Baghdad Scuttlebutt: Pssst! Obama's a Shi'ite

[cali]

When he learns that I live in New York, Ridha Mohammed leans toward me and lowers his voice to a conspiratory whisper. "I will tell you a secret that the Americans don't know," he says. "Their next President is a Shi'ite."

It's not just right-wing kooks in Middle America who believe Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim: conspiracy theorists across the Middle East have embraced the idea with the same fervor they bring to other bizarre notions. I am not a bit surprised when, later in the conversation, Mohammed assures me that Israel was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and that Saudi Arabia had agreed to bail out the U.S. economy in exchange for an American invasion of Iran.

A Pew opinion poll a month ahead of the Nov. 4 election showed that 12% of Americans still thought Obama was a Muslim. There are no reliable statistics on how many in the Middle East believe that, but there's some anecdotal evidence that the notion is especially popular among poor, undereducated Shi'ites in Iran and Iraq.

Ridha Mohammed is an exception, however: he trained as an engineer at Baghdad University and owns a flourishing plumbing business. He lives just outside Sadr City, Baghdad's giant Shi'ite slum, where preachers at several mosques routinely assure their congregants that Obama is a fellow sectarian. "When Obama won," says Mohammed, "it was a big day in Sadr City. Many people felt, Now we have a brother in the White House." (Sadr City — estimated pop. 2 million — is a bastion of anti-Americanism, where the radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia, the Mahdi Army, hold sway. Few Americans would dare visit the neighborhood without a massive military escort.)

The notion that Obama is a Shi'ite may be traced to Iran. In the run-up to the U.S. presidential election, state-run papers published articles claiming that the Democratic nominee's paternal ancestors had hailed from southwestern Iran. In reality, of course, Obama's father and his ancestors came from Kenya, where Shi'a Islam is rare. Most Kenyan Muslims are Sunnis and leaven their faith with pre-Islamic African traditions and beliefs. Obama himself has said he has no idea if his paternal grandfather (who converted from Christianity) was Sunni or Shi'ite.

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http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1863363,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

[MarkInCA]

1. Ridha the Plumber

We gotta stop listening to plumbers.

(no offense intended to hard working plumbers, just being sarcastic)

[PatGund]

2. Well.....

Kenya and Indonesia are both majority Sunni, and Lolo Soetoro was a (lasped) Sunni. So any Islamic influences in Obama's life were more than likely Sunni