Barack Obama a Secret Muslim? The innuendo dates to August 2004

By now, everybody who lurks Daily Kos is familiar with the unsubstantiated charge --- and it's no more than that --- that Sen. Hillary Clinton is quietly attempting to undermine her rival Sen. Barack Obama by spreading innuendos about his Muslim background. AFAIK, nobody here believes the original story at InsiteMag.org has any substance at all. We believe it's a smear directed at both Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama. I accept that too.

However, by diligent googling I have tracked this rumor back to a press conference by a certain Andy Martin held on August 10, 2004, while Barack Obama was still running for the Senate against Alan Keyes.

More after the flip.

The press conference was held by a certain Andy Martin, about whom I know nothing except he's a journalist for the website Out2.com, and is reputed to have spent some time in Baghdad.

In the press conference, held on August 11, 2004, Martin calls upon Obama's publishing firm to withdraw his autobiography from sale, because the Senatorial candidate had allegedly lied about his past and his heritage. Martin accuses Obama's Kenya-born father (Barack or Baraka Obama Sr.) of having links with the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the 1950's, and accuses Obama of concealing this.

However, the meat of the press conference was in the following quote from the accompanying press release.

"It is time for Barack Obama to stop presenting a fantasy to the American people. We are forgiving and many would still support him. It may well be that his concealment is meant to endanger Israel. His Muslim religion would obviously raise serious questions in many Jewish circles where Obama now enjoys support," Martin states.

The press release is reproduced in this Free Republic thread. Be warned! These are Freepers, and there's some vicious stuff in the comments.

Because Obama was still a Senate candidate at the time, the Freepers rubbed their hands with glee, certain this "revelation" would put Alan Keyes in the Senate. We all know how that turned out.

Fast forward a few months to April 2005, when an anonymous chain email begins to circulate, raising the charge that Obama is a secret Muslim and his loyalty to America is therefore suspect. Snopes.com has a rebuttal to it. We can date the email to April 2005 because it says Obama "has been a Senator for 100 days." He took his oath as a Senator in January of that year.

This email has been working its way around the 'Net for nearly two years. It, or the original press release, was the probable source of a blog post by Debbie Schlussel, a right wing talk radio host. The post is dated Dec. 18, 2006, but now contains an update repeating Insight's contention that Senator Clinton's campaign staff is spreading the rumor.

From Andy Martin to Free Republic, to a chain email, to Debbie Schlussel, to InsightMag.org. Insight, affiliated with the Washington Times, whose partisan affiliations are well known (GOP and Unification Church), pretends that Senator Hillary Clinton started this, when it fact the right wing of the blogosphere has been spreading it since Obama-Keys Senate campaign two and a half years ago.

If there's some backlash against Senator Clinton because of the Obama-as-Muslim rumor, she doesn't deserve it. The blame rests on Andy Martin and Free Republic.

For the record, I am a proud Democrat but not a supporter of either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama at this early stage of the campaign.

•  I know supporters of every candidiate here

  will stand with Obama is condemning this crap.  All Democrats do.

  I found the Mau Mau reference for his father interesting.  They were the good guys in leading the revolt agaisnt British colonialism in Kenya.  I don't know if his father was involved with them, and it is probable he was not, because his father was in the US in college and most of the Mau Mau supporters were in British concentration camps at that time.  But that is like saying Nelson Mandela supported the ANC.  I sure hope so.

  Just reaffirms that Republicans do not belong in power.

  by TomP on Sun Jan 21, 2007 at 12:03:02 PM PDT

  •  Don't forget

    yesterday's freedom fighters are today's terrorists.  They're rewriting history in France, for one.

    by rcald on Sun Jan 21, 2007 at 12:35:32 PM PDT

    •  Easy for them to teach

      the "positive" role of colonialism, since they were the colonializers and not the colonized.  

      Of course, it took France a long time to show the "Sorrow and the Pity," didn't it?  (I saw that once in the late 70s -- long, long movie, but sure shows the home-grown fascism that fit in Vichy France).  

      The writing and teaching of history often is a battle over the persent, not the past.      

      by TomP on Sun Jan 21, 2007 at 12:53:02 PM PDT

  •  the dirt on Andy Martin

    is in a Chicago Tribune article dated 2/10/06.
    http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

    For the highlights, Martin ran against Obama in 04 is the first mention of the two of them in the same article. At any rate, Martin is cited by rightwingers as a Middle Eastern expert noting he first went in 1971 and was bureau chief (of what?) in 2003. Martin notes that he received his law degree from the University of Illinois in 1969 and worked for Senator Paul Douglas (summer intern job) and was instrumental in laying the groundwork for Operation Graylord, exposing many politicians as crooked and corrupt.
    He is referred to as a GOP researcher though he has been in both parties depending on his location and time.  The Tribune article deconstucts him nicely.
    He is described as a perennial office seeker who has run for every office from county clerk to mayor to state legislator to Congress to President in Illinois, Florida, and Connecticut. In 1973, the Illinois Supreme Court denied him a law license, noting his Selective Service records refer to his "character defect" of ideation coupled with paranoia and self aggrandizement. He was said to lack the necessary responsibility, candor, self restraint, fairness, objectivity and respect for the judicial system necessary for professional licensure.  He has been sanctioned numerous times since then for spurious and frivilous lawsuits.  His response to his run-ins with the judiciary and others reflect an apparent basic  anti-Semitism, according to the Tribune.
    In 1980, he was convicted of mail fraud but this was later overturned. However, there is an active warrant for his arrest still extant in Florida.
    Most recently, it appears he is gearing up for a run against Durbin but has about 1% support, it appears from polls.
    This is the guy who is swiftboating Obama?
    The GOP is really scrapping the bottom of the barrel if this is the best they can do to scuttle Obama.        

    by entlord1 on Mon Jan 22, 2007 at 09:46:35 AM PDT

    •  Thanks for posting this.

      Sounds like he's the new "Dan Gannon," or whatever that guy's name was.

      by Kimball Cross on Mon Jan 22, 2007 at 09:53:55 AM PDT

      •  jeff gannon?

        The other guy was well connected in the GOP; this guy seems to be some sort of gadfly who is attracted by whichever party will afford him a platform.
        It is just funny that Savage et al are all blaming the Clintonistas for spreading the rumor when it is one of their own who is the genesis for it.

        by entlord1 on Mon Jan 22, 2007 at 10:56:59 AM PDT

•  Hmmmm...

  If there's some backlash against Senator Clinton because of the Obama-as-Muslim rumor, she doesn't deserve it. The blame rests on Andy Martin and Free Republic.

  I think that if there's any backlash against Senator Clinton it'll be because the supposedly professional mainstream media picks it up and rams it down America's throat like they did with the Swiftboaters against Kerry. ("Gee, who's telling the truth, the swiftboat liars or the U.S. Senator and Vietnam veteran? We do the 'he said/he said' 24/7 and you decide.")

  The MSM know very well that this is lying rightwing extremist nutjob Rovian swiftboat smear at its most dishonest and filthy. If they give it any kind of credence at all, THE BLAME RESTS ON THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA's intentional perpetuation of the dishonesty.

  The wingers can't help it - they don't know how be civil or truthful. But they do not deserve a voice in what should be honest journalism.

  by everhopeful on Sun Jan 21, 2007 at 12:12:26 PM PDT

•  I've seen the smear repeated here

  claiming that Obama in unelectable.

  by ParaHammer on Sun Jan 21, 2007 at 12:13:37 PM PDT

  •  savage nation is reveling in this

    What I find funny about Savage's rantings, well one thing anyway, is that he has mentioned that Obama is a member of a "Unitarian Church" but does not attend regularly (the thought police is taking Sunday School attendance? Wonder how ofter GWB goes to church?) which means even if he is not a secret Muslim, then he must be a closet secularist which means he opposed everything Christian the US stands for (and is an abortionistic, atheistic, Darwinistic liar for not admitting he does not believe in a Christian America)
    I wonder when the boys in the white coats will show up at the radio station?

    by entlord1 on Mon Jan 22, 2007 at 07:22:46 AM PDT

•  name is spelled Barack

  One of my pet peeves is misspelled names.

  I don't see this smear gaining much traction. Yes, there is tremendous anti-Muslim bias in America, but this claim is so demonstrably false that it won't go anywhere. While the Swift Boat affair had a he-said, she-said dynamic at work, there's no effective counter to Obama's church membership and declared Christianity. Keep preaching to the Freeper choir, Andy Martin.

  by dcatalin on Sun Jan 21, 2007 at 12:22:41 PM PDT

  •  Thanks for catching that. It's fixed now. n/t

    by Kimball Cross on Sun Jan 21, 2007 at 02:09:16 PM PDT

•  The Onion needs to do a piece

  Paralleling Timothy McVeigh good white christian, military guy - that blows up Americans!  

  These idiots are just showing exactly how insane they are.

  by totallynext on Sun Jan 21, 2007 at 12:35:13 PM PDT