Rumors and half truths about Obama
From dKosopedia
Categories: Barack Obama | Urban legends
Rumors and half truths about Obama abound due in no small part to his having both a father who was (at one time) a Muslim, a step father who was a nominal Muslim (at most) and the fact that according to Islamic law, "a son of a Muslim is born a Muslim" {fact}.
Some very nasty things have been put up on the WWW by people making a big deal of his two given names. The truth is that "Barack," "Baruch," "Berek," "Barak," "Baraka," etc. are all Semetic language words. They all mean "Blessing." The people who attack the name "Barack" will perhaps end up exhuming Bernard Baruch and questioning his political credentials on the same nutty basis.
To try to head off some of the nuttiness on this issues I have corrected the record: here
"Barack" is a word that is shared among several languages. First, it is a word in the Semitic family of languages. As such it has a root in Hebrew (but written baruch), a version in Aramaic (berek), a version in Arabic (baraka). (See Strong's Hebrew Bible Dictionary, entries 1288-1294.) It also occurs as a loan word in non-Semitic languages that have been influenced by these Semitic languages. As often happens, cognate words are similar in pronunciation. What appears in a later-appearing language may sound like something else in the earlier language. And in English we sometimes see words that are pronounced the same and even spelled the same, but that have very different meanings.
Barack or Barak means 'lightning' in Hebrew. The name Barak is also mentioned in the Bible in the book of Judges. Barak was part of the story of the prophetess Deborah.
Baruch (or Baruwk, Baruk, Strong, 1263) and its cognates berek and baraka all mean the same. Strong, 1288, says "barak, baw-rak', a primitive root; to kneel; by implication to bless God (as an act of adoration), and (vice-versa) man (as a benefit)." (See http://www.virtualchristiancenter.com/biblestudytools/kjvstrongs/STRHEB12.htm)
Regardless of how one spells the name, it gives two possible and not contradictory meanings. One is "a blessing from God," and another is "a blessing from God that the individual may pass on to others as a benefit to them." (The second meaning is very clear in the Sufi tradition in which the searcher for Allah, or as Jesus would have called Him Alaha, receives from his or her teacher a transmission of some key to seeing what Meister Eckhard called the "divine spark" within each of us. )
If you pray to Allah you may choose to call your child Barak. If you pray to Alaha you may choose to call your child Berek. If you think you are praying to different gods or bestowing names with different meanings you may benefit from further study.
Furthermore Obama's full name is Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. in other words his father gave him his own name thus Obama's naming was not based on religion but on a custom that is practiced widely in America.
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