WASHINGTON (Reuters)
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has launched a website to dispel rumors that he is Muslim, along with other doubts about his patriotism and his wife's views on race.
The website, www.fightthesmears.com, offers detailed responses to several rumors that have continued to circulate online and in conservative news outlets over the past year, and encourages supporters to e-mail the responses to others.
The site tackles false rumors that Obama, who will take on Republican John McCain in the November election, is Muslim.
"Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian," the site says.
A photograph shows Obama with his hand on a Bible as he is sworn into the U.S. Senate, to counter a rumor that he used a Quran when he was sworn in.
A CNN profile of the Indonesian school he attended as a child is used to dispel a rumor that it teaches radical Islamic tenets.
The website also says the Illinois senator's wife, Michelle, who like her husband is black, has never used the racially divisive term "whitey," as some blogs and conservative commentators have said.
Michelle has never spoken publicly at either of the two venues where she is alleged to have made the remark, the site says.
The site also puts in context passages from Obama's books that have been excerpted as supposed evidence of his racial resentments, and contains a video of him leading the Pledge of Allegiance -- an oath of loyalty to the US -- to dispel a rumor that he refuses to do so. |
