Kenyan Grandmother
Warns Against 'Untruths'
by Riccardo Gangale, APBarack Obama's Kenyan grandmother is upset by what she sees as dirty campaign tricks, including the distribution of a photo showing her grandson in a turban and robe. "Bringing such pictures that are trying to imply that not only is he a foreigner, he is a Muslim, is wrong, because that is not what he is," Sarah Hussein Obama, 86, said Wednesday.
A frown replaces the dimpled beam of Sarah Hussein Obama, grandmother of Barack Obama, when asked on Wednesday about recent attacks on her grandson that include the spreading of rumors that he is secretly a Muslim and the repeated use of his middle name -- Hussein -- by a radio host at a rally for presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.
"Untruths are told that don't have anything to do with what Barack is about," she said in the local Luo language, her gray hair smoothed neatly under a headwrap. "I am very against it."
Hillary Rodham Clinton won primaries Tuesday in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island, halting Obama's winning streak. Obama won in Vermont.
Each twist and turn of the race is closely scrutinized, said Barack Obama's half-sister, Auma Obama. The family gathered in his grandmother's house on Tuesday night to watch the results come in on a television donated by a family friend, she said - the grandmother's own simple house does not have one of its own.
"Barack's done extremely well and we're very proud of him," Auma Obama said when asked for a reaction to the losses on Tuesday. "This is like a football match. The game continues."
In recent weeks, two Clinton volunteers in Iowa resigned after forwarding false e-mails falsely saying he was a Muslim and a threat to national security. Matt Drudge, said his Web site, The Drudge Report, that he was e-mailed a picture of Obama in a turban and robe by the Clinton campaign.
"Bringing such pictures that are trying to imply that not only is he a foreigner, he is a Muslim, is wrong, because that is not what he is," scolded Sarah Obama.
The photo was taken when Barack Obama was presented with the outfit while on a visit to his late father's native Kenya. Clinton campaign officials have said they did not condone any such dirty tricks.
Obama's grandfather had converted to Islam from Roman Catholicism and taken the name Hussein, Sarah Obama said, but his children had inherited only the name, not the religion. Each person should be able to choose how they worshipped, she said.
"In the world of today, children have different religions from their parents," she said. She, too, is a Christian.
Barack Obama has visited his Kenyan relatives three times in Kogelo, and his grandmother has gone to the U.S. twice. She says they are close, although they have to speak through an interpreter.
Sarah Obama was the second wife of the candidate's late grandfather, so she is not his biological grandmother. But Auma Obama said: "By our definition, in our culture, she is his grandmother," she said.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
2008-03-05 15:07:33
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