Date:27/01/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/01/27/stories/2007012703131400.htm

International

Obama denies rumours

Suzanne Goldenberg

Washington: The Democratic Senator, Barack Hussein Obama, has launched an aggressive counter-attack against rumours that he is a Muslim and was educated at a madrasa in Indonesia. In an interview with a Chicago television station, Mr Obama denounced what he called a ``climate of smear'', intended to scupper his run for the White House in 2008. ``When I was six, I attended an Indonesian public school where a bunch of the kids were Muslim, because the country is 90 per cent Muslim,'' he said. ``The notion that somehow, at the age of six or seven, I was being trained for something other than math, science and reading, is ludicrous.'' Mr Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs said the Senator had never been a Muslim and was a church-going Christian. The furore over Mr Obama's ethnicity — he is the son of a Kenyan father, whom he describes as a secular Muslim, and a white American mother — erupted just as he announced he was running for the White House. Mr Obama has been the subject of Rightwing commentators for months, with speculation about his middle name, Hussein, and comments about the similarity of his surname to Osama bin Laden.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007