Barack Obama's Muslim Heritage: How Deep Does It Go?

Barack Obama's father was a Muslim. No one denies that. So how deep does his Muslim heritage run? I haven't heard much discussion of that issue. And I was surprised when I looked into the question myself, because the answer is that Obama's Muslim heritage doesn't climb very far up his family tree.

Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936–1982) was Senator Obama's biological father. He was born and he died a Muslim. Did he have much input into Senator Obama's life? Not really. He left when Senator Obama was two years old. The senator saw his father once in his life after that, at age 10. And since the Senator's father was already married in Kenya before 1961 and kept this a secret from Senator Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, the short marriage was probably illegal.

Senator Obama's grandfather (Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.'s father) was Onyango Obama (1895-1979). Onyango was born a Christian, worked for Christian missionaries for a while, and converted to Islam during World War I while in exile in Zanzibar (a Muslim area of Tanzania). Onyango's third wife, Sarah Obama, raised the senator's father, Barack Obama Sr. She is still alive, professes to be a Christian, and Senator Obama calls her "Granny Sarah." (Senator Obama's actual grandmother, named Akumu, separated from Onyango Obama shortly after the birth of the Senator's father.)

Barack Obama Sr. (1936–1982), the father who left him so early in life, seems to be the only male in the Senator's family tree who was born and died a Muslim. The senator was raised by a white woman from Kansas (Ann Dunham, a confirmed agnostic) and by his Christian grandparent. As a family heritage goes, that's not a very Islamic one...

"Evan Almighty" and Our Moral Categories

One of the blogs I look at periodically belongs to Dr. Ron Ethridge, the pastor of Woodward Avenue Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. This week Ron posted a blog entry about whether it would be wrong for his flock members to go see the new movie "Evan Almighty." I enjoyed his opinion on the matter, particularly the Bible quote he used. Ron said:

“Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is profitable!” (1 Corinthians 6:12) I think that applies here…

I commented on Ron's site and told him that the quote reminded me of a conclusion I drew during my time overseas. As Christians from a Western European cultural background, we tend to want to reduce all moral choices to good vs. bad, right vs. wrong. We love morality, but we limit our way of thinking about it. Those limits are cultural, and not really Biblical (as this passage shows). And the desire to divide things up into binary “yes or no” categories comes from our pre-Christian philosophical roots, from Aristotle (not Paul or Moses). That desire for "yes or no" answers also tends to lead to extreme conclusions (followed by extreme actions, with Prohibition being a classic example).

I’ve lived in places where Muslims made up the largest portion of the population and I’ve worked with Muslim college students in an ESL setting. It struck me some years ago that for all the problems that a legalistic religion like Islam presents, their moral categories seem more Biblical to me than those of my own culture.

In Islam there are four main moral categories:

• Some things are commanded, or required in their moral framework. You simply must pray, for example.
  

• Some things are encouraged, like charity.
  

• Some things are allowed, or permissible. The Arabic word is halal and it means much the same think as “kosher.” You don’t have to do it, but you can it you want to.
  

• Some things are forbidden, or impermissible. The Arabic word is haram.

So in Islam, you must pray, you should give to the poor, you can eat beef (or be a vegetarian if you’d prefer), and you cannot eat pork (because the Qur’an teaches that it is unclean).

I think American Christians would do well to reconsider what moral categories they use and examine whether the Bible or the Ancient Greeks have more influence on their thinking…

My thoughts, at least...