Joel Achenbach, writing in the Washington Post, employs Saul Alinsky's Rule 5, to tamp down the discussion about Obama and Islam.  He rails:

"Are Americans total numbskulls?"

"God help us.  Could so many Americans really be that dumb, ill-informed, paranoid, gullible and goofy?  It must be tricky being Barack Obama, winding down the U.S. presence in volatile Iraq, trying to keep Afghanistan from degenerating, pondering war with Iran, even as, according to the latest bulletin, one in five Americans thinks he is a Muslim."

"Why not just believe he's an alien from outer space?  Or a Manchurian Candidate, programmed by, say, the Chinese to bring America to ruin?"

Alinsky's rule 5 is, "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."

There is no defense.  It's irrational.  It's infuriating.  It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

But, in actuality, it is Achenbach who is really dumb, ill-informed, paranoid, gullible and goofy.

Here is The New York Times telling us that Obama is a Muslim.  Actually, The Times describes Obama as an Islamic apostate.

At birth, Barack Hussein Obama II, was, according to Islamic law, a Muslim.  The New York Times explains that Islam is patrilinear.  As the son of a Muslim father, Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood.  It makes no difference that, as Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion [Senior was buried in the Islamic rite].  Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

The Associated Press reports that "documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim" while at the Franciscus Assisi school during first through third grades, and three of his teachers the Besuki school have said he was enrolled as a Muslim.

In an April, 2007, interview with the New York Times, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s younger half sister, told the Times, "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim."  I assume Maya thinks of her brother, Barack (aka Barry), as a member of her family? (Alternate link)

In an interview with Nicholas Kristof, published in The New York Times, Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer, the Adhan, "with a first-class [Arabic] accent."  According to Islamic scholars, reciting the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, makes one a Muslim.

Obama has referred to his faith as, "my Muslim faith" publicly.

Nobody, except Obama knows if his alleged conversion to Christianity is real or not.  Although some reports, and even Obama have referred to a "baptism," there is no record of a baptism -- and the Trinity UC Church, under its pastor, the ex-Muslim Jeremiah Wright, didn't profess Christianity as its theology -- its theology was/is Black Liberation Theology -- a Marxist corruption of Christianity.

Cathleen Falsani, religion columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, writes, "He (Obama) described his conversion experience in his mid-20s, how he walked the aisle at Trinity United Church of Christ one Sunday in a public affirmation of his private change of heart."

Falsani wonders, "What kind of faith is it that is growing in Barack Obama?  Is it the historic Christian faith?  Not according to the good senator, who describes his faith as: (1) Suspicious of dogma (2) Without any monopoly on the truth (3) Nontransferable to others (4) Infused with a big healthy dose of doubt, and (5) Indulgent of and compatible with all other religions."

Unlike traditional Christianity, which Obama bemoans for its "call to evangelize and proselytize," the good senator’s faith is strictly a personal and private affair.  Although he has no qualms about parading it in public in hopes of bolstering his political career, he would never dream of preaching it to others in hopes of converting them to Christ -- he's far too busy telling Americans how valuable Islam has been to the growth and development of the United States.

There's no record of a baptism, anywhere, and strolling down the aisle of a black-nationalist church and pledging allegiance to the Black Value System does not a Christian make.  At the core of Obama's faith -- whether lapsed Muslim, new Christian or some mixture of the two -- is African nativism.  In the paperback version of "The Audacity of Hope," in the chapter entitled "Faith," beginning on page 195, and ending on page 208, Obama is telling us that he doesn’t really have any profound religious belief, but that in his early Chicago days he felt he needed to acquire some spiritual "street cred."

There is plenty of hard evidence to suggest Obama is a Muslim.  Whether he is, only he knows, but it is the Gullibles, like Achenbach, who are really that dumb, ill-informed, paranoid, gullible and goofy.

They'll believe anything Obama says.