Word: shying
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Undeterred, some Shi'ite scholars trawled through ancient texts to find proof and came up with increasingly far-fetched theories linking the rise of Obama to important Shi'ite figures like the Imam Ali. Some pointed to a prophecy sometimes attributed to Ali that the arrival of the Mahdi - a messiah-like figure who, Shi'ites believe, will ultimately defeat evil - will be presaged by the appearance of a messenger, a tall black man who will rule the West. Others read meaning into Obama's name. In Persian, O-ba-ma means "He's with us," and Barack Hussein...
...Election Day, these theories had become so commonplace that a prominent Shi'ite scholar based in Dubai felt compelled to issue a statement rejecting them. It made little difference...
...poll a month ahead of the Nov. 4 election showed that 12% of Americans still thought Obama was a Muslim. There are no reliable statistics on how many in the Middle East believe that, but there's some anecdotal evidence that the notion is especially popular among poor, undereducated Shi'ites in Iran and Iraq...
Ridha Mohammed is an exception, however: he trained as an engineer at Baghdad University and owns a flourishing plumbing business. He lives just outside Sadr City, Baghdad's giant Shi'ite slum, where preachers at several mosques routinely assure their congregants that Obama is a fellow sectarian. "When Obama won," says Mohammed, "it was a big day in Sadr City. Many people felt, Now we have a brother in the White House." (Sadr City - estimated pop. 2 million - is a bastion of anti-Americanism, where the radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia, the Mahdi Army, hold...
...notion that Obama is a Shi'ite may be traced to Iran. In the run-up to the U.S. presidential election, state-run papers published articles claiming that the Democratic nominee's paternal ancestors had hailed from southwestern Iran. In reality, of course, Obama's father and his ancestors came from Kenya, where Shi'a Islam is rare. Most Kenyan Muslims are Sunnis and leaven their faith with pre-Islamic African traditions and beliefs. Obama himself has said he has no idea if his paternal grandfather (who converted from Christianity) was Sunni or Shi...