Controversy over Obama's relegious bent

The controversy over the religious bent of Senator Barack Obama, one of the candidates for the post of the U.S president, has come under the line of fire recently. The question whether he is a follower of Islam or Christianity, has taken the country by a storm. Obama on the other hand is trying to assure, anyone who listens, that he is a staunch follower of Christianity and although he belongs to a Muslim background, has got nothing to do with that faith.

In his speeches and often on the Internet, the part of Sen. Barack Obama's biography that gets the most attention is not his race but his connections to the Muslim world, according to a report in Washington Post.

During his contention for presidential seat in February, Obama, a member of a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, has had to address claims that he is a Muslim or that he had received training in Islam in Indonesia, where he lived from ages 6 to 10.

His paternal grandfather, a Kenyan farmer, was a Muslim. The son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, Obama was born and spent much of his childhood in Hawaii, and he talks more about his multicultural background than he does about the possibility of being the first African American president. "A lot of my knowledge about foreign affairs is not what I just studied in school. It's actually having the knowledge of how ordinary people in these other countries live," he said earlier this month in Clarion, Iowa.

"The day I'm inaugurated, I think this country looks at itself differently, but the world also looks at America differently," he told another Iowa crowd. "Because I've got a grandmother who lives in a little village in Africa without running water or electricity; because I grew up for part of my formative years in Southeast Asia in the largest Muslim country on Earth."

Obama aides sharply disputed the initial stories suggesting that he was a Muslim, and in Iowa, the campaign keeps a letter at its offices, signed by five members of the local clergy, vouching for the candidate's Christian faith, according to the Washington post.

Obama for many of us represents not only the hope to see the first ever African- American candidate in the white house, but also to have a man that understands the world- politics and US role in it, in a positive way. Obama’s strong opposition to the Iraq war and his policies towards those parts of the world where the United States is not popular makes him a tough competitor and a better politician.

However, this issue about his religious followings has highlighted a lot of other problems in the country. It has brought out the mentality that works in US. The mind-set that is yet to accept a person from a Muslim background as their own. Because of which, the US claim to be a democratic as well as a developed country is at stake. It also proves that the blemish that was left by the incident of 9/11 is still fresh. People are yet to start trusting the community, which was alleged to have committed the biggest crime in the history of US. In an August poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 45 percent of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate for any office who is Muslim, compared with 25 percent who said that about a Mormon candidate and with 16 percent who said the same for someone who is an evangelical Christian.

Conservative talk-show hosts have occasionally repeated the rumor, with Michael Savage noting Obama's "background" in a "Muslim madrassa in Indonesia" in June, and Rush Limbaugh saying in September that he occasionally got "confused" between Obama and Osama bin Laden. Others repeatedly use the senator's middle name, Hussein.
His integrity does not get questioned whether he is a Muslim guy, following another religion. It gets questioned when he is so adamant to prove that his alliance with Islam is just fate and not by personal choice.

In the past few months, Obama has actively touted his Christianity, particularly in South Carolina, where his campaign hosted a gospel tour to appeal to black voters. He describes his movement from a "reluctant skeptic" to a believer during his 20s while he was working with black churches in Chicago as a community organizer, according to Perry Bacon Jr. a journalist working in Washington post. The title of his second book, "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream," comes from a sermon by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ.

The fact that, in making people believe that he follows Christianity, he has unknowingly shooed away the other faith. This attitude by the Senator has put a doubt in the minds of many, about the integrity of his intentions and claims to various foreign and internal policies, proposed by him during his presidential campaign.

My philosophy

Sometimes when I look around me,
I cannot believe that I am where I am.
The people who surround me all the time,
Used to be strangers, whose existence was not known to me.
Now they are my best friends.
And my best friends,
I do not know their continuation anymore.
Is it how life works?
With new people, new situations and new places?
Where you don’t know about your past anymore, in order to know your present.
I am trying to strike a balance so badly.
But sometimes I feel detached,
Sometimes unconcerned,
Sometimes I fear that my present will become my past,
And I don’t know what my future is.
This is a circle in which your life moves and there is no holding it.
One thing although that I have learnt from all this is,
It doesn’t take time for you’re present to become your past,
So before it becomes just another memory, try and live it to its fullest.
Live your life on your on terms, because you never know when it ends.