Allegations that Barack Obama secretly practices Islam,Demonizing a President: The "Foreignization" of Barack Obama, Martin A. Parlett - 2014, p 126 or that he is the antichrist of Christian eschatology, or covertly holds some other esoteric religious position, have been suggested since he campaigned for the U.S. Senate in 2004 and proliferated after his election as President of the United States in 2008. As with conspiracy theories surrounding his citizenship status, the claims are promoted by various political opponents, with American bloggers and conservative talk radio hosts particularly promoting the theories.
Belief in these claims in the public sphere endured and, in some cases, even expanded during Obama's presidency according to the Pew Research Center, with 17% of Americans (including one third of conservative Republicans) believing him to be a Muslim in a 2012 poll.
Obama practices Protestant Christianity. He attended Black churches while in his twenties. From 1992 until 2008, he was a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ—a Reformed denomination. Obama left it in the wake of the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Since then, he has attended various Protestant churches, including Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopalian churches.
Background In the political culture of the United States, mythologies of nativism and the immigrant identity of many citizens have often been in tension. The constitution contains a natural-born-citizen clause stating that any person born subsequent to the founding of the United States must be a "natural born Citizen" to be eligible to hold the office of president.
As a result of the absence of a clear definition of a "natural born Citizen", a history developed of claims against presidents and presidential candidates asserting that citizenship of other nations held in addition to US citizenship, or aspects of ethnicity or religion, made them constitutionally unqualified to hold the office. Anti-Semitic pamphleteer Robert Edward Edmondson published Roosevelt's Jewish Ancestry—"He Is Not One Of Us!" in 1939 in support of existing propaganda concerning President Franklin D. Roosevelt's religion and heritage Google Books link. and Roy Zachary, a leader of the Silver Legion of America, linked Roosevelt to the Crypto-Judaism of sixteenth-century Spain in public speeches. Google Books link.
Nazi German caricatures of Roosevelt also depicted him as Jewish. In the twenty-first century, similar approaches were developed for Barack Obama and Islam.
Claims that Obama secretly practices Islam
According to the Los Angeles Times, false rumors saying that Obama was secretly a Muslim started during his campaign for the United States Senate in 2004 and had expanded through viral e-mails by 2006. The Times compared these rumors to earlier false rumors about 2000 presidential candidate John McCain fathering a mixed race child out of wedlock.Smears 2.0 , Los Angeles Times, December 3, 2007 The rumors were subsequently promoted by conservative talk show hosts, including Michael Savage.
In December 2007, the Hillary Clinton campaign asked a volunteer county coordinator to step down after she forwarded an e-mail message which repeated the false rumor that Obama was Muslim.Clinton Campaign Volunteer Out Over False Obama Rumors , The Washington Post, December 5, 2007 In June 2008, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, himself Jewish, spoke out to Jewish voters in Florida against false e-mail rumors which said that Obama was secretly a Muslim and did not support Israel. Bloomberg said: "I hope all of you will join me throughout this campaign in strongly speaking out against this fear mongering, no matter who you'll be voting for."N.Y. Mayor urges Jewish voters to denounce Obama Muslim rumors , Associated Press, June 2, 2008
In 2015, Taha al-Lahibi, a former member of the Iraqi parliament known for promoting fringe conspiracy theories, claimed that Obama was "the son of a Shiite Kenyan father." These unfounded claims do not have broad support among Iraqis, and al-Lahibi's claim prompted mockery.Adam Taylor, The 'Obama is a Muslim' conspiracy theory gets a Shiite twist from a former Iraqi lawmaker , The Washington Post (June 8, 2015).
Obama was baptized into the United Church of Christ (UCC) denomination and formally joined it in 1988. He left the UCC in 2008 because of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy."Obama's church choice likely to be scrutinized" . Associated Press. NBC News. November 17, 2008. He later worshiped with a Southern Baptist pastor at Camp David but has not become a formal member of any church since 2008.Sullivan, Amy (June 29, 2009). "The Obamas Find a Church Home—Away from Home" . Time.
According to his own profession and some others, Obama is a practicing Christian.Marsden, Lee. "Religion, Identity and American Power in the Age of Obama." International Politics 48.2-3 (2011): 326-43. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 27 May 2012.Jacobson, Gary C. "Legislative Success and Political Failure: The Publics Reaction to Barack Obamas Early Presidency." Presidential Studies Quarterly 41.2 (2011): 220-43. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 27 May 2012. Obama said he was chiefly raised by his mother and her Christian parents. He characterized his father, Barack Obama Sr., with whom he lived only as a baby, as being a Muslim-raised atheist. Also, his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, with whom he lived during his early childhood, was nominally Muslim. This familial connection to Islam, among other things, is a basis of claims that Obama secretly practices Islam.
Qur'an claim A chain e-mail circulating during the presidential campaign claimed that Obama took his oath of office as a U.S. Senator in 2005 while placing his hand on a Qur'an rather than a Bible. This claim is false, as Obama was sworn into office using a Bible that he owned. The claim may have been inspired by a photo-op re-enactment of the 2007 swearing-in of U.S. Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who used a Qur'an that had belonged to Thomas Jefferson.
Madrasa claim An early version of a rumor that Obama had "spent at least four years in a so-called madrasa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia" appeared in an article published by Insight on the News, a magazine published by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate then owned by the Unification Church. Insight on the News ceased publication soon after the incident. Its editor, Jeff Kuhner, claimed that a person working for the Clinton campaign had told him that the campaign was "preparing an accusation that her rival Senator Barack Obama had covered up a brief period he had spent in an Islamic religious school in Indonesia when he was six". When interviewed by The New York Times, Kuhner did not name the person said to be his reporter's source. Senator Clinton denied the accusation.
Obama attended two schools during the four years he lived in Indonesia as a child (1967–1971). From the first grade until some time in the third grade he attended the Roman Catholic St. Francis Assisi School, where classes began and ended each day with Christian prayers. He was registered there as Muslim because of his stepfather, who was Indonesian. At some point during the third grade he transferred to State Elementary School Menteng 01, also known as Besuki School, for less than a year. Besuki is a secular public school. Students there wear Western clothing, and the Chicago Tribune described the school as "so progressive that teachers wore miniskirts and all students were encouraged to celebrate Christmas".
Soon after Insights story, CNN reporter John Vause visited State Elementary School Menteng 01 and found that each student received two hours of religious instruction per week in their own faith. Hardi Priyono, the deputy headmaster of the school told Vause: "This is a public school. We don't focus on religion. In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."
Interviews by Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press found that students of all faiths have been welcome there since before Obama's attendance. Akmad Solichin, the vice-principal of the school, told Pickler: "The allegations are completely baseless. Yes, most of our students are Muslim, but there are Christians as well. Everyone's welcome here ... it's a public school."
Middle name "Mohammed" claim One chain e-mail claimed incorrectly that President Obama's middle name is Mohammed or Muhammed. His actual middle name is Hussein inherited from his father.
"My Muslim faith" quote During an interview with ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos two months before the 2008 presidential election, Obama said: Fact-checking website Snopes rated the claim that "Barack Obama admitted to being a Muslim during an ABC News interview" as "false". After saying this quote, Obama clarified, "what I'm saying is ... that he [McCain] hasn't suggested that I'm a Muslim".
Polls and surveys Public opinion surveys carried out, beginning in 2008, have shown that a number of Americans believe that Obama is a Muslim. In March 2008, a survey conducted by Pew Research Center found that 10% of respondents believed that rumor. Those who were more likely to believe he is a Muslim included political conservatives (both Republicans and Democrats), people who had not attended college, people who lived in the Midwest or the South, and people in rural areas.
A study conducted by the University of Georgia found that the percentage of Americans who believed that Obama is a Muslim remained constant at approximately 20% in September, October, and November 2008, despite frequent attempts by the media as well as the Obama campaign to correct this misconception. However, the study also showed that some people who had initially believed Obama to be a Christian later believed the rumor that he is a Muslim. The survey found that respondents who had shifted to the misconception were generally younger, less politically involved, less educated, more conservative, and more likely to believe in Biblical literalism. According to Professor Barry Hollander, "These are groups of people who are generally distrustful of the mainstream media...So therefore journalists telling them that this is not true could actually have the opposite effect and make them more likely to believe the rumor."
In August 2010, a Pew Research poll showed that 18% of Americans and 30% of Republicans believed that Obama is a Muslim.
In 2012, data from the Pew Center found that the popularity of the misinformation had increased in some groups. Specifically, over one in seven Americans (including one third of conservative Republicans) labeled the President a Muslim. Haris Tarin of the Muslim Public Affairs Council said that the survey "shows there's a lot of fear-mongering and politicking in America".
A 2016 Public Policy Polling survey indicated that 65% of Trump supporters believed that Obama was Muslim, and only 13% believed he was Christian.
Obama's response
In person
Obama has publicly responded to questions regarding his religion on more than one occasion. During a debate of Democratic presidential candidates on January 15, 2008, in Las Vegas, Nevada, the moderator, Brian Williams, asked Obama about the rumor that he was "trying to hide the fact that he is a Muslim". Obama responded that "the facts are: I am a Christian. I have been sworn in [to the US Senate] with a Bible." He then said "in the Internet age, there are going to be lies that are spread all over the place. I have been victimized by these lies."
On June 4, 2009, Obama delivered a speech at Cairo University titled "A New Beginning". The entire speech was recorded by C-SPAN. During his speech to the largely Muslim audience,Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World. "Obama's Egypt Speech: What He Said to the Muslim World." Obama declared, "I'm a Christian."