America’s Struggle with Success

Everyday people develop identifications—sympathetic connections which become a part of them—with people, businesses, religions, countries or other concerns to which they are exposed. Often such identifications are unconscious, and the more exposure one has the more the identification tends to occur. Freud even coined the term “identification with the aggressor” which explained how people unconsciously mirror the behaviors of those who mistreat them (e.g. abused children not infrequently become abusive parents).

Because of numerous comments including several slips Barack Obama has made regarding Islam, we must examine his unconscious identification with Muslims. Although he has made explicit claims that he’s a Christian, this would not preclude significant identification with Muslims. He has reported a conversion to Christianity in his 30s after a long period of agnosticism, but that is many years after he had many Muslim experiences at a very young vulnerable age when powerful unconscious identifications can occur.

• Putting the matter in context, Obama was abandoned at the age of 2 by his African-Muslim father. When he was 6, his mother remarried another Muslim, Lolo Soetoro, and the three of them moved to Soetoro’s native country of Indonesia. In Jakarta, Obama attended Muslim schools for a year or more—registering as an Indonesian named Barry Soetoro, obviously taking his stepfather’s name. This lends credence to reports suggesting Lolo adopted young Barry.
• It’s easy to imagine the boy’s strong Muslim leanings and longings when his stepfather came into the picture. He would have urges to undo the painful separation from his biological father and cling to the new father as well as to the familiar religion which served to keep both father figures a part of him. Neighbors recall young Barry occasionally following his stepfather to mosque for prayers. At age 10, when he left his stepfather to return to Hawaii to live with his grandparents, such Muslim urges would have only intensified—a way of identifying and holding onto both Muslim fathers whom he had now lost. 
• In his early 20s, amidst a huge identity crisis, Barry Obama took his African father’s name Barack (Hussein) Obama which certainly has a Muslim ring to it.
• A September 7, 2008 television interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on This Week, revealed a striking slip which Obama himself didn’t even catch. In talking about how the McCain camp was smearing him with Muslim rumors Obama said, “Let’s not play games, what I was suggesting—you're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith.” Note the references to others smearing him and “playing games” in the context of his striking slip, “my Muslim faith,” suggest Obama is himself—again unconsciously—confessing to playing games and smearing America by concealing just how strong his Muslim sympathies actually are. Slips can be powerful confirmations of the truth of a matter.
• While Stephanopoulos repeatedly pointed out how McCain had gone out of his way to avoid Muslim accusations of him, Obama noted efforts from the Republicans “to suggest that perhaps I’m not who I say I am when it comes to my faith.” Here again Obama seemingly is confessing that also he’s not exactly who he says he is regarding matters of faith. He went on, “These guys love to throw a rock and hide their hand” further suggesting that unconsciously he’s hiding his own hand and could act out in a harmful way as president around the Muslim issue.
• Other revelations about his childhood have revealed: Obama registered in public school in Jakarta as a Muslim; studied Islam daily in school; learned to read and write Arabic; to recite his prayers properly; to read and recite from the Quran which Obama acknowledged in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father.
• A Muslim school principal recalls Obama diligently reciting the Quran. He originally denied ever attending mosque, but, as evidence from others has surfaced, he now admits attending.
• Perhaps most revealing in an interview with the New York Times, Obama described the Muslim call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” The Times’ Nicholos Kristof wrote that Obama recited, “with a first-class [Arabic] accent,” the opening lines of the Muslim call to prayer, translated:
  Allah is Supreme!
  Allah is Supreme!
  Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
  I witness that there is no god but Allah
  I witness that there is no god but Allah
  I witness that Muhammad is his prophet ...
• Obama made another recent slip (May 8, 2008) claiming he had campaigned “in all 57 states.” There are 57 Islamic states. In linking the 57 states to places “I was not allowed to go even though I really wanted to visit,” (on the surface referencing Hawaii and Alaska) he suggests Muslim leanings even further—a deep, albeit unconscious, wish to take his message global into Muslim lands. His slip suggests that, if elected president, he will in campaign on behalf of these Islamic states in America.
• This idea eerily fits with his June 2007 speech on YouTube, “Whatever we once were, we’re no longer a Christian nation…we’re also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu  nation, and a nation of nonbelievers...”
• In his autobiography, Obama noted his pride in his Kenyan half-brother who reasserted his African heritage and converted to Islam.
• Obama said he himself would meet with Muslim Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without any pre-conditions (later he changed this)—thus giving the disturbed Iranian president credibility which most diplomats have advised against.
• If elected president, Obama wants to hold a summit with Muslim leaders who he claims to “understand them better than anyone” because of his background. He clearly believes he has a deep understanding of Islam.
• As a point of psycholinguistic analysis, many people have observed that the political posters reading— “Obama Biden”—have striking similarities to “Osama Bin Laden.” Could Obama have unconsciously chosen Biden as a warning of sorts that he would show excessive sympathy toward the Muslim world, even to its most virulent anti-American terrorists?
• Obama’s Christian claims have been suspect—and ironically reveal his Muslim identification. Chicago Sun-Times religion editor Cathleen Falsani reports that Obama thinks “all people of faith—Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone—know the same God.” (In his own words, “I believe there are many paths to the same place.”) He denigrates evangelism as proselytizing and unnecessary since he denies the existence of hell, but is uncertain if he’ll be going to heaven—a much more Muslim view of the afterlife.1
• Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas wrote, “Obama can call himself anything he likes, but there is a clear requirement for one to qualify as a Christian and Obama doesn’t meet that requirement. One cannot deny central tenets of the Christian faith…(such as the) uniqueness of Christ as the sole mediator between God and man, and be a Christian. Such people...in Scripture…are called ‘false prophets.’”²
• Obama’s theological beliefs reflect the same lack of boundaries as does his political philosophy. While “no boundaries”—particularly theological—are popular with many today, we must see how fast and loose Obama plays with the Christian faith. If you take his belief that all religions are the same a step further, then Christianity is Islam and Jesus is Muhammad. If you want to be straight-forward about it, he attacks the essence of Christianity in his typically gentle, professorial manner which reveals how subtle is his aggression—the thinly disguised rage of the wounded child.
• All in all, Obama presents significant concern as regards his Muslim sympathies. In light of his previous warnings to us of the dangers of his presidency which could visit a plague of leprosy upon us, we must be concerned that weakness in foreign policy particularly with the Muslim world is one major way he could harm America.
• Lastly, we must remember the wounded child part of Obama could act out—completely outside his conscious awareness—his deep Islamic wounds brought about by two Muslim fathers who abandoned him. Exactly as Bill Clinton dragged America down as a result of his tremendous childhood deprivation and rage, making us feel his pain even as he tried to deny it.
• The evidence of his significant Islam identification is so overwhelming that we must avoid the temptation to sweep any Muslim connection to Obama under the rug. His rather obvious name-change was just one of many clues which his deeper intelligence has revealed proving that the religion of Muhammad remains a crucial part of Obama’s psychological makeup.