ANDY MARTIN: Barack Obama is a Muslim, Part Two
Obama author and movie producer Andy Martin analyzes why Barack Obama is a Muslim, and why Obama’s inner conflicts have created the chaos we face in America today. Andy, who wrote perhaps the most influential piece of opinion journalism in the last decade, his column on “Barack Obama is a Muslim” in 2004, explains why Obama has been unable to erase the public perception that he is not an American. Martin’s Third National Conference on Barack Obama’s Missing Birth Certificate, College Records and Muslim Religion begins November 9th in Honolulu.
Internet Powerhouse Andy Martin analyzes the complex belief structure that makes Barack Obama a Muslim
In Part Two of “Why Obama is a Muslim,” Andy explains that Obama is a Muslim even though Obama denies the fact
ContrarianCommentary.com
“The Internet Powerhouse”
Andy Martin
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“Factually Correct, Not Politically Correct”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
ANDY MARTIN SAYS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE ENTITLED TO BELIEVE BARACK OBAMA IS A MUSLIM
MARTIN SAYS THE PRESIDENT SHOULD BE A SPIRITUAL LEADER, BUT OBAMA IS NOT
ANDY MARTIN, WHO MAY BE AMERICAN’S MOST INFLUENTIAL OPINION WRITER, IS HEADING FOR A BLOCKBUSTER CONFERENCE IN HONOLULU
(NEW YORK)(October 1, 2010) Before I explain why Barack Obama is a Muslim let me get the “Muslim issue” out of the way. There is nothing wrong or evil about Islam. There are over a billion peaceful adherents of Islam throughout the world. There are aspects of Islam’s sacred texts that are deeply anti-democratic and its extremist supporters use Islamic pronouncements as a pretext to conceal their own political goals. But if you applied a similar standard to Christianity, and took every word Jesus says in the Bible literally, Christians would look a little fruity too.
But Islam, like Christianity, has its place. In the mosque, not the halls of government. It is precisely when religious leaders try to influence and control politics and enforce their religious dogma as government policy that religion becomes controversial and contemptible. That is the challenge most Muslims face today: to take back their religion from the hustlers and terrorists who have violated the peaceful tenets of their religion. In hindsight, even liberals now reluctantly admit that President George Bush was right on religion. Islam is not our enemy.
And so, no, this column is not an anti-Islam rant and I have no plans to burn any Muslim texts although I believe that constitutionally we should be as free to burn Islamic books as we are to incinerate the Bible or other holy writs.
Six years ago I wrote what in retrospect has become possibly become the most influential piece of opinion journalism in recent history. I collected my ideas and research and explained at a New York news conference why Barack Obama was a Muslim. In the following six years I have been brutally assaulted by the mainstream media. My writing touched a nerve during the 2008 campaign. The New York Times responded by trying to demonize me by putting me on page one and making me one of their “most important stories of the day,” all with a bunch of lies and distortions.
My writing also started a wildfire that has yet to be extinguished by either Barack Obama’s spin doctors and his own lies.
So what is all this “Muslim business” about? It is time to go back to first principles and reacquaint readers with what I have written in the past, what I have researched and what I believe about Obama’s religious beliefs.
During the 2008 presidential campaign I called Barack Obama the “World’s Greatest Entertainer.” I viewed Obama’s campaign trope as nothing more than skillfully presented entertainment. Americans were frustrated and disappointed with George Bush and the Republicans, as they had every right to be; voters were looking for some diversion from the mess the Bush years had created in Washington. Obama was the perfect entertainer. He diverted and channeled our disappointments into his own political pocket.
Obama’s nightclub act was pure painlessness. He told us “we” were the solution. “Hope,” “change” and reform without any cost, without any sacrifice, without any consequences.
People were offended when I called Obama an “entertainer” but his bag of political tricks was nothing more than entertainment. Lots of actors play doctors on TV; I wouldn’t count on them to perform surgery in a real hospital. People were desperate to believe in “Dr. Hope and Change.” They confused “acting” with “leading.”
By elevating “hope” and “change” over reality, they elected Obama, someone who portrayed a doctor, to actually “practice” medicine to cure what ailed America. The result is the disaster we face today.
Obama’s six years of denials that he is a Muslim have only made people believe even more ardently that Obama is a Muslim. That says something about his lost entertainment skills. (I predicted that change of heart would take place as well.) Almost a hundred million Americans now question who Obama is, and what he believes.
Why is Obama an “entertainer?” Entertainers suspend our belief. As noted, they portray doctors, and warriors, persons with caring and concern, people who can save us and serve us. That's why people pay ten or twelve dollars to be amused at the movies, or more for a nightclub act or Broadway play.
But most entertainers, and especially the great ones, are conflicted people. They are alienated individuals. They entertain because they project outwardly the turmoil in their inner spirits. Thus is it so with Obama. His bizarre life spectacle and his upside down upbringing are what make him a great entertainer. His soul is tormented. By his own admission he grew up frustrated, alienated, confused. Ironically, but inescapably, the very factors that make Obama a great entertainer also make him a lousy leader.
This week Obama was at it again, profusely professing his Christianity. But in the midst of peddling his “Christianity” Obama inadvertently dropped in another one of his favorite memes, that his mother was one of the most “spiritual people” he has encountered. Effortlessly, almost guilelessly, Obama segued--the way entertainers do--from religion to “spirituality.”
But spirituality, like religion, is a coat of many colors. Just what spirituality did Anne Dunham possess? What spirituality did she hand down to her son Barack Obama?
In the not too distant past, I had a girl friend who thought she was spiritual. And, unlike Obama, she even attended church. But in addition to her spirituality she had an unfortunate aspect to her personality, which is why she is a former girl friend. In practice there was little spirituality to her shtick. Sometimes she and a bunch of other women would get together to talk about spirituality and light candles, incense and who knows what else. My point: “spiritual” people are not always dealing with the Holy Spirit or religious denominations as we commonly think of them. People often lie to themselves.
Obama’s mother appears to have fallen into the “spiritual but not religious” category. One of my friendly competitors as an author, Jerry Corsi, has examined some aspects of Obama’s mother’s confused and conflicted spirit in more detail than I believe most of us want to read. It is sufficient to say Anne Dunham’s “spirituality” was something out of the wacky, drug-crazed 60’s and 70’s. It was self-referential spirituality, not genuine religious spirituality.
Moving one step further, we often hear the term “spiritual leader” used to describe a religious leader. The two are not the same. And no one has ever confused the “spirituality” of people like Obama’s mother with being the spiritual leader of a religious denomination.
Then there is the White House. The presidency of the United States is a secular, not spiritual, position. When politicians start talking about spirituality, count your change. They are usually trying to use “spirituality” to disguise their secular policy failures.
But having said the White House is not a spiritual see, I want to reverse myself in record time and say that the American president is a spiritual leader. Our president guards and exemplifies “the American Spirit.” The White House is the repository of our value system as Americans. The “American spirit” is what makes us a great people and a great nation. We put our trust in trust leaders who we believe will exemplify the American Spirit and protect our spiritual values as a nation.
Alas, the World's Greatest Entertainer is no guardian of the Americans Spirit. Obama does not even believe in one of the prime tenets of our secular spirituality: American exceptionalism. He has gone so far as to denigrate American exceptionalism. How long would the Pope last if he stood up in Rome and said Catholics were a bunch of phonies? About as long as the Obama Dynasty has lasted in Washington. Not long. That is why people now reject Obama’s “spirituality” and question his Muslim/Christian/whatever religious roots.
So what is a religion? What distinguishes a Christian from a Muslim or a Jew; a Buddhist from a Hindu? All of these belief systems embody both a structure of religious beliefs and believers who practice their beliefs on a daily or weekly basis. There are exceptions, of course. Jews see some congregants only on High Holy Days; some “Christians” magically manage to appear in church for Christmas and Easter. But we accept them. And they profess openly and outwardly their adherence to our beliefs. Jesus is Lord. Yahweh is coming. The Prophet is the true messenger. And so on.
Obama was raised in the Muslim, not Christian, religion. The Jesuits say, “Give us a boy until the age of 7 and we have him for life.” The Muslims had Obama until the age of 10, when he began to live full-time with his grandparents.
Try as he might, Obama cannot disguise or discard his Muslim roots. But despite the facts Obama went so far as to deny his father was a Muslim, even though Obama the father was buried as a Muslim and his father was also a Muslim. A point that is often forgotten is that Obama’s “Kenyan grandfather” was himself a convert to Islam.
Why is conversion such a critical issue? Because converts are often the most attentive individuals in pursuing their newly adopted religious beliefs. Converts don’t inherit a religion from their parents; they consciously choose one as adults. Choice is what distinguishes converts from people who obtain religion (as we say in the Episcopal Church in the “cradle”) through birth. Obama claims he is a convert to Christianity, but in the next breath he tells us paid no attention to the sermons or doctrine of his spiritual leader, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, for the twenty years after his conversion. He even denies that his "spiritual leader" Reverend Jeremiah Wright was his spiritual leader. Huh?
In Obama’s heart he hears the call of the Muezzin, not the Cantor’s call or church choir’s chorus:
No one consciously set out to make Obama a “Muslim.” He absorbed that belief structure through the osmosis of daily living, as he admitted to Nick Kristof of the New York Times:
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/opinion/06kristof.html?_r=1
Religious beliefs are deeply embedded in children. My father was Anglican (Episcopalian). My mother was Greek Orthodox. I was raised in the Greek Orthodox faith until I went to college. I would never deny that I am Greek Orthodox any more than I would pretend to practice that faith today. I chose the Anglican-Episcopalian side of the family but I recognize both.
Obama’s constant efforts to focus on a vague “choice” he claims to have made in his 20’s to become a Christian are misleading. Throughout his childhood Obama was psychologically and emotionally saturated with Islam and Islamic culture. For him to deny these roots is to deny his very character, his psyches, his “spiritual” home.
But having convinced you why you can believe that Obama is Muslim, I will now proceed to punch holes in my own argument and explain to you why Obama may be a Muslim who is not a Muslim. Unlike Judaism, where religion is transmitted matriarchally by the mother, under Islam religion is transmitted partriarchally through the father.
But I am not sure at all that Obama is Obama’s son. My research expeditions to Hawai’i (see below for the next one beginning November 9th) have convinced me that Anne Dunham concocted the “Barack Obama is your father” fairy tale to conceal the fact that Frank Marshall Davis, an exponentially more appealing and interesting character but, alas, a married man with a family, was really the biological parent of our president.
Indeed, my theory is that it is precisely because those closest to him lied about his parentage that Obama is such a tortured human being. Young Obama knew “Frank,” but he never knew him as “dad.” And Frank died before the lie could be revealed. The secret had been kept during Frank Marshall Davis’ lifetime. And so, while Obama is undeniably a Muslim in spirit, he may not be one by blood. Nevertheless, the religious beliefs of his childhood trump the reality of his genes. He is a Muslim.
Only Obama and maybe one or two others (maybe no one) know the truth. And Obama hasn’t been willing to take the American people into his confidence. He does not trust the American Spirit of tolerance, acceptance and forgiveness, because he was not raised as an American. And for that we have Anne Dunham to thank or condemn.
[Saturday, October 2nd we will expose another fallacy in Obama’s religious conversion to Christianity. Stay tuned for what will nominally, but not officially, be Part Three.]
In the meantime, Obama’s Muslim roots are what make him what he is today: confused, conflicted and contradictory. He can no more escape who he is than we can escape what he is: a failed leader who has disgraced and devalued the American spirit.
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THE “REAL” HAWAI’I FIVE-O RETURNING TO HONOLULU:
If the “reborn” Hawaii Five-0 doesn’t remind you of the original, there’s a reason. But take heart. The Third National Conference on Barack Obama’s Missing Birth Certificate, College Records and Muslim Religion begins November 9th in Honolulu. Join us there. Registration details will be posted October 2nd. In the past, Hawaiians have looked to Andy Martin’s investigative missions in Hawai’i as the “spiritual” successor to Steve McGarrett and Hawai’i Five-O. As in the original Five-O, there are no explosions, no acrobatics, no over-the-top gunfights, just solid detective work to uncover the truth about Barack Obama’s “roots.” ContrarianCommentary.com plans to post registration details for the new Honolulu conference after his Manhattan news conference Saturday. To receive email updates on the Conference please send a request to: contact@StopObamaCoalition.com
Andy Martin, on Obama’s Muslim Roots, and Sean Hannity:
http://www.mndaily.com/2010/09/30/study-news-fuels-rumors-about-obama-being-muslim
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT41uM1-dPs&NR=1&feature=fvwp
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ABOUT ANDY: Andy Martin, who Chicago Public Radio calls a “boisterous Internet activist,” is the legendary New York and Chicago-based muckraker, author, Internet columnist, radio talk show host, broadcaster and media critic. He has over forty years of background in radio and television and is the dean of Illinois media and communications. He promotes his best-selling book, “Obama: The Man Behind The Mask” and his Internet movie "Obama: The Hawai'i years." Martin has been a leading corruption fighter in Illinois for over forty years. He is currently sponsoring www.AmericaisReadyforReform.com
Andy is the Executive Editor and publisher of the “Internet Powerhouse,”
www.ContrarianCommentary.com. He comments on regional, national and world events with more than four decades of investigative and overseas experience. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law and is a former adjunct professor of law at the City University of New York (LaGuardia CC, Bronx CC).
UPDATES: www.twitter.com/AndyMartinUSAwww.facebook.com/AndyMartin Andy's columns are also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com.
contrariancommentary.typepad.com[NOTE: We try to correct any typographical errors in this story on our blogs; find our latest edition there.]
MEDIA CONTACT: (866) 706-2639 or CELL (917) 664-9329E-MAIL: AndyMart20@aol.com © Copyright by Andy Martin 2010
Labels: Andy Martin, Barack Obama, birth certificate, Hawai'i, Honolulu, Muslim, National Conference on Barack Obama's Missing Birth Certificate, Obama: The Hawai'i Years, Obama: The Man Behind The Mask
