maff wrote:

Q&A on the News
http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/161818

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.25.2006

Question: What is the origin of the name of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama,
D-Ill.? Is it of Muslim or African origin? Were Obama's parents Muslim?


Answer: In an interview while promoting his book, "Dreams From My
Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," Obama, who was named after
his father, said he decided to use the name Barack - a Swahili
derivative of Arabic that means "blessed" as "baruch" does in Hebrew
- after his father died. He had previously been called Barry. Obama's
middle name is Hussein. He does not use it but makes no effort to
conceal it.

The Audacity of Hope
http://biggerthanthesky.wordpress.com/2006/10/30/the-audacity-of-hope/

Posted by Heather on October 30th, 2006

There is some evidence that I may, in fact, be in the reincarnated soul
of Barack Obama's mother, Ann Dunham (though she died after I was
already born, thus proving me terribly, terribly wrong - or, at the
least, proving that I was a soulless freak until the time of her death,
which I rather highly doubt). Yes, I know - that's quite a
presumption, isn't it? Not if you've read an excerpt from Obama's
latest book, The Audacity of Hope: Reclaiming the American Dream (the
next book on my reading list), like I have. In this moving snippet from
the excerpt, he says this about his mother (courtesy of TIME):

"For my mother, organized religion too often dressed up
closed-mindedness in the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the
cloak of righteousness.

"This isn't to say that she provided me with no religious
instruction. In her mind, a working knowledge of the world's great
religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education. In our
household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf
alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter or
Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me
to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto
shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand
that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my
part-no introspective exertion or self-flagellation. Religion was an
expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring,
just one of the many ways-and not necessarily the best way-that man
attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths
about our lives. In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of
the anthropologist that she would become; it was a phenomenon to be
treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable detachment as
well. Moreover, as a child I rarely came in contact with those who
might offer a substantially different view of faith. My father was
almost entirely absent from my childhood, having been divorced from my
mother when I was 2 years old; in any event, although my father had
been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed
atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition.

Ann Dunham
http://news.google.com/news?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=%22Ann%20Dunham%22&btnG=Search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=gn

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22Ann+Dunham%22&sa=N&tab=nw

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22Ann%20Dunham%22&sa=N&tab=wb

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Ann+Dunham%22&btnG=Search+Directory&hl=en&cat=gwd%2FTop

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22Ann+Dunham%22&start=0&scoring=d&num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&