It's a ME thing, where conspiracy theories and wild fantasies are a way of life. In most circles, you are quite correct.

True, when Obama was a young boy growing up in Indonesia, he did go to a mosque. From one account his campaign issued, he just "played around" in the mosque -- meaning not praying -- but that is unlikely. His early childhood is wrapped up in rumors and he said, he said, but from what a boyhood friend said, he was registered as a Muslim. This account is highly likely, as his father was a Muslim and he was, after all, going to a mosque.

Still, all of this SHOULD be pretty meaningless to most Muslims, and certainly to Americans as he was not "officially" old enough to be a Muslim. If I remember correctly, one has to be at the age of Islamic rational consent, twelve years old, to be considered a Muslim for life, and the majority of his youth was spent in Hawaii, ferchissakes.

However, Islam is not the same everywhere, which may cause some confusion. In Malaysia, everyone is issued a card at birth with their religion printed on it. Sometimes it's automatic. If one is born a Malay, for instance, he or she is considered a Muslim. It's not a trivial matter. There is a recent case of a Malay woman who wanted to marry a Christian man. She insisted that she'd never chosen Islam and should be free to change her card from Islam to Christian so she could marry him. The Islamic courts, who have jurisdiction over Islamic affairs, and Muslims, refused to allow her this. As you know, in sharia, apostasy is not permitted -- at least not where Islam rules. She was imprisoned and her unfortunate fiance-who-could-never-be had his life threatened.

But, back to Obama. Obama chose the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago about twenty years ago, a Black Liberation Theology Church. It's a hugely popular church in that part of town, and I'm not so sure that he didn't join it, at least in part, to give himself "street cred." This isn't a slam at him, by the way: I think quite a few politicians go to church because it makes them more palatable to their constituents. Black Liberation Theology is nominally Christian, although its founder, Dr. Cone, and Reverend Wright are on the record that BLT is not exactly your average Christianity. Was Obama comfortable at Trinity? Did he really believe what they taught? Well, he listed Rev. Wright as a mentor in one of his books, was married there, had his kids baptized there, and gave the church $20,000, but he wasn't tied at the hip to it, as he departed the church during the later part of the campaign when it became a hot issue.

He's made a few interesting statements that might help define what he actually believes:

On intelligent design:

Reporter: "York County was recently in the news for a lawsuit involving the teaching of intelligent design. What's your attitude regarding the teaching of evolution in public schools?"

Obama: "I'm a Christian, and I believe in parents being able to provide children with religious instruction without interference from the state. But I also believe our schools are there to teach worldly knowledge and science. I believe in evolution, and I believe there's a difference between science and faith. That doesn't make faith any less important than science. It just means they're two different things. And I think it's a mistake to try to cloud the teaching of science with theories that frankly don't hold up to scientific inquiry."

On Christian doctrinaire:

Obama: "There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they’re going to hell."

Falsani: "You don’t believe that?"

Obama: "I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity."

What Obama insinuated, that Christians, presumably conservative right-wing Christians, believe all non-Christians are going to "burn for all eternity" isn't *quite* a fair statement, by the way, and implies that your basic conservative Christian God must be unfeeling and evil, but I guess he was playing to the base. Still, his sentiment isn't so different than what many, if not most, Christians feel, that there are many ways to Heaven.

My personal feeling is that he's a pragmatist without much religious conviction, not far from the mainstream American man who'd rather watch football on Sunday than go to church. I don't see how he could possibly be a Muslim.

Aardvark

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

Mahatma Gandhi