Posted: Monday, January 28, 2008 12:00 am
Is Barack Obama Muslim, and did he take his oath of office for the Illinois Senate on the Quran?
Obama is not Muslim and did not accept his Oath of Office for the Illinois State Senate on the Quran.
The urban legend Web site snopes.com features an extensive page on this very topic. Check it out at: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp
A page at Sen. Obama's Web site also addresses this issue: http://obama.senate.gov/press/
070123-debunked_insigh/index.php
The page debunks recent news reports on Sen. Obama. First of all, Sen. Obama is Christian and has been involved in the United Church of Christ since the mid-1980s.
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., is Muslim and did take his oath of office on the Quran in 2007 when elected to the House of Representatives from Minnesota's 5th Congressional District.
The confusion might come from Obama's upbringing.
Barack Hussein Obama, Sen. Obama's paternal father, was raised a Muslim. He was no longer a practicing Muslim when he met Ann Dunham, Sen. Obama's mother. The two met at the University of Hawaii while attending medical school.
Dunham and the elder Obama divorced when Sen. Obama was 2 years old. Sen. Obama had very little contact after that with his father.
Dunham married again when Obama was 6. She married Indonesian oil manager Lolo Soetoro, and she and her son moved to Jakarta, Indonesia. While in Indonesia, Obama attended both Catholic and Muslim schools, but was raised by his parents in a secular household.
What is a donnybrook?
Rent "The Quiet Man" and view the part where John Wayne and Victor McLaughlin start pounding the stink out of one another.
That is a donnybrook.
In 1204, King John of England granted a license for annual fair to be staged in Donnybrook, a village in Ireland on the road to Dublin. John ruled from April 1199 to October 1216.
It turned into quite a fair by the 18th century. It started on Aug. 26 each year and lasted 15 days. It became a place for, according to various online sources, horse dealers, fortune-tellers, beggars, wrestlers, dancers, fiddlers, and the sellers of every kind of food and drink.
It also became a great place for one to scrape their knuckles and throw a few punches after throwing down a few drinks. "Whiskey-fuelled fighting that went on after dark" is but one of the descriptions we found.
Legend holds that visitors to Donnybrook fair would rather fight than eat. Doesn't say much for the food, does it?
Dublin and Donnybrook grew together and Dubliners and others in the area came to frown on the bawdy reverie in their new suburb. In 1855, Dublin Corporation purchased the rights to the fair and it was forever supressed.
Unlike the fair, the definition stood time's test, and to this day a donnybrook is a scene of uproar and disorder, or a heated argument.
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