That's not a rhetorical question, although the way some people have reacted to yesterday's TIME and Pew polls about the percentage of Americans who think Obama is a Muslim, I wouldn't be surprised if they took it as such. Sure, it's possible that one-in-four (or five, depending on the poll) Americans actually believe in their hearts of hearts that Obama is a Muslim, despite the fact that he became a Christian in his twenties, has spoken during the presidential campaign and since about his Christian faith--even referencing his belief in "our risen Savior"--and attends Christian worship services. He is not, despite what Franklin Graham thinks, a Muslim who converted to Christianity. If anything, Obama was a secular agnostic by default who became a Christian once he reached adulthood and started thinking seriously about faith.
Still, it's possible that one-quarter of Americans are choosing to ignore facts, evidence, and the president's own profession of faith and that they firmly believe he is secretly Muslim. Possible. But I'm inclined to agree with Ben Smith and Cathy Grossman, who see something else going on in these poll results, namely that calling Obama a Muslim has become a way for some conservatives to express their distrust of and opposition to him. The idea that "Muslim" is being used as that kind of pejorative shorthand is a disturbing development on its own. But it does mean that the White House and Obama's allies don't necessarily need to launch into a campaign to educate those poor deluded Americans who have somehow gotten the mistaken impression that the president is a follower of Islam instead of Christianity.
Again, there is no doubt a not-insignificant percentage of the population that does continue to believe that Obama is lying about his faith. In three consecutive polls throughout 2008 and 2009, Pew researchers found that a pretty consistent 10-12% of respondents believed Obama was a Muslim. But then again, some people genuinely believed Jerry Falwell's 1990s nonsense about Bill Clinton being involved in a cocaine-smuggling operation and ordering drug hits. So let's say something more like 10% of Americans are conspiracy-minded. The other 10 to 15% are just willing to appropriate an entire religious tradition in order to malign a politician with whom they disagree.
As I posted in response to your previous piece on the subject(on my blog: http://www.adamjcopeland.com/2010/08/19/barack-obama-is-not-a-muslim-well-it-depends-who-you-ask/ ) I see three possibilities.
1. I live a too sheltered life and do not interact with the 1/4 to 1/5.
2. Perhaps the poll connects someone to allowing folks to voice racist thoughts in a more culturally approved way.
3. I disagree, however, that Obama's religious affiliation does not matter. It matter very much to me.
For further explanations, see that piece:
http://www.adamjcopeland.com/2010/08/19/barack-obama-is-not-a-muslim-well-it-depends-who-you-ask/
I read your piece, Adam..I am not clear what you find important about religious affiliation. Is it that you want to know whether or not a President has the ability to distinguish religious ideation from reason?.
Just for you Amy. Enjoy!!.
And what if he is muslim? Muslims, Arab and Persian Americans fought and died for this country. You are dishonoring their families with your attempt to paint Obama as unamerican..Here comes the typical right wing response, "I am not a racist, I just hate muslims, mexicans, and blacks.".
Point to anything I have said in posting a video that Obama is "unAmerican"..Oh heck, that's right you can't..Go away...........we need better liberal trolls.
Rusty, did you even watch this? Unless you count editing, nowhere does Obama admit he is a muslim. There's even a disclaimer at the beginning of the video that admits that this video does not prove Obama is a muslim, or that he ever admitted he is a Muslim. Instead, you have a great of innuendo, paranoia, and general stupid.
...mix with a pinch of hyperbole, a smidgen of closed-mindedness and a dash of lunatic fringe. Agitate well. Serve cold under a rotten log.
*sigh* Rusty, Rusty, Rusty...
newfreedomblog~.I watched each of the broadcasts excerpted in your posted video.The video is a deliberately-deceitful sequence of edits out of context..Omitted, for instance, are Obama's quotes from the Bible and the Tora, as part of his attempt to demonstrate the universality of certain themes.If you made this video, shame on you..If you are just passing it on, send it back to where ever you got it, along with my comments, and be a lot more careful about taking anything from that same source as gospel. Not only does it make you look bad to keep posting this kind of thing, it makes you a tool of Satan
Either willfully ignorant, or bigoted, or both. Franklin Graham is in the "both" category.
Religion is not a genetic trait, nor an infection, as Graham seems to think.
Yes, it is the practice bordering on child abuse of indoctrination.
If religious affiliation is genetic, I can only be happy I wasn't born to the likes of the Grahams.
The birther thing and the Muslim thing are all of the same, trying to paint Obama as an 'other' that is acceptable to hate in public in place of the 'other' that is not acceptable to hate in public -- that he's black..Didn't we go through a lot of this during the primaries when Hillary said outright on a radio interview that Obama could not win the working class white vote?
nibbly this pretty much sums it up. Obama is not an American in heart, spirit and loyalty. He doesn't have our background. He doesn't share our values. He certainly does not respect our Constitution and our form of govt.
http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748703302604575294231631318728.html
excerpt from article above WSJ:
"A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe."
"Obama is not an American in heart, spirit and loyalty.".That is an unsupported claim..He spent nearly all of his childhood and all of his adult life in the United States, was educated at two of the most elite colleges in the United States due to his own merit..He has never worked for a foreign government..He has, unlike Poppy and Dubbya Bush worked with or for Saudi Arabian companies..Being in elected office is serving one's country because the pay is dramatically lower than that of any counterpart in the private sector..Senators earn $174,000 per year while CEOs of fortune 500 companies earn about 100 times as much..The president makes $400,000 - about half as much as a partner at a law large law firm..So, your allegation that he does not have his heart here is absurd but can not be proven one way or another unless we could read the synapses in his brain..Democrats had long alleged that GWB was looking for big, big money by selling out as much as he could to big business for a post presidential career getting retroactive bribes in the forms of speaking fees and the like..Now conservatives are dying to make the same claim about Obama.
To answer your question, Amy, yes - see above.
Who cares what religion he is I personally would prefer a President who was completely non religious it is just incomprehensible to me that anyone today takes anything in any religious dogma as literal... seriously all sides of the big "R" affiliation are scary the prophets of yesterday are the paranoid schizophrenics of today John the Baptist would receive an SSI check today and absolutely no one would take him seriously.
Education in this country needs serious re-structuring
And if Jesus were walk the earth today, especially in the US, he'd be put in a straight jacket and locked up on the nearest mental ward.
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