The Fact-Checker: Was Obama ever a Muslim? (in response to ad from "Willie Horton" ad creator) [View All]

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Was Obama ever a Muslim?

The Republican consultant who helped sink the 1988 Dukakis campaign with his infamous "Willie Horton ad" is using his attack dog skills against Barack Obama. A web ad created by Floyd Brown, founder of a conservative political advocacy group called the National Campaign Fund, accuses the presumptive Democratic nominee of covering up his Muslim past. The ad relies on a mixture of half-truth, innuendo, and dramatic headlines rolling across the screen to depict Obama as fundamentally "untrustworthy."

The Facts

As with his 1988 ad attacking Michael Dukakis for being soft on crime, Brown has grounded his assault on Barack Obama on a seemingly solid fact. It is true that the Associated Press reported, in passing back in January, that Obama was "enrolled as a Muslim" in a Catholic school in Indonesia in 1967. He was six years' old at the time. The bulk of the AP article was devoted to rebutting rumors that the Illinois senator had attended an Islamic madrassa while growing up in Indonesia.

Documents viewed by the AP showed that students attending the Fransiskus Assisis Catholic school were registered under one of five different religions: Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic or Protestant. Obama, then known as Barry, attended the school from 1st through 3rd grade as student 203. He later enrolled in Public Elementary School Menteng No. 1, a school incorrectly described by the Washington Times Insight magazine and Fox News as an Islamic madrassa.

The Brown ad misses out key facts that cast a very different light on Obama's Muslim connections. At the Catholic school, he was required to participate in Catholic rituals and pray four times a day. Teachers quoted by the Chicago Tribune said that he was probably registered as a Muslim because this was the religion of his then-Indonesian step-father, Lolo Soetero. Like many Indonesians, Soetero was a rather lax Muslim who drank and did not abide by the strict tenets of the faith....

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The Pinocchio Test

Barring fresh revelations, the Obama campaign's explanation for the "Muslim" annotation beside Barack's name in the Catholic school ledger seems reasonable. Three Pinocchios for Floyd Brown.



http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/06/was_obama_a_muslim.html?hpid=sec-politics

LINK TO VIDEO OF AD, "WAS HE MUSLIM?": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbsihrdn-_s&eurl=http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/06/was_obama_a_muslim.html?hpid=sec-politics