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Politics

Wright criticizes those who think Obama is Muslim

3:25 PM 08/29/2010
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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, President Barack Obama’s controversial former pastor, accused people who wrongly believe Obama is Muslim of catering to political enemies during a fiery speech Sunday in Arkansas.

In his sermon at New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Wright criticized supporters of the Iraq war and defended former state Court of Appeals Judge Wendell Griffen for speaking out against it. Griffen serves as the church’s pastor.

Wright’s only reference to Obama came when he compared Griffen’s opponents to those who incorrectly think Obama is Muslim. The president, whose full name is Barack Hussein Obama, is Christian.

“Go after the military mindset … and the enemy will come after you with everything,” Wright told the packed church.

“He will surround you with sycophants who will criticize you and ostracize you and put you beyond the pale of hope and say ‘you ain’t really a Baptist’ and say ‘the president ain’t really a Christian, he’s a Muslim. There ain’t no American Christian with a name like Barack Hussein,’” he added.

A poll released this month found that nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, said they thought Obama was Muslim, up from the 11 percent in March 2009. The proportion who correctly said he was Christian was 34 percent, down from 48 percent in March of last year. The poll, conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and its affiliated Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, surveyed 3,003 people.

Obama cut ties with Wright in 2008, after Wright’s more incendiary remarks hit the Internet during the presidential election. At a National Press Club appearance in April 2008, Wright claimed the U.S. government could plant AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrahkan and suggested Obama was putting his pastor at arm’s length for political purposes while privately agreeing with him.

Obama denounced Wright as “divisive and destructive” and left Wright’s church in Chicago.

Griffen lost a re-election bid for the Arkansas Court of Appeals in 2008, after high profile battles with a state judicial panel over the rights of judges to speak out on political issues. Griffen was elected in May to a judicial post in Pulaski County, the state’s most populous county that includes Little Rock.

Griffen said he invited Wright to speak at his church as part of a monthlong focus on the relationship between faith and the community.

Wright defended Griffen’s outspokenness on political issues, saying it showed he was willing to speak out even if it would cost him politically.

Wright’s sermon focused on the Old Testament story of the prophet Elisha thwarting an attack by the Aramean Army. Wright repeatedly made references to the war in Iraq and suggested parallels with the Biblical story.

“What was his motivation? Elisha had embarrassed him, like Saddam had embarrassed George Herbert Walker,” Wright said, referring to the former president.

Wright spoke as Arkansas Republicans hope to capitalize on Obama’s unpopularity in the fall election. Obama has not visited the state since 2006, and lost its six electoral votes in the 2008 election.

Tags: Barack Obama, Iraq, Iraq War, Islam, Jeremiah Wright, Middle East, Military, Muslim, President, Religion, Troop deployments, Troop withdrawals, United States
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  • hempstead1944

    The Black Community listens to this man at their peril….he is a false prophet and what he preaches is evil. He, like all of us, will one day have to answer for his words and deeds……

  • damage6

    It’s ok he’ll have the rest of his life after 2012 to figure out what religion he want’s to claim. As for the moment the only thing I believe he worships is being president.

  • truebearing

    Why should Reverend Wright’s past as Muslim concern us?

    First, Reverend Wright’s hate sermons are virtually identical as those given by his good friend, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who followed in the footsteps of Malcolm X. For example, this description by Ben Wallace Wells, published in Rolling Stone—a magazine that favors Obama, most likely in serving the interests of their demographic–in February, prior to the release of the Wright videos, makes clear the connection:

    The racist paranoia of AIDS being developed by white America to kill blacks and other inexcusable statements are from the same framework of the NOI and Farrakhan. In fact:

    In 1984, Wright was one of the inner circle that traveled with Farrakhan to visit Libyan strongman Col. Muammar Khadafy. The ostentatious Farrakhan junket came at a time when Khadafy had been identified as the world’s chief financier of international terrorism, including the Black September group behind the Munich Olympics massacre.

    Secondly, while Obama’s plagiarism of a speech delivered by Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X to mostly black audiences has been correctly noted as a racial dog-whistle, it has not been examined in the larger context of the black separatist movement from which it originates.

    Third, why did Wright’s church put the racist and anti-Semitic Farrakhan on the cover of its magazine Trumpet? Why did Trinity Church post:

    a manifesto by Hamas that defended terrorism as legitimate resistance, refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist and compared the terror group’s official charter – which calls for the murder of Jews – to America’s Declaration of Independence[?]

    The three points above show a consistent pattern of Wright parroting not only the language and but also the attitude of the Nation of Islam.

    Wright has synthesized Christianity and an odious brand of Islam. When two religions become one, social scientists refer to this as a syncretic religion.
    For example, the Mayans developed Mexican Catholicism as a subversive way to maintain their culture in the face of Spanish conquest.

    The Reverend Wright may no longer be a Muslim, but he clearly embraces Hamas, Minister Farrakhan and others because they dovetail with his established world view, as with other syncretic religions.

    Reverend Wright’s hate speeches are a glimpse of someone who has blended Nation of Islam and Black Nationalist Liberation Theology into a subversive Christianity, one that would hardly be recognized by most black Christians, and much less so mainstream American Christians, regardless of color. Indeed, one suspects that Jesus himself would have a difficult time recognizing the message delivered by Jeremiah Wright.

    Obama’s 20-year mentorship with Wright not only demonstrates an incredible lack of judgment, but also highlights his views on race. Comments about his Grandmother being a typical white person may simply sound immature, unappreciative, and dismissive of the woman who helped raise him, but in the tradition of Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, and Jeremiah Wright, calling someone a typical white person is an insult indicating a world view.

    http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/04/10/jeremiah-wright-was-a-muslim-why-that-matters/

    • tombt

      Good posting. I think its interesting that Liberation theology caters to the material & physical as does Islam. Islam promises fleshy rewards (72 virgins) to those who die as martyrs – the only guarenteed way a Muslim can merit salvation. The heretical Christianity that Wright proclaims also caters to the material stirring up a victim mentality and blaming one’s poverty on others – a difficult sell here in the land of opportunity.

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