williams President, Global Council of Bishops African Methodist Episcopal Church Sister Simone Campbell, SSS Executive Director NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby The Rev. John H. Thomas General Minister and President United Church of Christ Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy President Interfaith Alliance Rabbi Jill Jacobs Director of Education Jewish Funds for Justice Alexia Kelley Executive Director Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good Dr. T. DeWitt Smith, Jr. President Progressive National Baptist Convention |
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