Rick Moran is embarrassed that some of his fellow conservatives push the “Obama is a Mooslim!” theme. What’s wrong with these people?

I am usually quite proud of being a conservative. I know in my heart that the only way to enjoying liberty under the law AND equality of justice is through the application of conservative principles to government and society. And I am usually proud of the rational, reasonable basis on which most conservatives see the world and evaluate people and events.

That’s why it embarrasses me to no end to see fellow conservatives who actually believe that Barack Obama is some kind of “Manchurian Candidate” sent by Muslims to undermine American society. Or that Obama is a closet Muslim just waiting to take power before unmasking himself. Or perhaps most bizarrely, since Obama was born to a Muslim father, he is a Muslim whether he wants to be or not and that Muslims elsewhere will not let him forget his heritage.

There are other permutations to this theme involving Obama’s middle name of Hussein which to some of my fellow conservatives is a dead giveaway that he is Muslim. And there are no end of theories, rumors, tall tales, and outright lies about Obama’s Muslim childhood spent at this madrass or that mosque which “proves” him to be a son of Islam.

Most of this idiocy takes place in comment sections of blogs and conservative boards where new Vince Foster murder theories still generate excitement. Occassionally, one of these stories goes mainstream and for a brief period, conservative are made to look like paranoid loons who believe Barack Obama is a cross between the anti-Christ and Osama bin Laden’s long lost brother.

Well, today conservative stupidity regarding Obama and his supposed ties to Islam hit paydirt - as in generating a ten on the laugh-o-meter. Evidently, the probable next president of the United States was caught in flagrante dilecto, dressed to the nines in what appears to be some kind of native garb (probably Kenyan) and with a (gasp!) turban on his head. To some of my unschooled, ignorant conservative friends, this is further proof that if we elect Obama president, there will be a department of Sharia Affairs.

The truth as Jim Hoft (via Sweetness and Light) shows, is a little less dramatic. The costume is that of a Kenyan tribal elder.

Now Obama already has some problematic connections to Kenya including his appearances for presidential candidate Raila Odinga, a distant cousin and someone whose recent actions in fomenting violence in Kenya following a crooked presidential election are extremely troublesome. (There have also been rumors of a deal between Odinga and the small Islamist party in Kenya that he would, if elected, establish Sharia law - a dubious proposition and almost certainly a lie that has been picked up by some conservatives in this country and passed off as the truth.)

But the idea that Obama in traditional Kenyan garb proves he’s some kind of closet Muslim or Islamic sympathizer is absurd. Kenya is 70% Christian and only 10% Muslim. To extrapolate that Obama’s dress denotes anything other than acknowledging his birthright not to mention playing the gracious guest by donning the clothing of his hosts is irrational, stupid, ignorant, and totally without foundation.

But that doesn’t stop some from allowing imagination to trump rational thought:

Over at Islamica magazine, they are acknowledging what the few of us fighting the great fight have been saying all along. Hussein Obama is Islam’s candidate. They call it a wink and a nod but shhhhhh don’t let on to the fat, lazy infidels.

Expect the fantasy mongerers in the mainstream media to continue to scrub and whitewash (no pun) Hussein Obama’s Islamic bonafides. The rabid fervor by the leftarded lemmings is Hitleresque.

A former Associate Publisher of The New York Observer should know better.

While writing this post, I received a comment on my article from yesterday about Obama’s radical friends. The wildly off base nature of most of the charges made almost make me believe I’m living on a planet full of escapees from the loony bin:

Rick, check out these other Obama ’soulmates”:

Cousin Raila Odinga, the losing Presidential Candidate in Kenya, whom Obama supposedly has almost daily conversations, has been linked to religous violence, burning of churches ( with parishioners in them), and other violence following his loss in the elections. Odinga was accused of making a secret pact with a Kenyan national muslim group to install sharia law in Kenya if he won the election. Oh by the way, check out the picture of Obama in Kenyaa tribal Muslim garb in 2006 at Sweetness and Light.

“Tony” Rezko, corrupt Syrian-Amerioan slumlord/ businessman and heavy poitical contributor to Chicago area democrats, who will be inducted this week I believe for corruption. This is the character, with a nineteen year relationship to Obama and his law firm, who put up the money for a portion of Obama’s lot so Obama could purchase his $2.1 million home. Rezko it seems also has ties to politically connected types in Syria and the former Saddam regime.

It seems that it was true that Obama was reaching out in bi-partisan way- it just was to the parties of the Islamic radicals and not to the Republicans.

This is a guy who:

• Won’t say the pledge of allegience
• Won’t wear an American flag pin.
• Whose wife has never been proud of American before her husband’s campaign.
• Who belongs to a racist anti-white church in Chicago.
• Who was enrolled as a muslim in Indoneisa’s schools and studied the Koran in afterschool clubs.
• Whose middle name is named after Ali Hussein, grandson of Mohammad and the founder of Shia d’ Islam. Incidentally, “Barrack” is awfully close to the name “Buraq”, the winged steed that Mohammad rode to heaven on.

This apostate muslim is the one who is to lead us on the War on Terror?

Pray tell, how is Barrack going to make peace between the Shia , Sunni and the Sufi, much less those other people of the Book, those infidel Jews and Chistians? The muslim Takfiri have only been waging war on the insufficiently pious muslims and infidel for over thirteen hundred years, or did’nt Barrack learn that studying the Koran as a teenager?

We as voters really need to hear from Barrack, how studying the Koran as a teenager affected and shaped his political outlook and worldview.

I receive these kinds of comments all the time and read them constantly on other blogs. What the commenter and other conservatives don’t take into account about Obama is that he is much more of a calculating man than anyone generally gives him credit for. He attends a church in Chicago whose pastor is admiring of black racist Louis Farrakahn. But I doubt whether Obama’s Christianity goes much deeper than his devotion to Islam - which is to say his religiosity is a calculated element of his political personae. His attendance at Trinity United Church Of Christ in Chicago establishes his authenticity as an African American more than fulfilling any spiritual need the candidate may have.

And that’s why I find charges that Obama is some kind of closet Muslim so absurd. The candidate may have been trained as a grass roots organizer using the playbook written by radical Saul Alinsky. And he may have been involved in radical lefist politics early in his career. But a man who has so carefully crafted a political resume by conveniently being absent for key votes or voting “Present” on controversial bills - all the better to obscure how far left his politics go or what his true politics are - it is not beyond imagining that whatever his religious beliefs, they are calculated to effortlessly merge with the rest of this image Obama is presenting to the world. There is no room for Islam in this image nor is there anything in the public record that would indicate Obama has even given his Muslim heritage - if indeed his father was a member of the Islamic faith - a second thought as an adult.

I would say to my conservative friends who continue to insist that this is a rich vein to mine that you are so off base as to be a laughingstock. Just because my middle name is David doesn’t mean I’m a Jew despite a long, illustrious connection of that name to the history and faith of the Hebrews. Hence, this nonsense about Obama’s middle name being “proof” that he is a Muslim has got to stop. There’s no evidence that name was given to him for any other reason except the given one - it was his father’s middle name as well.

Nor does Obama dressing up in local garb make him a Kenyan elder or a shadow Muslim. The fact that he is wearing a traditional headress is irrelevant to what he believes. When Calvin Coolidge was photographed wearing a Lakotan headdress, no one came out and said Coolidge was a devotee of The Great Spirit. Politicians wear all sorts of funny hats and clothes. It’s part of Americana. For Obama to be singled out for honoring his hosts by dressing in traditional garb is the height of stupidity and my conservative bretheren should be ashamed of themselves.

I really wish this meme would stop. There is so much else to criticize Obama for that to start tilting at windmills by claiming he’s a danger to our Judeo-Christian society is a waste of time, effort, and resources. I would imagine the candidate himself rather than being hurt by these accusations probably gets a good laugh out of them, so silly they are and so revealing of the stupidity that permeates a large subset of the right.

Get a grip, friends.