April 29, 2009: Conservative Activist Asserts Obama a ‘Closet Muslim’

Conservative columnist and political activist Jonathan Moseley writes an article for his blog US News and Views that asserts President Obama is, and always has been, a “closet Muslim.” This assertion has been made numerous times by conservative opponents of Obama, and has been thoroughly debunked (see October 1, 2007, December 19, 2007, Before October 27, 2008, January 11, 2008, Around March 19, 2008, and April 18, 2008). Moseley accuses the national news media of “acting as the palace guard for ‘Dear Leader’ Barack Obama” and refusing to report what he calls “the truth” of Obama’s “secret Muslim” beliefs. Apparently, Moseley’s primary evidence is a February 2007 interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, where Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer and called it “one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset.” Moseley calls the Muslim call to prayer “screeching,” and says no one who listened to it would believe it to be beautiful “without enormous indoctrination into Islam.” Obama says he learned the call to prayer as a child, when he attended school in Indonesia. According to Moseley, the recitation of the call to prayer “makes one a Muslim. The words express a Muslim’s complete acceptance of, and total commitment to, the message of Islam.… Having attended Islamic religion classes, Obama knows this.” Moseley also cites as “evidence” a false claim that in April 2009, Obama demanded that “Georgetown University cover up the name of Jesus in a campus hall before” he would give a speech there. And, he says, at a recent economic summit, Obama “bowed reverently to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah,” but did not bow to Queen Elizabeth of England; Mosely writes that “a Muslim would instinctively give reverence to” the king of Saudi Arabia, but would not bow to the Queen of England, who, he writes, “is technically the head of the Church of England. Obama did not bow to the royal queen who is guardian of the world’s first and oldest Protestant Christian Church.” Moseley incorrectly calls Queen Elizabeth a “head of state” equal to the king of Saudi Arabia; in reality, Elizabeth is queen in title only, with the real head of the British government being the prime minister. Moseley states falsely that Obama “was raised as a Muslim,” citing the fact that his biological father was Muslim as well as his stepfather Lolo Soetoro (see October 28, 2008), and falsely states that Obama’s stepfather enrolled him in school under the name “Barry Soetoro” (see June 27, 2008, August 21-24, 2008, and Shortly Before June 28, 2010). Moseley even claims: “Since Obama changed his name back from Barry Sotero [an alternate spelling of ‘Soetoro’], he could have legally removed [his middle name] ‘Hussein’ in the process had he wished to. He did not.” This, Moseley claims, is further proof of Obama’s Muslim status. Moseley says that Obama has been masquerading as a Christian for over 20 years, ever since his “profess[ed]” conversion to Christianity at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago (see January 6-11, 2008), but dismisses Trinity United as “little more than a left-wing political club” and not a real church. And, Moseley says, Obama incorrectly claimed he had been to “57 states” on the presidential campaign trail, and cites this as evidence of Obama’s “closet Muslim” status, noting that there are 57 “states” in the Organization of Islamic Conference. “So the number of Islamic OIC states appears to have sprung more readily to Obama’s mind than the 50 states of the USA,” he writes. [Jonathan Moseley, 4/29/2009; The British Monarchy, 2011] Obama said after that statement that he had misstated both the number of states and the number of victims of a cyclone in Myanmar in that speech, and blamed fatigue for his misstatement; there are also less than 57 members in the OIC. [Snopes (.com), 7/1/2009] Moseley will later become a senior campaign aide to Christine O’Donnell (R-DE) in her unsuccessful bid for the Senate (see September 13, 2010); O’Donnell’s campaign will assert that Obama is a Muslim, and both O’Donnell and Moseley will assert that Obama, like other Democrats, is a secret Communist. [Mother Jones, 9/20/2010]