BECKWITH RESPONDS TO WASHINGTON POST

As an Obama supporter -- Danielle Allen says:

"I started thinking, 'How does one stop it?' "

STOP FREE SPEECH? STOP OPINION YOU DISLIKE? STOP ENQUIRY INTO FACTS? DISCREDIT FACTS PROVIDED BY OBAMA FAMILY MEMBERS? BAN CERTAIN TOPICS YOU DISFAVOR?

BY USING INNUENDO SHE ATTACKS FROM OTHERS? WITHOUT PROVIDING AUTHENTIC REFERENCE FOR HER KEY OBAMA "FACTS" AS SHE ACCUSES OTHERS OF DOING?

Lots of attribution to background matters but not about salient Obama details, wih which she tries to make her accusatory case.

WHY DID SHE NOT PUT MATTERS SOMEWHAT TO REST BY RESEARCHING AND PRODUCING A REAL OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE INSTEAD OF THE PHOTOSHOPPED ONE PRESENTED ON THE WEB?


Beckwith responds to The Washington Post.
The first thing I have to say about "An Attack That Came Out of the Ether," published by The Washington Post on June 28th, is that at NO time was I ever contacted by this woman, Danielle Allen.

As an Obama supporter -- she had met the senator while she worked as a dean at the University of Chicago -- it made her angry. And curious.
"I started thinking, 'How does one stop it?' "

Allen, who is an Obama shill from Chicago and who has contributed $2,750 to Obama (going back to 2004), obsesses about the "Muslim" Obama stories, but steers clear of Obama's relationships with communists, Marxists, socialists, terrorists, racist reverends and convicted swindlers.

The trick she attempts to use is to knock down one or two or three items so the other four thousand don't count.

Alan note: Exactly the kind of "disinformation" she attributes to anyone not impressed with Obama.

I spoke to two male Post reporters, who spoke to me over the phone for a period of months. The first contact was in the fall of 2007. They told me they were trying to track down the source of emails they considered negative to the Obamamessiah.

Allen obsesses about the "Muslim" Obama stories, but steers clear of Obama's relationships with communists, Marxists, socialists, terrorists and convicted swindlers.

The trick she attempts to use is to knock down one or two or three items and the other four thousand don't count.The following notice appears on my website's "About" page: "I don't write this stuff -- I cherry-pick it and publish it here -- every attempt is made to provide attribution and/or links to the original source -- if you don't like the writer's viewpoint -- send them an email -- not me.

If the reader finds content that is incorrect, I will correct or delete it upon the submission of two links to an independent source with more accurate information.

"And I mean just that and I do just that. I want The Obama File to be able to withstand the type of attack that Allen attempts in this article.

When Allen quotes me: "If 20 percent of what's on my Web site is true, this guy is a clear and present danger," she left out the whole quote.

I told her reporters that I believed that The Obama File content was better than 95% accurate, but that If 20 percent of what's on my Web site is true, this guy is a clear and present danger. I still believe that.

Allen writes, "There was 'Beckwith,' whom she pegged as a veteran from Boston, old enough to vote for John F. Kennedy, in uniform by 1964, and host of a Web site that devotes considerable space to an 'Obama file' that says the senator is 'by birth, blood and training, a Muslim.'

"That statement is true. Just ask Obama's sister Maya. In an interview with the New York Times, published on April 30th, 2007,

Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s younger half sister, told the Times, "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim."

I assume Maya thinks of her brother, Obama, as a member of her family?

Even if Maya didn't make such a statement. Islam is patrilinear. The son of a Muslim is a Muslim (birth, blood) and Obama did study Islam, the Quran and the Hadith at the Besuki Primary School in Jakarta, Indonesia for two years (training).

Further, he attended mengaji classes where he studied the Quran in its native Arabic.

In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama mentions studying the Quran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school."

He wrote, "In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Koranic studies."

According to Tine Hahiyary, one of Obama's teachers and the principal from 1971 through 1989, Barry actively took part in the Islamic religious lessons during his time at the school.

His teacher was named Maimunah and she lived in the Puncak area, the Cianjur Regency.

"I remembered that he had studied mengaji" (recitation of the Quran)" Tine said.

These facts can account for the startling statement Obama made on February 27th, 2007, when he said the Muslim call to prayer was "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth."

In an interview with Nicholas Kristof, published in The New York Times, Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer, the Adhan, "with a first-class [Arabic] accent."

The opening lines of the Adhan (Azaan) is the Shahada:
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that Muhammad is his prophet...

According to Islamic scholars, reciting the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, makes one a Muslim.

This simple yet profound statement expresses a Muslim's complete acceptance of, and total commitment to, the message of Islam.

Obama knows this from his Quranic studies -- and he knows the New York Times will publish this fact and it will be seen throughout the Islamic world.

Regardless of Obama's religion, what message is he sending the world's 1.2 billion Muslims?

I suppose it's easy for Obama to remember the Shahada for the 35 years since he left Indonesia -- and in 'first-class' Arabic -- especially since he believes the Muslim call to prayer is "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth." -- no matter what religion he belongs to, or not, those Muslim prayers run through his head, and often -- what does that really make him?

And although I do have a Boston accent, of which I'm proud (you can hear it on the webcast at the link on the main page), Allen gets in a little ethnic stereotyping by calling my accent a "... thick Boston brogue" -- Bostonians don't have brogues -- my antecedents from Ireland do -- it's a good thing I don't have a chip on my shoulder and charge "racism" at such obvious stereotyping -- like some folks might do.

And there is no "unnamed 'colleague' in Europe" -- that's probably my friend and fellow FReeper, ExpatGuy, who operates the "An American Expat in Southeast Asia" blog (a truly great resource).

But, what the heck, Europe, Southeast Asia, they're all foreign places.

Allen is also incorrect when she writes, "His initial goal was to take swats at the liberal left. 'Then this new guy comes along called Obama,' he said." -- All one has to do is to read the "About" page on my website to get it right -- "The Obama File is a spinoff of http://www.freedomsenemies.com/ where it started out as a single page.

Freedom's Enemies documents the relationship between the political left and Islamofascism. Along comes Obama -- with a foot in each camp -- and The Obama File just evolved.

The reason I spun off The Obama File is that I did not want the Freedoms Enemies website a pejorative to the information I was compiling on Obama.

This sentence is also false -- "Beckwith said he built a Web site that features hundreds of pages of material intended to undermine Obama." --

There are 18 pages on my website. Because I take pains to document and provide attribution for everything, those 18 pages link to thousands of source articles, primarily from mainstream media sources (including The Washington Post), and my intention is not to "undermine" poor Barry -- it is to "oppose the most liberal (read "left-wing") member of the U. S. Senate sitting in the Oval Office" -- just like it says on my "About" page.

I suppose it could have been more of a hatchet job, but what amazes me is Allen's obsession with the Muslim thing -- that rumor is a year old and has been fed more by Obama and his family more than anyone else.

Why hasn't Allen attempted to knock down Obama's relationship with communists, Marxists, socialists, terrorists, convicted swindlers, and, dare I say it, DHIMMICRATS!

Could it be that those long-term relationships are just too easy to document?

ALSO DANIEL PIPES offers this summary:

As Barack Obama's candidacy comes under increasing scrutiny, his account of his religious upbringing deserves careful attention for what it tells us about the candidate's integrity.

Obama asserted in December, "I've always been a Christian," and he has adamantly denied ever having been a Muslim. "The only connection I've had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father's side came from that country [Kenya]. But I've never practiced Islam."

In February, he claimed: "I have never been a Muslim. … other than my name and the fact that I lived in a populous Muslim country for 4 years when I was a child [Indonesia, 1967-71] I have very little connection to the Islamic religion."

"Always" and "never" leave little room for equivocation.

But many biographical facts, culled mainly from the American press, suggest that, when growing up, the Democratic candidate for president both saw himself and was seen as a Muslim.

Obama's Kenyan birth father:

In Islam, religion passes from the father to the child.

Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936–1982) was a Muslim who named his boy Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Only Muslim children are named "Hussein".

Obama's Indonesian family:

His stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was also a Muslim. In fact, as Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng explained to Jodi Kantor of the New York Times: "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim."

An Indonesian publication, the Banjarmasin Post reports a former classmate, Rony Amir, recalling that "All the relatives of Barry's father were very devout Muslims."

Barack Obama's Catholic school in Jakarta.

The Catholic school: Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press reports that "documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim" while at a Catholic school during first through third grades.

Kim Barker of the Chicago Tribune confirms that Obama was "listed as a Muslim on the registration form for the Catholic school."

A blogger who goes by "An American Expat in Southeast Asia" found that "Barack Hussein Obama was registered under the name ‘Barry Soetoro' serial number 203 and entered the Franciscan Asisi Primary School on 1 January 1968 and sat in class 1B. … Barry's religion was listed as Islam."

Barack Obama's public school in Jakarta

The public school: Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times learned from Indonesians familiar with Obama when he lived in Jakarta that he "was registered by his family as a Muslim at both schools he attended."

Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star visited the Jakarta public school Obama attended and found that "Three of his teachers have said he was enrolled as a Muslim."

Although Siddiqui cautions that "With the school records missing, eaten by bugs, one has to rely on people's shifting memories," he cites only one retired teacher, Tine Hahiyari, retracting her earlier certainty about Obama's being registered as a Muslim.

Koran class:

In his autobiography, Dreams of My Father, Obama relates how he got into trouble for making faces during Koranic studies, thereby revealing he was a Muslim, for Indonesian students in his day attended religious classes according to their faith.

Indeed, Obama still retains knowledge from that class: Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times, reports that Obama "recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them [to Kristof] with a first-rate accent."

Mosque attendance: Obama's half-sister recalled that the family attended the mosque "for big communal events." Watson learned from childhood friends that "Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the local mosque."

Barker found that "Obama occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers."

One Indonesia friend, Zulfin Adi, states that Obama "was Muslim. He went to the mosque. I remember him wearing a sarong" (a garment associated with Muslims).

Piety: Obama himself says that while living in Indonesia, a Muslim country, he "didn't practice [Islam]," implicitly acknowledging a Muslim identity.

Indonesians differ in their memories of him. One, Rony Amir, describes Obama as "previously quite religious in Islam."

Obama's having been born and raised a Muslim and having left the faith to become a Christian make him neither more nor less qualified to become president of the United States.

But if he was born and raised a Muslim and is now hiding that fact, this points to a major deceit, a fundamental misrepresentation about himself that has profound implications about his character and his suitability as president.

Apr. 29, 2008 update:

This article builds on two prior ones on the matter of Barack Obama and Islam. First, "Was Barack Obama a Muslim?" considered the implications of his Muslim childhood; second, "Confirmed: Barack Obama Practiced Islam" responded to a critique of the first article.

This third one brings the evidence together in a single place.