Obama's Brother,
Abongo "Roy" Obama is a Luo activist and a
militant Muslim
The brother Barack stated he was "most proud of"
Investor's Business Daily
Election 2008: Since we first drew attention to Barack Obama's Afro
centric church a full 12 months ago, other media have weighed in. And
additional disturbing information has come to light.
At the core of the Democratic front-runner's faith -- whether lapsed
Muslim, new Christian or some mixture of the two -- is African nativism,
which raises political issues of its own.
In 1991, when Obama joined the Trinity United Church of Christ in
Chicago, he pledged allegiance to
something called the Black Value System, which is a code of non-Biblical
ethics written by blacks, for blacks.
It encourages blacks to group together and
separate from the larger American
society by pooling their money, patronizing black-only businesses and
backing black leaders. Such racial separatism is strangely at odds with
the media's portrayal of Obama as a uniter who reaches across races.
The code also warns blacks to avoid the white "entrapment of black
middle-classness," suggesting that settling for that kind of
"competitive" success will rob blacks of their African identity and keep
them "captive" to white culture.
In short, Obama's "unashamedly black" church preaches the politics of
black nationalism. And its dashiki-wearing preacher -- who married Obama
and his wife and now acts as his personal spiritual adviser -- is
militantly Afro centric. "We are an African people," the Rev. Jeremiah
Wright reminds his flock, "and remain true to our native land, the
mother continent."
Wright once traveled to Libya with black supremacist Louis Farrakhan to
meet with terrorist leader Muammar Qaddafi. Last year at a Chicago gala,
Wright honored his old pal Farrakhan, who's fond of calling whites
"blue-eyed devils," for lifetime achievement.
It comes as little surprise then that Wright would think Israel a
"racist" occupier of Palestinians, while describing the 9/11 attacks as
a "wake-up call" to "white America" for ignoring the concerns of "people
of color."
Wright makes the Rev. Jesse Jackson look
almost moderate and patriotic. Yet this is whom Obama picked to baptize
his daughters, plus to act as his "sounding board" during his
presidential run.
The candidate already has heeded his church's "nonnegotiable commitment
to Africa," spending an inordinate amount of his campaign time on the
Kenyan crisis, for one. Obama has close family ties to Kenya, and even
founded a school in his ancestral village -- the Senator Obama School.
In the bloody conflict there, which already has claimed some 700 lives,
Obama appears to have sided with opposition leader Raila Odinga, head of
the same Luo tribe to which Obama's late Muslim father belonged.
Obama's older brother still lives there. Abongo "Roy" Obama is a Luo
activist and a militant Muslim who argues that the black man must
"liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture." He
urges his younger brother to embrace his African heritage.
Beyond family politics, these ties have potential foreign policy, even
national security, implications.
Odinga is a Marxist who reportedly has made a pact with a hard-line
Islamic group in Kenya to establish Shariah courts throughout the
country. He has also vowed to ban booze and pork and impose Muslim dress
codes on women -- moves favored by Obama's brother.
With al-Qaida strengthening its beachheads in Africa -- from Algeria to
Sudan to Somalia -- the last thing the West needs is for pro-Western
Kenya to fall into the hands of Islamic extremists.
Yet Obama interrupted his New Hampshire campaigning to speak by phone
with Odinga, who claims to be his cousin. He did not speak with Kenyan
President Mwai Kibaki.
Would Obama put African tribal or family interests ahead of U.S.
interests?
It's a valid question, and one voters deserve to have debated regardless
of the racial and religious sensitivities. Thanks to a media blackout of
these issues, the electorate has yet to benefit from a thorough vetting
of Obama.
We have to wonder how much of the national agenda Africa would consume
under an Obama administration. Of the six "world threats" Obama lists in
stump speeches, at least half of them concern that chronically troubled
Third World continent.
Yes, some of his African priorities are noble, such as fighting AIDS and
genocide. But how much U.S. aid, resources and presidential time would
he devote to them? How much is enough? If Bill Clinton was America's
"first black president," would Barack Hussein Obama be our first
president for Africa?
Then there is the issue of his Muslim past. Obama, 47, was raised by two
Muslim fathers and attended Islamic classes in Indonesia.
He denies being Muslim, however, and says he "embraced Christ" while
answering the altar call 20 years ago at Trinity. (Contrary to anonymous
e-mail rumors circulating, Obama never took the oath of office on the
Quran. He used a Bible, and Vice President Dick Cheney swore him in
during his Senate ceremony.)
This merely raises another concern, beyond that of the controversial
church he chose to baptize him. If Obama were ever Muslim, even as a
youth, he would now be viewed as an apostate, which in radical Islam is
punishable by death. As Mideast expert Daniel Pipes has noted, a
President Obama could be the target of a fatwah.
Still, his Muslim heritage is not the signal issue before the
electorate. It's his Afrocentric church, which preaches black socialism
and black nativism, and his family ties to an African tribe that's
fanning the flames of Marxism and militant Islam in a country once
considered strongly democratic and a friend of the U.S.
"I believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to
spur social change," Obama has asserted. He also says his faith has led
him to question "the idolatry of the free market."
If a President Obama's foreign and domestic policies are anything like
the Afrocentric doctrine he's pledged to uphold, Americans will pay a
hefty price, including those among the growing black middle class.