Obama's grandmother in Mecca

aiia
Superfan
aiia's picture
Posts: 1923
Joined: 2006-09-12
User is offlineOffline
Obama's grandmother in Mecca

 http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Religion/?id=3.0.4036802442

 

Quote:
Saudi Arabia: Obama's grandmother in Mecca for 'Hajj' ceremony




 

Mecca, 25 Nov. (AKI) - The grandmother of US president Barack Obama has arrived in Saudi Arabia for the 'Hajj' or Islamic pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, a Saudi daily said on Wednesday. Sarah Obama, 87, is being accompanied by a nephew and Obama's cousin, Omran.

On Wednesday Sarah Obama was in the valley of Mina with an African delegation, according to the Saudi daily Okaz.

Obama, the mother of the American president's father, lives in a village in Kenya and is one of the many guests of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud.

About two million Muslims converge on Mecca each year for the Hajj pilgrimage but Saudi officials were expecting fewer pilgrims this year due to the threat of the H1N1 virus known as swine flu.

Crowds of pilgrims have been converging on the holy city of Mecca in recent days, and started the Hajj rites on Wednesday.

At the weekend, Saudi health authorities said that four people attending the Hajj had died from the H1N1 virus but sought to play down the risk.

The Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam. It is an obligation for all able-bodied Muslims to attend at least once during their lives, provided they can afford it.

 

 

People who think there is something they refer to as god don't ask enough questions.


Answers in Gene...
High Level Donor
Answers in Gene Simmons's picture
Posts: 4214
Joined: 2008-11-11
User is offlineOffline
Pardon me but why exactly is

Pardon me but why exactly is this news?

 

Seriously, we know who gramma Obama is and she happens to be Muslim. When I saw this stuff during the election, I would have a huge “so fucking what” moment. Now that the election is done, this is just a bigger SFW moment.

NoMoreCrazyPeople wrote:
Never ever did I say enything about free, I said "free."

=


aiia
Superfan
aiia's picture
Posts: 1923
Joined: 2006-09-12
User is offlineOffline
Answers in Gene Simmons

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

Pardon me but why exactly is this news?

 

 

Its news. Interesting to me and perhaps to others also

People who think there is something they refer to as god don't ask enough questions.


Vastet
atheistBloggerSuperfan
Vastet's picture
Posts: 13234
Joined: 2006-12-25
User is offlineOffline
I don't see the point

I don't see the point either.

VFNN wrote:
Breaking news: Vastet is currently in Brockville, Ontario, and is likely to remain there the rest of the year.

Why is it interesting?

Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.


aiia
Superfan
aiia's picture
Posts: 1923
Joined: 2006-09-12
User is offlineOffline
Conclusion: it is not

Conclusion: it is not interesting to you


Answers in Gene...
High Level Donor
Answers in Gene Simmons's picture
Posts: 4214
Joined: 2008-11-11
User is offlineOffline
So can you explain why it is

So can you explain why it is interesting?

 

Seriously, does this have something to do with the idea that the president may have been born in Kenya? Seriously, at this point that is pretty much beating a dead horse.

 

The fact is that we put that bit in the constitution because we did not want some deposed Hungarian prince coming over here, getting elected and then declaring the Republic void and announcing his monarchy. That kind of nonsense was, well not exactly common in Europe at the time but certainly it happened from time to time.

 

I think that we are safely past that point today.

 

In other news, Mitt Romney's father (George) ran for president in 1964. He obviously did not win but that is relevant because few people, if any, made a big deal because he was born in Mexico. Of note here is that gramps Romney never lived in the United States. He did live in the Utah territory for the first few years of his life but great gramps moved the family to Mexico when he was a small boy. So George Romney had less of a claim than Obama could possibly be reduced to.

 

BTW, great gramps Romney had to move the family back when Utah was ready to become a state as part of a general Mormon migration. Lots of Mormons moved to Mexico at the time for similar reasons. Basically, having >1 wife.

 

I am probably being a moral relativist on this one but I cannot see a way to reconcile the whole argument on the legitimacy of gay marriage and forcing established families to break up due to moral disapproval of the existing family structure.

NoMoreCrazyPeople wrote:
Never ever did I say enything about free, I said "free."

=


geirj
geirj's picture
Posts: 719
Joined: 2007-06-19
User is offlineOffline
aiia wrote:Conclusion: it is

aiia wrote:

Conclusion: it is not interesting to you

Observation: You have not answered the question regarding why it is interesting to you, which has been posed more than once.

Nobody I know was brainwashed into being an atheist.

Why Believe?


Atheistextremist
atheist
Atheistextremist's picture
Posts: 5134
Joined: 2009-09-17
User is offlineOffline
My mother has been to the Haj

 

She was a christian missionary in Lebanon and Syria for ten years after WW2 and speaks arabic. Interestingly she was in Lebanon for the suez crisis, was captured by hill bandits who thought her knitting patterns were british war plans (the local ladies came up from the village and rescued the 8 lady missionaries by beating the gun-toting bandits with sticks - a great image) and she was in a village in Lebanon that was divided by the Israeli army when that country was formed. As she explains it this was a profoundly bad time for the Lebanese and in a point of further interest, most of 'her' villagers were christian, not muslim. There were families that were divided and everything - went to work and couldn't go home - the works.

Pleasingly, Mum's whole time in the haj was spent praying to jesus to enlighten the infidel muslims and teach them that throwing rocks at an obsidian block was akin to idolatry.

I knew having a missionary for a mother was going to come in handy some day and there you have it. Proof that my mum is actually way cooler than President Obama's grandmum.

 

 

 

 

 

"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck


Stosis
Posts: 327
Joined: 2008-10-21
User is offlineOffline
I thought it was

I thought it was interesting, only because I didn't know she was a muslim. Why are you all so angry?


Atheistextremist
atheist
Atheistextremist's picture
Posts: 5134
Joined: 2009-09-17
User is offlineOffline
are people implying that aiia is suggesting

 

with this post that Obama is too close to islam? I'd be interested if he was shown to have a belief in islam, myself.

However, I've convinced myself he's an atheist or an agnostic. Remember, he did re-do his vows in the oval office without the bible on inaug day and there was no sign of the koran.

I know it's probably a point of contention judging by the tones here but something that is very impressive about the USA is that its president post 9/11 was a black dude who went to an

islamic school in Indonesia - a hotbed of muslim fundamentalism. The U.S. had every reason to nominate some wild zealot but went in a quite different and commendable direction.

So there you have it. President Obama's Islamic grandmother - conclusive proof that morality is evolving.

 

 

 

 

"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck


Vastet
atheistBloggerSuperfan
Vastet's picture
Posts: 13234
Joined: 2006-12-25
User is offlineOffline
I'm neither angry or trying

I'm neither angry or trying to imply anything. I'm simply curious as to why the location of someone, who happens to be related to someone else who currently holds a position of power, is interesting.
But if you want an implication, this smells of paparazzi style "news".

Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.


geirj
geirj's picture
Posts: 719
Joined: 2007-06-19
User is offlineOffline
Stosis wrote:I thought it

Stosis wrote:

I thought it was interesting, only because I didn't know she was a muslim. Why are you all so angry?

I wouldn't call it anger. Simply irritation that a fairly simple and direct question that was asked several times of the OP was not answered.

Nobody I know was brainwashed into being an atheist.

Why Believe?


Answers in Gene...
High Level Donor
Answers in Gene Simmons's picture
Posts: 4214
Joined: 2008-11-11
User is offlineOffline
In other news:   Hugo

In other news:

 

Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met yesterday to discuss various things. So what did they talk about? Well Venezuela had a nuclear weapons program a while back that was a bigger mess than that of Iran. They had it for about 20 years before they agreed to the NNPT.

 

Nobody knows what they have, it cannot be inspected and Iran is doing a deal with them right when they are going out of the way to cock block anyone from preventing them from actually getting nukes.

 

Is that slightly better than the idea of an old woman trying to do her religious duty?

NoMoreCrazyPeople wrote:
Never ever did I say enything about free, I said "free."

=


ProzacDeathWish
atheist
ProzacDeathWish's picture
Posts: 4147
Joined: 2007-12-02
User is offlineOffline
Answers in Gene Simmons

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

Pardon me but why exactly is this news?

 

 

 

   Perhaps you should go directly to the source and ask the news outlets why they chose to publicize it to begin with.  I'm sure they must feel that there is a market for this information  ..why else would they bother ?   After all the news media is a business and whether you fit their target audience or not is beyond their control.  It's a matter of preference not logic.

 

  For example the people who read Mother Jones may pick up an issue of Guns and Ammo and ask themselves why people waste their time reading about guns and gun legislation.  Such concerns are meaningless piffle to one side while being vitally important to another.  To each his own.

  Besides, who says every news items must only deal with matters of profound importance ?  How much ink and air time is wasted on that bimbo Paris Hilton ?  ...or Michael Jackson overdosing on drugs..or any other superficial crap that the mainstream media routinely covers ?    Is it newsworthy ?   Depends on who you ask.

  And historically, why was it newsworthy that George Washington wore false teeth, that General Grant was an alcoholic, that Ben Franklin was a philanderer, Einstein was a vegetarian, Captain Kirk was gay ?, etc... 

 


ClockCat
ClockCat's picture
Posts: 2265
Joined: 2009-03-26
User is offlineOffline
:I

 What are other people's relatives doing? Please, don't limit it to one person. What is George W. Bush's second cousin's nephew up to?



This is not news. It doesn't even fit into Fark's not news it's so not news.

 


I can't imagine how anyone would, or could care what someone's unimportant relatives are doing on a daily basis. Like it in any way reflects on them.

Theism is why we can't have nice things.


ProzacDeathWish
atheist
ProzacDeathWish's picture
Posts: 4147
Joined: 2007-12-02
User is offlineOffline
ClockCat wrote: I can't

ClockCat wrote:

 


I can't imagine how anyone would, or could care what someone's unimportant relatives are doing on a daily basis.

  I can't imagine why millions of people watched Jerry Springer.


Gauche
atheist
Gauche's picture
Posts: 1565
Joined: 2007-01-18
User is offlineOffline
Maybe journals had some

Maybe journals had some space left over after they didn't report that the nobel laureate is sending another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan to guard opium fields. But hey at least they'll have some heroine to shoot up when they get back home and find out they won't be receiving any medical care for their irreversible injuries.

There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft


ClockCat
ClockCat's picture
Posts: 2265
Joined: 2009-03-26
User is offlineOffline
:3

ProzacDeathWish wrote:

ClockCat wrote:

 


I can't imagine how anyone would, or could care what someone's unimportant relatives are doing on a daily basis.

  I can't imagine why millions of people watched Jerry Springer.

 

Rednecks are cheap entertainment.

Theism is why we can't have nice things.


ProzacDeathWish
atheist
ProzacDeathWish's picture
Posts: 4147
Joined: 2007-12-02
User is offlineOffline
ClockCat

ClockCat wrote:

ProzacDeathWish wrote:


  I can't imagine why millions of people watched Jerry Springer.

 

Rednecks are cheap entertainment.

   Buh-zing !  


Gauche
atheist
Gauche's picture
Posts: 1565
Joined: 2007-01-18
User is offlineOffline
Maybe they though a story

Maybe they thought a story about his grandmother would be less embarrassing than one about how he's had almost 600 meetings with people who representing the policy interests health insurance companies.

There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft