Allegations Against Barack Obama
On his own website and in articles for The Jerusalem Post, Pipes claimed that Barack Obama was a former Muslim. He alleged that Obama falsely claims that he had never been a Muslim, and that "the campaign appears to be either ignorant or fabricating when it states that Obama never prayed in a mosque." Pipes wrote an article for FrontPage Magazine entitled "Confirmed: Barack Obama Practiced Islam." According to Pipes, "this matters" because Democratic presidential candidate Obama "is now what Islamic law calls a murtadd (apostate), an ex-Muslim converted to another religion who must be executed", and as president this would have "large potential implications for his relationship with the Muslim world." The progressive media watchdog group Media Matters for America described Pipes' article as promoting a "falsehood". Ben Smith, in an article on The Politico responded to these accusations claiming that they amounted to a "template for a faux-legitimate assault on Obama's religion" and that Daniel Pipes' work "is pretty stunning in the twists of its logic".
On a program on the Fox News Network, Pipes claimed that scholar Rashid Khalidi was an employee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, at the time when the United States government designated the PLO as a 'terrorist organization', and that Barack Obama had alleged "financial ties" with Khalidi and that Khalidi hosted a fundraiser for Obama.
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