REV. GRAHAM: “Obama Is A Muslim”

Nearly 1 in 5 Americans polled still incorrectly believe that President Obama is a Muslim. Interestingly, one of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders is among them.

Rev. Franklin Graham, son of the famed national leader Rev. Billy Graham, waded with both feet into the debate regarding why people believe the president is a Muslim. “I think the president’s problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim, his father gave him an Islamic name,” Graham said last week in an interview on CNN. “Now it’s obvious that the president has renounced the prophet Mohammed, and he has renounced Islam, and he has accepted Jesus Christ. That’s what he says he has done. I cannot say that he hasn’t. So I just have to believe that the president is what he has said,” Graham continued, adding that “the Islamic world sees the president as one of theirs.”

Graham’s words instantly set off a firestorm of criticism.  His seemingly lukewarm support of President Obama’s Christianity was dwarfed by the insinuation that Mr. Obama is “one of them.”

The president himself is on record stating that his father, Barack Obama Sr., was already a confirmed atheist by the time he was born. He has also pointed out that his father divorced his mother when he was 2 years old, and he had little contact with his father during his childhood. So any argument that President Obama is a Muslim by birth is a stretch at best.  Combine that with his known faith and membership at Trinity United Christian Church on Chicago’s South Side and the known hoopla that once connected him to Rev. Jeremiah Wright (which almost cost him the Democratic nomination), and the entire Muslim approach is laughable, if it weren’t so pathetically serious.

“The president is, obviously, Christian. He prays every day. He communicates with his religious advisers every single day,” White House spokesman Bill Burton said last week. “There’s a group of pastors that he takes counsel from on a regular basis. His faith is very important to him, but it’s not something that’s a topic of conversation every single day.” Burton added that the president has talked “extensively” about his faith in the past and “you can bet he’ll talk about his faith again.” But with unemployment and the economy hard on his mind, “making sure Americans know what a devout Christian he is”  is not necessarily one of the president’s top priorities.

Exactly what is behind this strange and propelled notion that President Obama is a Muslim?  Some relate it to the fact that Mr. Obama is the nation’s first black president, and that the belief has less to do with religion, but more to do with race.  However, according to Andrew Perrin, a Sociologist with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,  “I think the reality is that false beliefs spread like gossip more than actual information.” Perrin’s research has shown that a false perception can spread quickly if people’s friends and neighbors also have heard or believe a similar idea.  “False beliefs propagate when people think others believe them, and when they have a supportive source that wants them to hold it,” Perrin said.

Perrin has found that even direct denials of the false information, such as the president has done, do not always solve the problem.  “In my own research, when [people] get reliable information that discounts these beliefs, they tend to cling to those beliefs more.”