Muslims Donors to a “Christian” Candidate? Maybe.

In a notorious April 2008 Obama gaffe, Mr. Obama put down small-town Pennsylvanians before a San Francisco crowd, describing them as bitterly taking refuge from economic woes in guns and religion. The remarks demeaned not only small town residents but belief in religion itself.

St. Barack spoke of neither guns nor religion in a context of respect. The questions he raises by disparaging religious faith–we’ll leave guns for others to discuss–are answered in large part, for those capable of connecting the dots, by Obama’s history, by his choice of Jeremiah Wright as his pastor, by his Muslim-leftist family background, and by his education and history to date.

As well as by his connections with communist Saul Alinsky, with unrepentant Weather Underground terrorists Willam Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and Arab bagman Tony Rezko, who miraculously provided critical funds to buy Obama’s house. It was from the living room of Ayers and Dohrn, you may recall, that Obama launched his campaign for Illinois state senator. His connection with them is not merely a casual, passing acquaintance but one involving shared objectives and long-term friendship. It is “all one of a piece,” as they say in small towns across America, not just in Pennsylvania.

Nor was his choice of a church an accident. Obama’s choice of any church at all was forced by his fellow community activists in Chicago, not by a heartfelt need for religion. Which, as Obama clearly demonstrated this last weekend, he disdains.

Until fellow activists informed Obama he needed to find a church home to have street credibility, he attended none:

“From Wright and others, Obama learned that part of his problem as an organizer was that he was trying to build a confederation of churches but wasn’t showing up in the pews on Sunday. When pastors asked him the inevitable questions about his own spiritual life, Obama would duck them uncomfortably. A Reverend Philips put the problem to him squarely when he learned that Obama didn’t attend services. “It might help your mission if you had a church home,” he told Obama. “It doesn’t matter where, really. What you’re asking from pastors requires us to set aside some of our more priestly concerns in favor of prophecy. That requires a good deal of faith on our part. It makes us want to know just where you’re getting yours from.”

“After many lectures like this, Obama decided to take a second look at Wright’s church. Older pastors warned him that Trinity was for “Buppies”–black urban professionals–and didn’t have enough street cred. But Wright was a former Muslim and black nationalist who had studied at Howard and Chicago, and Trinity’s guiding principles–what the church calls the “Black Value System”–included a “Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness.’”

Obama needed a political base of support, so he had a sudden need for religion in his life. He found one sympathetic with his political views in Trinity United Church of Christ, led by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Barack’s own autobiography, Dreams of My Father, makes it clear that from day one, he understood of what Wright and his church were about– from their first interview, before he ever attended a meeting, and of course, before he continued to do so for the next twenty years.

Trinity United was more political action than religion, if one puts any stock in the DVDs sold in its foyer, offering footage of Jeremiah Wright performing at its pulpit. The church’s mission statement [] cites W. E. B. DuBois with approval. Like Alinsky, DuBois was another famous, card-carrying communist. Communists are by definition atheists; religion, according to Marx, was “the opiate of the people.”

Obama apologists can cry “guilt by association,” but when multiple associations lead to terrorists, American or Islamic, to those who preach hatred against whites and against Israel, to those who pile honors on the likes of Louis Farrakhan, and to Marxists or communists, only the intellectually dishonest or willfully blind continue to ignore the obvious. It’s like all roads leading to Rome in the days of the Empire. They did. Today, in the Obama circle, all roads seem to lead to terrorists or Marxists.

Barack Obama came to Chicago as a political activist. He responded to an ad, applying for just such a position. This is the period of his life he points to as his most important education. Not at Harvard Law, but on Chicago’s South Side. It was the school of Saul Alinsky, “dead ten years before Obama got to Chicago” but “very much alive” in his disciples and carefully studied and emulated by Obama, according to Ryan Lizza:

“By defining himself as a ‘community organizer’ above all else, Obama is linking himself to America’s radical democratic tradition and presenting himself as an heir to a particular political style and methodology that, at least superficially, contrasts sharply with the candidate Obama has become. Community organizers see themselves as disciples of Thomas Paine and the colonists who dumped tea in Boston Harbor. Historically, they have revered the tactics of the labor militants of the 1930s, and they became famous in the ’60s for the political theater championed by Alinsky, illustrated most memorably by his threat of a “fart-in” at a Rochester, New York, opera house to bring attention to the Kodak company’s refusal to hire blacks.

“Needless to say, this doesn’t sound much like the placid politician who wrote The Audacity of Hope. And it raises questions about Obama’s authentic political identity that require traveling back to the years when community organizing gave him the best education of his life.

“The year after graduating from Columbia, Obama spotted an intriguing help-wanted ad in The New York Times. The Calumet Community Religious Conference (ccrc), a group that aimed to convert the black churches of Chicago’s South Side into agents of social change, was looking for a community organizer to run the group’s inner-city arm, the Developing Communities Project (DCP).”

And there you have Obama. A demagogue who promises “change” without specifying what kind, although Rev. Wright gets quite specific. Given the history, the links, the “chance” remarks, we can only conclude that this is Obama’s religion. The southside Trinity United Church of Christ was already an agent of social change before he arrived, thanks to Jeremiah Wright. Obama found a ready-made organization to support the movement he was hired to lead. No wonder he found it so difficult to disavow its long-time commander, he who traveled to North Africa to visit terrorist Moammar Gaddafi with Louis Farrakhan.

So there is no surprise, no inconsistency, in the appearance of a Muslim terrorist, Hatem El Hady, on Obama’s website as a fundraiser (ht: Atlas Shrugged):

“Two years ago, Hatem El-Hady was the chairman of the Toledo, Ohio-based Islamic charity, Kindhearts, which was closed by the US government in February 2006 for terrorist fundraising and all its assets frozen. Today, El-Hady has redirected his fundraising efforts for his newest cause - Barack Obama for President.

“El-Hady has his own dedicated page on Barack Obama’s official website, chronicling his fundraising on behalf of the Democratic Party presidential candidate. Not only that, but he has none other than Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle Obama, listed as one of his friends (one of her 224 listed friends). “

But El Hady is only one of many such donors. On January 31, 2008, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on the Tony Rezko-related donations that Barack’s campaign returned. Most of the list are Muslims and Arabs. If that doesn’t raise questions in the minds of voters, it should. Obama’s returning the donations means nothing except that his campaign sought to avoid embarrassment, while numbers of Muslims making such donations to him speaks volumes. Are Muslims donating to a committed Christian candidate? According to a Muslim website:

“There exists a mechanism in Shi-ism that lets Muslims conceal their faith in anticipation of damage or injury. Taqiyyah becomes the norm of public behavior when ordinary people fear the danger of being persecuted for their belief.”

Arrive at your own conclusions. However, we have every reason to be skeptical, and as voters, every obligation to be wary.