a few days ago, some of the dimmer bulbs of right blogistan claimed that malik obama (barack's half brother) confirmed that the presidential candidate grew up muslim. actually, all that malik said was that his brother would make a good president for jews. when the jerusalem post picked up the story, it added the words "despite his [i.e. barack obama's] muslim background." it's only been a few days, but the jerusalem post link is already dead. but you can find the "muslim background" bit in this israel insider post.
anyway, israel insider didn't seem to notice where the quotation marks were and claimed that this meant malik was saying that the presidential candidate "grew up as a muslim." slippery quotes aside, it seems rather obvious that having a "muslim background" is not necessarily the same thing as growing up muslim. obama also has a kenyan background, but he never lived in kenya and doesn't have a kenyan passport. i have a "lithuanian background" because my grandfather came from lithuania, but i can't speak a word of lithuanian and i wasn't "raised lithuanian" in any sense of the phrase. i know plenty of people from "catholic backgrounds" who were not raised catholic. the word "background" can mean a lot of different things. assuming it means "grew up as" is adding some assumptions that aren't actually in the original article.
but that common sense objection didn't stop several rightwing bloggers from insisting that this proved that barack grew up as a muslim. (and never mind that barack and malik didn't meet until they were both adults)
so to summarize: (1) the reference to "muslim background" may have been added by the jerusalem post and may not have actually been said by malik as those words don't appear in quotes in the j-post article, (2) even if malik did use the words "muslim background" that doesn't necessarily mean that barack grew up muslim, and (3) malik did not grow up with barack so he doesn't have any particular insight into how barack grew up.
it doesn't surprise me at all that fox news took this incredibly flimsy half-assed case and turned it into a special report. yet another example of how fox amplifies even the most vacuous stories so long as they favor some rightwing rumor-mongering.
actually, both fox and the rightwing bloggers completely missed the real story, that the future ra'iis has a brother named malik.
