Claim: Barack Obama's status as a Muslim prevented his wife from traveling with him to Islamic countries in April 2009.
Example:[Collected via e-mail, May 2009]
This is a conversation between a friend of mine and two Arabs in Gainesville on May 2. We have always heard that once a Muslim always a Muslim, and it must still be true.
I was at Blockbusters on Saturday renting videos, and I was going along the wall and there was a video called "Obama". I told the men next to me that I wouldn't waste my time. We talked about Obama. These guys were Arabs and I asked them why they thought Michele Obama headed home following her visit in France instead of traveling on to Saudi Arabia and Turkey with her husband. They said she couldn't go to Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Iraq.
I said, "Laura Bush went to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Dubai."
They said that Obama is a Muslim and by Muslim law he would not be allowed to bring his wife into the countries that accept Sharia Law. Just thought it was interesting that the Arabs at Blockbusters accept the idea that we're being led by a Muslim who follows the Islamic creed. They also said that's the reason he bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia. It was a signal to the Muslim world. Just thought you would like to know.
Origins: There are several ways the above-quoted anonymous account of an encounter with anonymous Arabs at an unidentified Blockbuster video store could be debunked, starting with the fact that its premise is false: Barack Obama is not a Muslim. Even if that fact is set aside, however, the central claim of this account
is still demonstrably false.
The gist of this message is that during Barack Obama's first major foreign trip as President of the United States in April 2009, his wife Michelle did not accompany him for the full duration of his visit abroad because the itinerary included Islamic countries governed by sharia law into which he, as a Muslim, was prohibited from bringing the First Lady. That claim is manifestly false because President Obama did not visit any sharia-governed countries during his trip.
First off, the account states that President Obama visited Saudi Arabia, but that piece of information is not true. Although the president did meet with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia during his trip, that meeting took place at the G20 economic summit in London, not in Saudi Arabia.
Second, the countries to which President Obama traveled during his foreign visit were France, the UK, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Turkey. Of those five nations, the only one with a predominantly Islamic population is Turkey, and that country is governed by secular law, not Islamic sharia law. In fact, news accounts from the month following President Obama's return from abroad noted that tens of thousands of Turkish citizens had rallied in the capital city of Ankara "to support the country's secular system."
Last updated: 10 July 2009
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/sharia.asp
