Is Barack Obama a Muslim?

Here’s a recent email exchange that might shed some light on the subject. First you’ll see the bogus email that is circulating the Net and then a response afterwards:

Obama mentioned his church during his appearance with Oprah. It’s the Trinity Church of Christ. I found this interesting.
Obama’s church:
Please read and go to this church’s website and read what is written there. It is very alarming.
Barack Obama is a member of this church and is running for President of the U.S. If you look at the first page of their website, you will learn that this congregation has a non-negotiable
commitment to Africa. No where is AMERICA even mentioned. Notice too, what color you will need to be if you should want to join Obama’s church… B-L-A-C-K!!! Doesn’t look like his choice of religion has improved much over his (former?) Muslim upbringing.
Are you aware that Obama’s middle name is Mohammed? Strip away his nice looks, the big smile and smooth talk and what do you get? Certainly a racist, as plainly defined by the stated position of his church! And possibly a covert worshiper of the Muslim faith, even today. This guy desires to rule over America while his loyalty is totally vested in a Black Africa!
I cannot believe this has not been all over the TV and newspapers.
This is why it is so important to pass this message along to all of our family & friends. To think that Obama has even the slightest chance in the run for the presidency, is really scary.
Click on the link below:
This is the web page for the church Barack Obama belongs to:
www.tucc.org/about.htm

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Bob -
Thanks for sending me this. Interesting stuff. I tend to wonder how many of my family and friends have received this but haven’t forwarded it to me for obvious reasons.
First off, I can tell you that all of these issues have come up several times and I can shed some light on these facts:
* The majority of the claims made in this email stem from a conservative radio host named Bill Cunningham. See this article: http://mediamatters.org/items/200801100003
* His middle name is Hussein, not Mohammed.
* This is the church that he belongs to - the Trinity United Church of Christ.
* Obama is obviously not a practicing Muslim nor is he a racist.
If/when the people that receive this email go to the link that is provided, they would see a video at the bottom of the page. At the end of the video a white woman says “. ..know matter who you are, you’re welcome here.”
To me, emails like this are more of a problem to us as a society than they are to Obama… It just shows you how Internet technology has unleashed the ability for untruths to be easily spread around the country - even the globe - without much fact-checking involved. And an even scarier thing is that most people well pass it along without any hesitation (I’m glad you didn’t).
I kinda think the small/trivial act of forwarding an email becomes much more critical when it contains political or religous content.