Obama Anti-Smear Site: 'He Was Never A Muslim'

But contemporaries, records indicate candidate once 'quite religious in Islam'

By Aaron Klein
Posted: June 12, 2008
10:50 pm Eastern
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

JERUSALEM – In an effort to combat what it calls Internet smears, Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign yesterday launched a website with the stated aimed of setting the record straight.

One of the main issues addressed by Obama's "Fight the Smears" site is the contention the Illinois senators was once a Muslim.

"Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian," states the site.

But as WND reported, public records in Indonesia listed Obama as a Muslim during his early years, and a number of childhood friends claimed to the media Obama was once a mosque-attending Muslim.

Obama's campaign has several times wavered in response to reporters queries regarding the issue of Obama's childhood faith.

Commenting on a recent Los Angeles Times report quoting a childhood friend stating Obama prayed in a mosque – something the presidential candidate said he never did – Obama's campaign released a statement explaining the senator "has never been a practicing Muslim."

The issue of Obama's personal faith has dogged the candidate amid multiple scandals involving his now former Chicago church and several spiritual advisers.

The issue re-emerged in recent months following conflicting media accounts of Obama's enrollment as a Muslim during elementary school in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Widely distributed reports have noted that in January 1968, Obama was registered as a Muslim at Jakarta's Roman Catholic Franciscus Assisi Primary School under the name Barry Soetoro. He was listed as an Indonesian citizen whose stepfather, listed on school documents as "L Soetoro Ma," worked for the topography department of the Indonesian Army.

Catholic schools in Indonesia routinely accept non-Catholic students but exempt them from studying religion. Obama's school documents, though, wrongly list him as being Indonesian.

After attending the Assisi Primary School, Obama was enrolled – also as a Muslim, according to documents – in the Besuki Primary School, a public school in Jakarta.

The Loatze blog, run by an American expatriate in Southeast Asia who visited the Besuki school, noted, "All Indonesian students are required to study religion at school, and a young 'Barry Soetoro,' being a Muslim, would have been required to study Islam daily in school. He would have been taught to read and write Arabic, to recite his prayers properly, to read and recite from the Quran and to study the laws of Islam."

Indeed, the Israel Insider online magazine points out that in Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," he acknowledges studying the Quran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school."
"In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Quranic studies," wrote Obama.

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