The importance of the following opinion-letter is that it reminds us of Kenyan sharia-advocate, Raila Odinga -- who claims to be Obama's cousin. According to Atlas Shrugs, Raila Odinga has even stated that he has a "close personal friendship" with Barrack Hussein Obama. Thus Obama is not only fond of inviting radical Islamists to conferences, but he has a "close personal friendship" to a man who tried to implement sharia. Just some food for thought. "A few questions for candidate Obama," by Steven Nish for the Modesto Bee, August 25:
So-called professionals in the politically correct news media have tried hard to tell us what the relevant facts are about Barack Obama. My questions to Obama: Was your surrogate father Frank Marshall Davis a communist? Why would anyone want to apply Marxist doctrine to America? How close are you to your cousin Raila Odinga who fought to replace the Kenyan constitution with Sharia law? What do you mean by "economic justice"?
It is time for Obama to stop telling us how beautiful the Islamic call to prayer sounds and start telling us what he thinks of Sharia Law.
What does he think of stonings, amputations and beheadings and how are they to integrated with the American Constitution?
(Small clue: they can’t. )
My liberal siblings are every bit as enraptured with Obama as the MSM. What a Herculean challenge, trying to love them unconditionally while I have such contempt for their political opinions.
They are all good, decent, ethical people whom I love dearly...but their political myopia is disheartening to say the least (if I'm honest, the appropriate word would be nauseating). They all seem to understand the malevolence of Islam (thanks to my efforts), but the RoP remains something remote to them. Conversely, Bush is one of us...easily comprehended and - for them - the fountain of all that is unholy.
My inclination is to keep my mouth shut throughout the campaign...in the hopes of retaining some amity at the family gatherings. Why can't we discuss things dispassionately, without rancor?
Anyone else dealing with this?
Anyone else dealing with this?
Posted by: Cornelius at August 25, 2008 9:24 AM
Well, sure. My younger brother is a huge PC MoonBat! But, as you said about your own relatives, he's a "good, decent and ethical" person whom I love. We just don't discuss Muslims and the Global Jihad.
Hussein's cousin looks like a real brain surgeon.
Cornelius
"...remains something remote to them."
That's the key phrase! Believe me you are not alone. The endless bombardment of media, particularly television, has taught everyone to 'spin' any event (9/11 for instance) in such a way that it will become part of the MSM WorldView. My horror (as if finding oneself among pod people versions of one's family) is that the shock of even 9/11 cannot shock. NOTHING can truly shock into awareness. The mental and emotional process has become one of ADJUSTMENT - adjusting input to the MSM worldview. These are not people like people in 1940 or even 1960 for that matter. I haven't watched TV in 15 years and I feel like an alien visitor.
"Anyone else dealing with this?"
Posted by: Cornelius
My mom and I are almost always amicable, and she's a Republican, as am I.
She has no great love for either of the two main candidates for President--Thank goodness she's not an Obamaphile, or we wouldn't be able to speak at all. She's very conservative, and despises all the offerings of the Democratic Party.
Still, Mom is more concerned with the execrable performance of Bush in his failure to deal with the Mexican border issues and his free-for-all amnesty policies.
She doesn't believe in the very real dangers of creeping Sharia. I have hope, though. She's a news-hound, and sooner or later she's going to realize the importance of what our delightful Muslim citizens (real and fake) are doing to the Constitution, bit by bit.
Frankly, a few extra Mexican Catholics are preferable, in my sight, than one more Muslim from anywhere. Yes, Bush is an idiot, a traitor, in some ways, but Obama, if elected, will be a disaster.
Obama not only thinks Islam is benign, but he also thinks Muslims are desirable.
"Hussein's cousin looks like a real brain surgeon."
Darcy:
Yeah, he's got that "I'm a superior Muslim male" thing going, doesn't he?
Still, this is a great photo. Odinga=black. Obama=NOT black. Hyphenated African-Americans don't have a dog in this race, and they need to realize that, before election day.
I don't think this is either a convincing or a clever line of attack/
It is, rather, the kind of criticism that is likely to be mocked and thus, in the end, to undercut the perfectly legitimate many worries about Barack Obama in his view of the Middle East and in his view of Islam, including his being opposed to the war in Iraq for all the wrong, and none of the right, reasons, and his dreamy belief that Afghanistan is the "central front" in the war when if one understood things better one would recognize that there is no "central front" in the war of self-defense against the Jihad being conducted -- it is merely the sum of all the local Jihads, conducted both against Infidel nation-states, and against regimes in Muslim countries deemed insufficiently Muslim, and against non-Muslims in both Dar al-Islam (to push them back into submission, as with the Copts in Egypt, or to push them out altogether, as with Hindus and Christians in Pakistan).
There are so many things about Barack Obama and those upon whom he has relied for information in the past (Rashid Khalidi), and at least some of whom he relies on in the present, that this kind of thing gives the appearance of right-wing craziness, always to be avoided. He has shown no great understanding - none at all in fact -- of Islam. Most of his new, more "acceptable" because mainstream advisers, such as some taken over from Clinton, including the egregious Albright and Dennis Ross, are limited, and wedded to the formulas and understandings and nostrums of the past, the past that was devoid of an understanding of the meaning, and menace, of Islam, and of the various instruments, and manifestations of the Jihad, from the killings of non-Muslims in Thailand and the Philippines, to the persecution even within already Muslim-ruled lands of Christians, Hindus, and others (see Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Sudan).
And that is not the only problem. As discussed here, Obama's view of Islam is based on childhood memories, and seen through the prism of that childhood, attending a school that contained Muslim children from the most tolerant Muslim families (else they would not have sent their children to school with Christians) and in Indonesia forty years ago, at a time when the largely secular nationalists (Sukarno, Suharto) of the early post-war period were still in control (they are no longer, and many in Indonesia appear to be reverting to the full-bodied Islam), he has acquired a skewed view (as skewed as the view acquired by Paul Wolfowitz when he was the naive American ambassador to Indonesia). Furthermore, Obama's Search For His Roots -- meaning his absentee father -- intorduced him to Islam in Kenya, again mild-mannered(given the Christian majority, it has to be) and, forty or fifty years ago, before the Saudi and other Arab money transformed so many mosques even in black Africa, such an "Islamic identity" in Kenya might have meant something milder.
This is a problem. Unlike the defectors from Islam -- Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq -- who have experienced the real and undiluted thing, Obama has not. Yet he thinks, and others presume that he knows, something about it.
Obama may harbor the illusion -- he certainly gives thatimpression - that the mixture as before will do. He thinks we need to "explain" ourselves better. We don't. We need to understand the meaning of Islam better, and work to identify the various means used to further Jihad -- Jihad being the "struggle" to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam, everywhere. We need to exploit pre-existing fissures -- sectarian, ethnic, economic -- within the Camp of Islam. We need to to identify, and then undo, the main weapons of Jihad in the West -- the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, demographic conquest. We need to find a clever way to discuss this.
But Obama, like McCain, is still in this area one of Yesterday's Men. And unlike McCain, there are few signs that he senses the threat (McCain's problem is that he continues to misunderstand the nature of that threat from Islam, so believes that a "victory" in Iraq -- that is a stable, unified Iraq -- is better for us, for some reason, than an unstable source of permanent Sunni-Shi'a friction, and were an independent Kurdistan to come into existence, a conceivable cynsosure, for non-Arab Muslim eyes, of non-Arab Muslims throwing off the Arab yoke (and thus would emphatically underline the Arab supremacism that accompanies, is a natural part of, Islam).
Obama has surrouned himself with the old guard, the weary yet constantly hopeful and misguided peace-processers of the "Arab-Israeli dispute" (in reality, a Jihad against Israel that has no end, and to which there is no solution save that of deterrence, or of forcing the Arab side to invoke Darura, Necessity, the necessity of recognizing Israel's permanent military superiority or at least its ability to inflict such counter-damage as should end, or dampen widespread Arab enthusiasm, so costly to the Arabs themselves, for attempts to undo the Infidel nation-state of Israel). Just look at the names: Dennis Ross, whose entire professional life has been spent ignoring Islam, ignoring the real nature of the war being made on Israel. He can't admit to that, can't admit he has missed the main point, and so he continues as before. His amour-proper is at stake, his reason for being is at risk. And it is no different with Madeleine Albright or other Clinton inheritances. They all have failed to make Islam the center of their study, sturdily refusing to consult the texts, the tenets, the history of Islam, wilfully unable to connect the dots between what happens when Christian children are decapitated in Indonesia, Buddhist teachers and monks killed in southern Thailand, 2 million Christians killed in southern Sudan, Copts persecuted in Egypt, Maronites on the run in Lebanon, Assyrians and Chaldeans, their Ba'athist -- therefore "secular" -- protector Saddam Hussein gone, either being killed, or threatened into fleeing Iraq, and then of course there are the bombs in London and Madrid, the killings and threats in Amsterdam, the hundreds and hundreds of plots uncovered, one after the other, all across Europe, and the ceaseless demands everywhere in the Infidel world by, at this point already very aggressive Muslim groups and spokesmen, engaged in a simulataneous well-financed propaganda effort to convince some (George Bush is a believer) that Islam is a "religion of peace" or, at the very least, is no different from, is just like, "all other religions," and at the same time, a deadly strategy to everywhere remove obstacles to the spread and dominance of Islam, little by little by little, to force Infidels to accommodate Islam at every step and what's more, to become acclimated to this sudden new irruption of Islam into their lives, and to make them feel that there is something disreputable, something not quite right, even about inquiring into the nature of Islam, into the figure of Muhammad, so that the habit of mental subission that Islam encourages in its own Believers, is in turn being encouraged in Unbelievers, by Muslims determined at all costs to defend from free inquiry, and thus from possible critical analysis, Islam.
That is what counts. That is what is so worrisome about Obama. His naivete, combined with the conviction that he "knows" about Islam because of his experiences in Indonesia between the ages of 6 and 10, or because he "knows" about his father, a nominal Muslim, in Kenya, or because he "knows" -- how could such a person not know? --that Everyone Wants The Same Thing, All Religions Are Exactly Alike, and The Whole World Is Kin. These are Articles of Faith. They are remarkably like the Articles of Faith of Karen Hughes and George Bush. The main difference is that Bush and Hughes are also defenders of economic privilege. And Obama is a defender of other kinds, more specific kinds, of privilege, including that enshrined in the immoral policy of affirmative action.
But let's not start railing about Raila Odinga, because he claims to have "a close personal relationship" with Obama. All kinds of people can claim all kinds of things.
There is plenty to worry about. False worries merely prevent the real worries from being seen clearly, or make it harder for them to get a hearing.
Frankly, a few extra Mexican Catholics are preferable, in my sight, than one more Muslim from anywhere. --Abscedere
Oh, without doubt.
The questions that Stephen Nish would like to have answered are above Obama's pay grade.
To Cornelius,
It's my entire in-laws. At least with my father-in-law I got him to look at what islam does rather than what the apologists say. But the rest, they bought the lies of the MSM hook line and sinker. It makes for interesting gatherings, especially when my wife's oldest sister is there. She's the type that thinks that unless you have a college degree, you is stoopid. So yeah Cornelius, I feel your pain. And unlike Clinton, I actually mean it. Good luck.
frankly i think the american media has done way more damage than any jihad efforts can, by making it acceptable to polarize a nation and turn them in to a red team and a blue team (political racism if you ask me) and encourage them to hate and destroy each other to generate fuel for the next mouthpeice or outrage of the day.
I deal with the same situation. Your choice is clear if you want to keep your family together.
Liberals, even family, will never tolerate reason.
All the best!
Frankly, a few extra Mexican Catholics are preferable, in my sight, than one more Muslim from anywhere.
maybe we get the mexican their gift of green card if they'll get rid of mulims
"But let's not start railing about Raila Odinga, because he claims to have "a close personal relationship" with Obama. All kinds of people can claim all kinds of things."
-by Hugh
What about worrying about US Senator Barack Obama's support of Odinga in the disputed Kenyan election? Is it proper etiquette for a US official to openly take part in a foreign election campaign? It's not just a personal relationship. It's political.
"Obama visited Kenya while President Kibaki was locked in a presidential election contest against Raila Odinga. During his visit the Kibaki administration objected that Odinga was using Obama's visit to win votes. Obama's repeated public appearances with Odinga and his almost daily criticism of the Kibaki government added to the Kibaki administration's dismay at how the US senator conducted himself in their country."
-Jerome Corsi
Cornelius,
You're not alone. My sister is a (transplanted) San Francisco liberal. She's lived more than two decades in California, most of it near San Fran.
We rarely discuss electoral politics. Each knows where the other stands. We just agree to disagree.
The rest of us have had some loud arguments. It stopped the discussion. Everything now is about the children, just the way Liberals want it.
I cannot believe with all that has been discovered about the Obamanation that people will still vote for him. Just mind blowing.
Here is a good link for study of islamic texts:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/index.htm
No, it was not proper for Obama to campaign in Kenya with a Luo leader against a Kikuyu leader (the Luo bigshots and waBenzi want not an end to corruption, but a different thing -- more of the loot). But the comment moves from what is true -- Raila Odinga claims a "close personal connection" with Obama -- to the unproven, which is that "Raila Odinga has a close personal connection" to Obama. No evidence is presented for this.
Abscadere,
Bush's immigration policy IS a scandal. As least your Mom is on the right side of the isle.
Poetcomic1,
No TV in 15 years?!?! You ARE an alien visitor. I'm as addicted to that idiot box as I am the net.
Kevin,
In-laws are tough enough as is.
Liberal in-laws...what a "blessing". I feel YOUR pain. My sister-in-law is a public school, social-studies teacher whose views mirror the text-books she's using to indoctrinate her students.
Darcy, Witness & PMK,
To quote a famous American TV news-anchor whose concept of Left and Right was so convoluted that he believed the New York Times was "middle of the road"...
"Courage"
Did anyone see the Foxnews special on Obama last night? It was interesting to me that his two best friends in college were Muslims. One became a room-mate in New York...both became life-long friends who - interestingly - refused to be interviewed for the piece.
It's important to point out that these guys had no connection whatsoever with his father's side of the family. Obama's Muslim connection seems to extend beyond mere blood-ties.
Don't worry, be happy.
Signed: The MSM
Some folks, I am sure, will miss (misunderstand) a mere feature (or objection) that is shared by Marxist ideology and Sharia . . . and any collection of men that gather together to call themselves government. There is always a natural tendency toward increasing dictatorship and authoritarianism. Such gatherings all oppose, or work against, the notion of preserving individual liberty.
Some folks might overcome this, in an Orwellian world, by believing that man (or at least some of them) are somehow exempt from the natural impulse of self-preservation and the need to control their own little world (some inner circle) against the evils of . . . none other than just OTHER MEN that are similarly inclined.
The core of the American experiment is to formulate a government that nevertheless strives to preserve individual liberty against . . . against government itself, above all else.
Does Obama recognize this quality? And Does Obama recognize threats to it posed by either particular ideologies or particular people?
I do not need to conclude that Obama is himself the threat to conclude that his judgment as to the threats to my own personal liberty are too childish.
Just as burning the American flag with impunity illustrates (to some) the pinnacle of individual free speech . . . protecting the individual freedom to burn or stomp on (or piss on) any book (even the quran) would demonstrate the very same principal.
(see post on James Yee, Democratic Party delegate who related the story of desecration of the quran;
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022373.php)
Would the following make a good litmus test of loyalty?:
Would Obama or McCain, upon witnessing the desecration of a quran by some protester, without hesitation announce that though he would not do it himself that it remains the right of the individual to do so and that it would be his duty as President to defend that right . . . that right of that individual and thereby all other individuals in this land of the free? (Is he with us or against us?)
Abscedere -
President Bush has been a disaster.
President Obama would be worse.
The Raila Odinga story has been around for a while.
The lamestream media has kept absolutely silent about it.
Not sure how or even if word can get out to the general public on this.
While I agree with Hugh that this issue might not be the best one for opponents of Obama to focus on, I am going to play armchair psychologist for my friends on this site (I have no training for this role, but then again Obama doesn't have the experience to be President).
As a teen, Obama felt abandoned by both his birth parents. He choose, though, to romanticize his Kenyan father, who he had little interaction with, and his Kenyan relatives that he had never met. It is easier to mythologize those you don't know.
In order to channel his anger at his parents into the more socially acceptable politically-expressed outrage, Obama constructed a radical pan-African identity with its "authenticity" coming from his familial connection to Kenya.
Upon traveling to Kenya, his fantasies were crushed by reality. He learned unflattering information about his father, who many members of his family weren't particularly fond. He was disappointed to hear that his grandfather didn't convert to Islam as an act of anti-white militancy.
Most shocking to Obama must have been the fact that his relatives viewed him as a "lost" person or stranger, someone who was born to a white mother (that angered his black relatives), raised in America and not really one of them, as he had never lived as an active part of their tribe. Their acceptance of his tribal and familial ties has increased with his prominence as a Senator and Presidential candidate,
By this time, though, Obama's worldview, political philosophy and career choices were too tied to his pan-African identity to let reality overwhelm the myth he had spent years developing in his mind. Besides having rejected the values of his white grandparents, and having scapegoated white America for his own emotional pain, Obama still needed an identity, tribe and cause to attach himself. His Kenyan family would continue to fill that role.
Thus, I conclude that Obama's support for his first cousin, Raila Odinga, is his attempt to prove his tribal loyalty to his Kenyan family members. I fear for the same reason, Obama will never open his mind to the truth about Islam, and even if he does, his desire to earn acceptance from his Kenyan relative makes him unlikely to take a hardline against Islam as being Muslim is part of his families identity. It is also part of his "citizen of the world" identity that he is so invested in.
CORRECTION: re post above: "... being Muslim is part of his families identity. It is also part of his "citizen of the world" identity that he is so invested in."
PLEASE NOTE: That sentence was poorly constructed for getting across the intended meaning. I did not mean to suggest Obama is a Muslim. I've never gone for that line of argument. I meant to write--and this was an honest mistake--that his Kenyan relatives' Muslim identity, and his ability to relate to the Muslim world, is part of Obama's "citizen of the world" view of politics.
Frankly, a few extra Mexican Catholics are preferable, in my sight, than one more Muslim from anywhere.
Posted by: Abscedere
I tend to agree with you; better an illegal Mexican immigrant than any Moslem immigrant. BUT they do tend to bring with them many of the same social pathologies; such as: a disproportionate number of them on welfare; a tendency for street-gangs and organized crime; a demand for special privileges as a victim class; a greater loyalty to their home country than to the U.S. (why do any of them come to the U.S. if they dislike it so?). And they have their own version of the Moslems' el-Andalus that they want back: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California, and a few other bits.
So, yeah, better them than the Moslems. But we don't need either bunch, and should be doing a better job of keeping both out.
If you live in an area with a large population of Spanish-speaking Mexicans - or Puerto Ricans, or Cubans, or other Latinos - your best bet is to obtain copies of the Spanish translation of "The politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades" and present them to the clergy of those Catholic and Evangelical churches which have large Hispanic congregations; also see whether you can get them into the libraries of Catholic high schools and even into the 'books in Spanish' section of the public libraries and public high schools in the same area.
If there is a Spanish-language newspaper in your area, or a community radio station that broadcasts in Spanish, catering for Spanish-speaking Mexican and other Latin immigrants whether legal or illegal, the Spanish 'PIG' could be offered to their staff.
Is there any possibility of someone producing Spanish translations of 'Islam Unveiled', 'Onward Muslim Soldiers', 'The Truth about Muhammad' and 'Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't'!
Find someone to do a Brazilian Portuguese translation for the Brazilians, and there's Latin America in with a sporting chance to wake up to the Jihad in time.
Oh - and is there anyone out there with the requisite knowledge and equipment to produce Spanish-dubbed versions of 'Fitna', 'Submission', and 'Islam: What the West Needs to Know'? Or do such versions already exist? If so - same deal: sow them far and wide in the Spanish-speaking churches, Spanish section in public libraries and libraries of high schools, and Spanish-language media.
"Frankly, a few extra Mexican Catholics are preferable, in my sight, than one more Muslim from anywhere."--Abscedere
Really? Check this out:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_4_hispanic_family_values.html
Mexican Catholics are more concerned with social services than freedom and liberty. The welfare state has been eroding our basic freedoms for generations. Illegal immigration is destroying our healthcare system, and increasing poverty, crime, and gang activity,as well as illegitimacy.
Both problems need to be dealt with with the utmost urgency!
If you ask the Democrats they will tell you that Odinga, Obama's cousin is Christian. I think he is Christian Sunni not Christian Shiia.
I guess this makes Obama Christian Sunni as well, no? Unless he downgraded to Christain Shiia.
Hugh;
What has Obama said? I have not heard anything from him about this, and the buses are still running.
Is not silence from him a proof?