Lehman believes Obama is a Muslim

The liberal blog Bleeding Heartland has the scoop on Republican National Committee member Kim Lehman posting a message on her Twitter account suggesting President Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim.

Lehman, who previously served as head of Iowa Right to Life and now works for works for The John Paul II Stem Cell Research Institute, was responding to a Politico article about a recent survey which found a third of all Republicans believe that Obama is a Muslim. Last week, Lehman mocked Politico’s story and claimed Obama has publicly said he’s a Muslim.

In June, Lehman posted a link on her Twitter to an article claiming Obama admitted to being a secret Muslim to the foreign minister of Egypt. Numerous conservative bloggers and commentators have pushed the conspiracy theory, but to date there there has been no evidence to support the claim.

Obama’s father was a Muslim and his mother was a Christian. Bleeding Heartland points out that no one has made a similar accusations of not being a Christian against Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad even though his mother was Jewish.

Branstad’s own interfaith family background makes him an ideal person to speak publicly about religion as a matter of faith and an individual’s spiritual journey, as opposed to a genetic inheritance. But I’m not holding my breath for Branstad to dispel false rumors about Obama. He generally avoids taking any position that would anger conservatives–when he’s not kowtowing to far-right sentiment, that is.

Lehman drew criticism earlier this month following a federal judge’s ruling that a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage in California was unconstitutional. She said the only proper response to the ruling was to “do what the founders did in the Declaration of Independence, that after many attempts to reason with the King of England with no success, decided to withdraw from England and its force of laws without representation — which they defined as tyranny.”

Lehman is one of three Iowa members of the RNC.

UPDATE: In an interview with the Huffington Post, Lehman stood by her claim that Obama admitted he was a Muslim.

From Huffington Post:

“I was watching television when he was over there talking to the Muslim world and he made it, in my opinion, clear he was partially Muslim,” Lehman told the Huffington Post. “The way he was approaching that speech was, ‘Hey I’m one of you. I’m with you.’ He didn’t have to say that… but he did.”

Obama’s speech in Cairo did include discussion about his father’s Muslim faith. But the president also made it abundantly clear, both then and many times since, that he was a practicing Christian. Asked why she didn’t believe the empirical and overwhelming evidence, Lehman replied:

“Again, going back to his speech… he would have said I’m a Christian and I’m from the Christian religion and we can work together. It didn’t appear to me he said Christianity was part of his religion.”

The Huffington Post also published the relevant portion of Obama’s speech that Lehman keeps pointing to:

Now part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I’m a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith.