"Young Muslim socialist that I used to be."
Allen Z. Hertz was senior advisor in the Privy Council Office serving Canada's Prime Minister and the federal cabinet. He formerly worked in Canada's Foreign Affairs Department and earlier taught history and law at universities in New York, Montreal, Toronto and Hong Kong. He studied European history at McGill University (B.A.) and then East European and Ottoman history at Columbia University (M.A., Ph.D.). He also has international law degrees from Cambridge University (LL.B.) and the University of Toronto (LL.M.). A version of this article was also published in the Times of Israel, February 26, 2014.
Okay to ask about Obama's religion?
June 4, 2009 in Cairo was one of several occasions when Barack Obama reminded us: "I'm a Christian." President Obama there chose to again broach the sensitive matter of his personal religious belief, which is a topic that he has also addressed in two books and on the campaign trail. This makes sense because consistent public-opinion polling shows that most Americans want a political leader to have religious conviction, and are interested in learning something about their leader's religious faith. Moreover, such polling about the role of religion in USA public life suggests that most Americans regard President Obama's current religion and religious history to be matters of legitimate public interest, though an articulate minority would strongly disagree.
The "birthers" helped Obama
Including careful research by reputable biographers, a range of evidence now shows that Barack Obama was indeed born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in August 1961. The birthers' far-fetched claims that he was born in Kenya helped Barack Obama discredit opponents as crackpots.
The birthers' egregious failure to prove false allegations about a Kenyan birthplace has gone a long way toward tarring all critical inquiry into Barack Obama's past. They have also harmed by distracting attention from Barack Obama's significant connection to Indonesia and the related issue of his worldview from childhood.
This worldview importantly includes long-standing ties to Islam, which is not only a religion, but also a civilization -- with distinct ways of interpreting human experience historically, politically and militarily. For example, it is probably fair to say that worldwide most Muslims see Iran’s current race to develop nuclear weapons as no greater a threat to peace than the nuclear weapons already possessed by countries like USA, India, and Israel.
Focus on Indonesia not Kenya!
In 1967 child Obama moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, to be reunited with his Muslim step-father Lolo Soetoro, who was significantly the only father Obama knew daily during early childhood and beyond. Obama's particular worldview was also derived from his anthropologist mother, Stanley Anne Dunham. She married two Muslims; and spent almost all of her professional career in Indonesia, where she encouraged her son to adopt local culture. She was sharply critical of her fellow Americans, but deeply committed to both Indonesia and its people.
Almost 90% Muslim, Indonesia is now the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. While living there, child Obama was perceived to be Muslim and he practiced Islam. This simple statement about Islamic practice should not be exaggerated into the bogus claim that child Obama studied in a fundamentalist medrese. Nor should it be "read down" to accommodate the politically convenient falsehood that Obama had a secular childhood. As we shall see, the "secular" claim is inconsistent with some of the bare facts about Obama's life in 1960's Indonesia, which is not to be confused with the USA either then or today.
Early ambition to be a President
From childhood, Barack Obama's enduring goal was to lead a country, whether the USA or much earlier Indonesia, to which he long retained ties. Thus, in eventually opting for the USA, Obama likely sought political advantage in his significantly late start of Christian religious practice. This probably occurred around age thirty, but in any event no later than his October 1992 marriage to Michelle Robinson. For about fifteen years thereafter, he attended services at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, where his long-time pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright frequently used the pulpit for anti-USA rants.
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Self-serving denials
During the 2007-2008 Democratic nomination campaign, candidate Obama made the improbable claim that he had been unaware of Wright's bitter anti-USA pronouncements. But, this self-serving denial directly contradicts what had previously been written about Wright in Obama's 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father.
Similarly, both Barack Obama and his campaign staff specifically denied that he had ever practiced Islam. For example, in Pleasantville, Iowa, on December 22, 2007, candidate Obama explained:
My father was from Kenya, and a lot of people in his village were Muslim. He didn't practice Islam. Truth is he wasn't very religious. He met my mother. My mother was a Christian from Kansas. I've always been a Christian.... The only connection I've had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father's side came from that country. But I've never practiced Islam.But we shall see that this unequivocal denial does not square with the salient facts. Thus, President Obama should be encouraged to speak about his early religious experience in a way that would be more truthful; and also more intelligible to ordinary Americans, who from childhood are generally people of faith.
Does childhood matter?
During the Cairo speech, President Obama specified: "My father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk."
Psychologists tell us that childhood experience is exceptionally significant. And, the Jesuits believed: "Give me the child until the age of seven and I will give you the man.” Because President Obama is a pivotal public figure who himself raises the matter of his Muslim roots, we are fully entitled to ask about his childhood to help better understand the foundations of his current ideology and predict his policy directions -- for example, with respect to Israel and the various Muslim countries, including the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Did child Obama practice Islam?
Theologically, Islam regards all children to be born Muslim and to remain such until adults teach them otherwise. On the balance of probabilities, child Obama was Muslim also because:
- his paternal grandfather in Kenya was Muslim;
- his Kenyan birth-father (though ideologically Marxist) always used his two Muslim names; and Dreams From My Father tells us that, when he died, his family wanted him buried with Muslim rites;
- he was given his birth-father's two Muslim names, "Barack" and "Hussein";
- his Indonesian step-father was also Muslim;
- his Indonesian classmates and playmates recall that he attended Muslim religious services both at school and in mosques, when they believed him to be Muslim;
- he was registered as Muslim at two elementary schools in Indonesia;
- he then studied the Koran, as indicated in Dreams From My Father;
- an Indonesian teacher recalls that child Obama was also learning Arabic recitation of the Koran, a part of which adult Obama could still recite by memory, as demonstrated during his 2007 interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof;
- reflecting on her childhood with her older brother, Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro in 2007 told the New York Times: "My whole family was Muslim"; and
- speaking to ABC commentator George Stephanopolous in September 2008, candidate Obama inadvertently referred to "my Muslim faith" -- a slip of the tongue that could never have passed the lips of a lifelong Hindu, Buddhist, Christian or Jew.
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| From Jakarta's Fransiskus Assisi School, a registration (Jan.1, 1968) for "Barry Soetoro," aka Barack Hussein Obama. Indicated are "Honolulu" as "birthplace"; "Islam" as "religion"; and "Indonesia" as "country of citizenship." (AP, Jan. 24, 2007). |
Young Muslim socialist?
The high probability that Barack Obama practiced Islam as a child in Indonesia does not necessarily mean that his close connections with Islam and Muslims abruptly ended in 1971, when he moved back to Hawaii.
Barack Obama himself specifically pointed to this possibility on April 28, 2013, at the annual White House correspondents' dinner, which is traditionally an occasion for presidential humor. There, as a subtle political ploy, he probably spoke truth in jest, in saying: "I'm not the strapping young Muslim socialist that I used to be."
This quip recalls information in Dreams From My Father which, inter alia, details his many continuing ties to Muslims, e.g., close friends and roommates. Thus, Dreams From My Father and some other statements by Barack Obama, and by his family and friends, raise the possibility that he did indeed retain something of a Muslim self-identification beyond his first decade.
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| Holding hands: Barack Hussein Obama and Mohammed Hasan Chandoo were roommates in Pasadena (1980-1981), when they attended Occidental College, Los Angeles. |
Relevant to this track record of strong ties to Muslims was Barack Obama's 1981 visit to Muslim Pakistan, a trip which he discussed during the 2008 presidential campaign. Barack Obama's three-week stay in Pakistan was immediately preceded by a visit to Indonesia, where he had lived as a child until 1971. Thereafter, Obama returned to Indonesia on no fewer than five occasions, at various times in the 1970's and 1980's.
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| With Michelle Robinson to our right and "Chicago" behind, see Barack Hussein Obama, no younger than age twenty-eight. He wears the white topi or kofia hat that is indicative of Islam in East Africa, Southeast Asia and China. The identical Muslim hat and clothes appear in the next photo below. |
With a master's and doctor's degree in divinity, Jeremiah Wright is also a prominent USA theologian. From this expert perspective, he recently specified that, when he first met Barack Obama in 1987, he was immediately impressed by how much Obama then knew about Islam, by contrast with Obama's slender knowledge about Jesus. Asked if he had converted Obama from Islam to Christianity, Wright replied:
That's hard to tell. I think that I convinced him it was okay for him to make a choice in terms of who he believes Jesus is. And I told him that it was really okay and not a put down of the Muslim part of his family or his Muslim friends.
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| Barack Hussein Obama, circa age thirty. Fox News says this 1990's photo was from his half-brother Malik's wedding in Maryland. The Muslim hat and clothes worn here are significantly the very same ones shown in the preceding "Chicago" photo above. |
As a new law student at Harvard University in late 1988, Barack Obama was told by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Senior: "If you want to succeed in politics in this country, you had better get yourself a Christian religion." What did Jesse Jackson then know about Obama's religious background? And twenty years later (October 2008), why did Jackson significantly predict that an Obama victory in the presidential election would certainly mean a reversal of USA policy toward Israel?
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| 19th-century UK Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881). His parents always remained Jews, but they had their 12-year-old son convert to Anglicanism, specifically for social advantage. |
Like Nixon to China?
Though earlier Presidents spoke about the Mideast or the Arab world, Barack Obama was significantly the first to frequently refer to "Muslims around the world" and the "Muslim world." Both historically and currently, this Muslim world is as much a political as a religious concept.
Certainly, President Obama's 2009 journey to Cairo for "a new beginning" with Muslims around the world cannot be compared with President Richard Nixon's 1972 trip to Beijing to begin direct dialogue with the communist leaders of China. As a long-time "Cold Warrior" with sterling anti-communist credentials, Nixon was hard to challenge on his motives for talking with Chairman Mao.
By contrast, ought there not to be some degree of skepticism about the motives of a President with publicly avowed Muslim roots, reaching out to the Muslim world, notably including appeasement of the Islamic Republic of Iran?
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| February 1972 President Nixon talks with China's Premier Chou En Lai. Nobody was ever able to credibly accuse Nixon of being "soft on Communism." By contrast, many say President Obama is "soft on Islam." |
Conflicting loyalties?
With respect to President Obama, the potential political problem falls under the familiar headings of bias and conflict of loyalties. Acute danger arises because:
- USA stakes are the very highest with respect to the race to nuclear weapons of the Islamic Republic of Iran;
- Islam is not just a religion, but also a political program; and
- President Obama really does make his own Mideast policy solo like a 21st-century Napoleon III.
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| "Emperor of the French," Napoleon III (1808-1873). His incompetent, ideology-driven foreign policy ignored vital national interests and led to France's humiliating defeat and permanent loss of primacy in Europe. |
There is no responsible way to avoid the disturbing possibility that this President neglects vital USA interests, due to peculiar ideological preconceptions. Specifically, the risk is that he harbors sympathies and self-identifications that historically have been both outside the American mainstream and hostile to the Western world.
Killing Osama partly political theater!
Personally approving targets, this President puts special emphasis on drone strikes against Al-Qaeda and other selected terrorists. Whatever the tactical benefits, such drone strikes are no substitute for an effective foreign policy. To the contrary, they harm foreign policy by damaging relations with Pakistan and stirring strong anti-USA sentiment in other countries.
Killing Osama bin Laden and the continuing drone strikes are significantly also political theater -- a Rambo-style show partly aimed at deflecting attention from Barack Obama's own Muslim past toward a contrived narrative portraying him as a tough sheriff, riding posse on Islamists.
Drone strikes are also intended to distract from the philo-Muslim architecture of President Obama's peculiar Mideast policy. This appeases a dangerous enemy like the Islamic Republic of Iran, which daily gets closer to nuclear weapons. The Iranian ayatollahs also persistently project power via Iraq to Syria, and then onward to Lebanon. President Obama helped make this possible by rushing to withdraw USA forces from Iraq. He also abandons Afghanistan and betrays old friends like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Killing Osama partly political theater!
Personally approving targets, this President puts special emphasis on drone strikes against Al-Qaeda and other selected terrorists. Whatever the tactical benefits, such drone strikes are no substitute for an effective foreign policy. To the contrary, they harm foreign policy by damaging relations with Pakistan and stirring strong anti-USA sentiment in other countries.
Killing Osama bin Laden and the continuing drone strikes are significantly also political theater -- a Rambo-style show partly aimed at deflecting attention from Barack Obama's own Muslim past toward a contrived narrative portraying him as a tough sheriff, riding posse on Islamists.
Drone strikes are also intended to distract from the philo-Muslim architecture of President Obama's peculiar Mideast policy. This appeases a dangerous enemy like the Islamic Republic of Iran, which daily gets closer to nuclear weapons. The Iranian ayatollahs also persistently project power via Iraq to Syria, and then onward to Lebanon. President Obama helped make this possible by rushing to withdraw USA forces from Iraq. He also abandons Afghanistan and betrays old friends like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
A Jewish-American President?
Charges of bias and conflict of loyalties would inevitably be raised were there a Jewish-American President, perceived to favor Israel to the slightest extent. For example, consider the case of Al Gore's year 2000 vice-presidential running-mate, former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. He practices Orthodox Judaism. Had Joe Lieberman become President, we can be dead certain that countless critics would have pointed to his Jewish descent and faith to challenge his Mideast policies, unless egregiously hostile to Israel.
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| Senator Joe Lieberman practices Orthodox Judaism. |
But, still remaining are two essential differences: Firstly, by contrast to any Muslim country, Israel is more closely linked to the USA and consistently admired by a solid majority of Americans. Secondly, Senator Lieberman was persistently truthful about himself -- namely, he was always completely open about both his Judaism and his strong affection for the Jewish State.
Heed Buddha's warning!
Seeking political advantage, Barack Obama probably lied in saying that he had always been Christian and never practiced Islam. If so, carefully consider consequential dangers as set out in Verse 176 of the Dhammapada. There, Shakyamuni Buddha (Gautama Siddhartha) wisely warns that there is no limit to the evil that a liar can do:
Ekam dhammam atitassa musavadissa jantuno vitinnaparalokassa natthi papam akariyam.
There is no evil that cannot be done by the liar, who has transgressed the one law of truthfulness and who is indifferent to a world beyond.
