In this flashback quote from March 7, 2007 in The New York Times, journalist Nicholas Kristof tells us of Obama’s empathetic feelings towards the Muslim faith:
He spent four years as a child in Indonesia and attended schools in the Indonesian language, which he still speaks.
“I was a little Jakarta street kid,” he said in a wide-ranging interview in his office (excerpts are on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground). He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school, but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics — and more likely to be aware of their nationalism — if he once studied the Koran with them.
Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as ”one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”
Moreover, Mr. Obama’s own grandfather in Kenya was a Muslim.
Kristof has never released the audio of Obama reciting the Muslim call to prayer.
Related posts:
Somewhere that audio is out there, saw the video on the ‘net. Does wayback archives have something like that? For you tech guys/gals check that out, please.