Email: Is Barack Funded by Ties to the Middle East?

One of the more recent email hoaxes to make the rounds regarding Barack Obama calls into question any number of items regarding his background, most notably things like "how did he pay for college and grad school?", "How did he buy his house?", and others.

Other sites have already done a decent job of debunking this email, including this article from Snopes.com, and our article on Tony Rezko (which cites further verifiable sources). We won't bother to rehash that information here; you can check it yourself.

However, more recent versions of the email have had some additional points added to them that are worth addressing separately.

First, the email mentions an out-of-context quote of Obama saying, "my Muslim faith". This quote was part of an interview with George Stephanopoulos. During the interview, Obama was talking about conservative smears against him insinuating that he is a Muslim, and how (remarkably) the McCain campaign has not brought up the issue. When heard or read in context, the intended meaning of the quote becomes clear.

(Apart from which, all rumors about Obama secretly being a Muslim have been widely researched and debunked. Obama is a long-time Christian, was never a Muslim, and did not attend a Islamic religious school when growing up. Here is one source; there are many others you can find via Google.)

The last point of note is in reference to his close advisor, Valerie Jarrett. It says that she was born in Iran – seemingly intending to lead the reader to the conclusion that all Iranians are Muslims and/or terrorists and cannot to be trusted. Leaving aside the racist undertones, the statement is extraordinarily misleading because of what it doesn't tell you. Ms. Jarrett WAS in fact born in Iran... to American parents! Her father was a medical doctor, and worked for several years back in the 1950's at a hospital for the poor in Iran, long before that country was part of the "axis of evil".

Here is an excellent article on Valerie Jarrett. It is long, but pages 4-5 provide the relevant information regarding the above claim.