Barack Hussein Obama has the unique distinction of being the first black American president. However, his opponents have always tried to get the general public to mistrust him and to denounce their support for him because of his Muslim heritage.
For a better part of the latter half of the 20th century, the American public was told by their leaders and their government that the Muslim world was out to get them. Thanks to the 9/11 tragedy, the mistrust of Muslims grew even further in the heart of the American people. For Obama’s political opponents, this made it very easy for them to go around telling voters that Obama is a Muslim. But that claims isn’t entirely a lie either.
Barack Obama’s paternal grandfather, Onyango Obama, was a born and practicing Muslim. His father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., too was born Muslim though he didn’t practice the religion as an adult and some even claim that he was an atheist. Obama’s middle name Hussein is a traditional Muslim middle name that points towards his Muslim lineage.
However, Obama’s biological father abandoned the family a few years after Barack’s birth after which his American mother married a Muslim Indonesian man, Lolo Soetero. In Indonesia, Barack attended big communal prayer services though neither his stepfather nor Barack were particularly devout Muslims. For his opponents, being born a Muslim and being raised by one is enough reason to believe that Obama is in fact a Muslim even though he himself claims to be a Christian by choice.
While both official and independent biographies claim that Obama accepted and embraced the Christian faith and even attended black church services regularly in his 20s, his opponents claim that his supposed acceptance of the faith isn’t true.
