Former Muslim Raises Concerns About the Muslim Background of Presidential Candidate Barack Obama

The Former Muslim Notes the Illinois Senator Had a Muslim Father and Stepfather

Concerns about the Muslim background of Democratic United States Presidential candidate, United States Senator Barack Obama, have been expressed by a best selling author, who is herself a former Muslim. She said the Illinois Senator's election might send the wrong signal to America's enemies.

Former Muslim Brigitte Gabriel said she has concerns about Senator Obama being raised by a Muslim stepfather and attending a Muslim school as a child.

Senator Obama, however, denounced reports on the Insight Magazine website that he was educated at a "madrassa," which is reportedly a radical Muslim school, in Indonesia. He lived in the country with his stepfather from 1967 to 1971. Senator Obama has said the school was not a madrassa, but a secular institution, open to those of all faiths.

Brigitte Gabriel, however, has said that regardless of that issue, the presidential candidate did have significant Muslim influences in his background. Gabriel, who founded and is president of the American Congress for Truth, said that fact makes her "uncomfortable."

She noted that Senator Obama's actual father was a Muslim, who later became a Christian after leaving the senator's mother. She noted that his mother then married another Muslim.

The former Muslim said she is uncomfortable with Muslims being elected to office in the United States. She said if that happens, the message to those in other countries is that America can be defeated, and Islam is winning in the United States. For that reason, Brigitte Gabriel said Muslims throughout the world rejoiced that the first American Muslim, Democrat Keith Ellison, was recently elected to Congress. She said some of those who rejoiced were shouting, "Allah Akbar," which hijackers also shouted when they crashed planes into the World Trade Center in 2001.

On the presidential campaign website of Senator Obama, the senator noted that he attends a Church of Christ. He also noted that he was once a community organizer with a Christian church-based group that was seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods that had high crime.