Understanding Obama’s Muslim Roots

Understanding Obama’s Muslim Roots

To understand why President Barack Obama endorsed the Ground Zero Mosque—before he didn’t endorse it—a look at his various parents and their ideological roots might be in order.

Much has been made about the Kenyan Obamas and their Muslim heritage, but it has become increasingly clear that Barack Sr. probably never even saw little Barry until he visited the boy and his family in Hawaii ten years after the boy’s birth.

Still, the Obamas matter since President Obama has pulled much of his identity from them. For obvious political reasons, however, he has been skittish about their faith.

Yes, his grandfather was a Muslim, but he converted because Islam better reflected his mercilessness. But no, Barack Sr. was not a Muslim. On one occasion in his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father, a Chicago barber asks, “Barack, huh. You a Muslim?” Obama replies evasively, “Grandfather was.”

If Obama conceded that his father was a Muslim, he would have had to deny his father to erase his Muslim roots, and that would have worked against Obama’s master narrative.

In reality, Barack Sr. lived his early life as a Muslim. In Dreams, Obama’s half-brother Roy suggests that he died one as well. “The government wanted a Christian burial,” Roy tells Obama. “The family wanted a Muslim burial.”

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