Saturday, June 21, 2008

Will someone please ask Qadhafi to stop smearing Obama?


Thomas Lifson, writing at the indispensible American Thinker:

The Obama campaign faces a burgeoning problem: the tendency of certain highly-placed Muslims overseas to declare that he is of their faith. The latest to do so is Libya's Qadhafi, in remarks made marking the anniversary of the U.S. air raid on Libya. MEMRI provides this transcript:

There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama. All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency.

We still hope that this black man will take pride in his African and Islamic identity, and in his faith, and that [he will know] that he has rights in America, and that he will change America from evil to good, and that America will establish relations that will serve it well with other peoples, especially the Arabs.

Americans believe that Barack Obama has every right to become a Christian as an adult and proclaim his faith in Jesus Christ. Americans understand that true religious identity depends on the faith one accepts. But we deceive ourselves if we believe the rest of the world thinks this way...

...The campaign has so far been rather effective at suppressing discussion of any of the complexities of Barack Obama's connection to the faith of his father. To even broach the subject is to be branded a smear artist, to have "emails" invoked as cyber boogeymen, and to be an "Islamophobe."

Obama has been celebrated as a man who repair America's image overseas. But images are tricky things, and managing them overseas may be impossible.

Oh, and I forgot: Gadhafi says the Israelis were behind the JFK assassination.

So he's got that going for him.

Update: Obama's brother Malik didn't get the memo, either.

Related: LGF

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