Follow up to previous post-you decide

Malik Obama says Israel shouldn't worry about Barack's Muslim "connection"

This article updates and corrects the one previously published on June 13, 2008 with newly uncovered evidence of the audio recording at the center of the controversy.

Apparently the Jerusalem's Post's sloppy paraphrase of a radio interview with Barack Obama's half-brother created the false impression that he had explicitly confirmed the "Muslim background" of the likely Democratic Presidential nominee. The newly uncovered recording presents more ambiguous evidence. The Jerusalem Post reported on June 12 that "Barack Obama's half brother Malik said Thursday that if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background. In an interview with Army Radio he expressed a special salutation from the Obamas of Kenya." The link above is from Google's cache of the Post, but the article has since been pulled from its live website. Israel Insider had relied on that quote as confirmation that Malik himself had spoken explicitly about Barack's Muslim background.

ABC News obtained from Israel Army Radio a recording of (only) Malik's side of the interview, and the unavailability to date of the interviewer's side of the conversation injects some uncertainty about the references of his answers. Malik says, in response to the interviewer's question: "I don't think that's in any way going to be something to worry about. I myself am not speaking for him. But we are here, we love people in general. People love us. I myself love people who love me. You know, so, everything's mutual. I can't go [sic] in terms of Israel and Kenya and America, and so forth, you know, but based on what else I've heard him say and what I know of him as an individual, I don't think Israel should worry too much, you know, about the connection. Because, I am a Muslim myself, and I don't think that my being a Muslim has got anything to do with my brother being the President of the United States."

The context clearly indicates that "the connection" being asked about had something to do with Barack Obama's relationship to things Muslim -- although without hearing the question, it is uncertain what exactly is the connect. Malik answering "because I am a Muslim myself" might imply that Barack, in his mind, is a Muslim too, but on the other hand Malik asserts that "my being a Muslim" did not have "anything to do" with his half-brother being President [sic]." (Presumably Malik meant that their shared heritage would not impact Barack's actions should he be elected.) The rambling and genial answers do not prove, nor disprove, the depth of the Obamas' connections, past or present, with Islam -- except of course the undenied fact that their common father was a Muslim convert. (By the laws of Islam that makes Barack Obama a Muslim.)

Jake Tapper, ABC News senior national correspondent, commenting on the recording in his blog, observes that "nowhere in there does Malik expressly say anything about Obama having a Muslim background. And nowhere does he 'confirm' anything about Obama having a Muslim background. Malik refers to Obama having a 'connection' to something, perhaps Islam, which could clearly be a reference to Obama's father."

The Obama brothers' father, a senior economist for the Kenyan government who studied at Harvard University, died in car crash in 1982. He left six sons and a daughter. All of his children - except Malik -- live in Britain or the United States. Malik and Barack met in 1985 in the US. "He was best man at my wedding and I was best man at his," said Malik in a 2004 interview with an AP reporter. Their paternal grandfather, Onyango Hussein Obama, was one of the first Muslim converts in Nyangoma-Kogelo, Malik said."

In a denial issued last November that still stands on the official campaign website, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs issued a statement explaining that "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."

Melanie Phillips is the most recent commentator to draw attention to the massive body of evidence that leaves no doubt that Barak Hussein Obama was born a Muslim (Islam is patrilineal) and raised a Muslim (so registered in school, acknowledging attending Islamic classes, reported accompanying his step-father to the mosque, and able to recite the Koran in the original Arabic).

Reuven Koret, Aaron Klein and Daniel Pipes have previously pointed to the attempts by Obama and his campaign to conceal the candidate's Muslim background. The well documented evidence draws upon the on-the-ground interviews by researchers in Indonesia and Kenya, published quotations of Obama's childhood friends and his school records, as well as the candidate's own autobiography.