NEW YORK – An AP photo that recently surfaced showing Barack Obama registered for school as an Indonesian citizen of the Muslim religion provides tangible evidence for some of the claims made by author Jerome Corsi in his best-selling book, "The Obama Nation." "The Associated Press document provides additional evidence suggesting the Obama campaign's insistence that Obama was never trained in Islam and he never lived as a Muslim is not accurate," author and WND staff reporter Jerome R. Corsi said.
"Moreover, the document indicated that Obama may have been an Indonesian citizen when he lived there," Corsi continued. "This is an issue the Obama rebuttal fails to address at all, evidently conceding the accuracy of the claim."
Corsi discusses these school registration documents on pages 50-52 of "The Obama Nation."
The existence of the school registration was first revealed on the Internet by "An American Expat in Southeast Asia" on Jan. 24, 2007.
Since then, the issue has been widely discussed, but without the documentary proof the Associated Press photo has now provided.
Corsi told WND that until the AP photo surfaced, he did not have in his possession a copy of the original.
In the 40-page rebuttal to "The Obama Nation" issued last week by Obama's presidential campaign, the "reality" asserted by the campaign was the school registration only listed the religion of the father, implying the registration established nothing about the religion of Barack Obama, then known as Barry Soetoro.
"The Obama rebuttal misses the point in claiming my statements about the school registration are a lie," Corsi said. "It is clearly true that the 'An American Expat in Southeast Asia' blog did state the registration listed Obama as an Indonesian citizen and a Muslim. That is not a lie."
"Now that we have the AP photo, we see the blog was correct in describing the registration," Corsi continued.
The only issue at dispute is whether the registration establishes Obama to have been a Muslim, or only registered as one because that was the religion of his father.
"The most convincing evidence Obama was living in Indonesia as a Muslim, not simply registered as Muslim because his father was Muslim, comes from Obama's experience at the government-run public school at SDN 1 Menteng, Jakarta, not from his time at the Catholic Assisi School in Jakarta," Corsi argued.
On pages 59-60 of "The Obama Nation", Corsi cites a Kaltim Post interview with Tine Hahiyary, one of Obama's teachers at the public school.
Tine Hahiyary affirmed that Barry Soetoro had been registered as a Muslim and took part actively in the Islamic religious lessons during his time at the school.
"I remembered that Barry studied 'mengaji,'" she told reporters.
"Mengaji" involves recitation of the Quran.
"To put it quite simply, 'mengaji classes' are not something that a non-practicing or so-called moderate Muslim family would ever send their child to," wrote the 'An American Expat in Southeast Asia' blog.
"The Obama campaign desperately wants to deny Obama was raised as a Muslim child in the four years he lived in Indonesia from age 6 to 10," Corsi said. "These are formative years in a child's religious education."
"What the record clearly shows is not only that Obama received Islamic instruction, at least in the public school he attended," Corsi concluded, "but he received the type of Islamic instruction reserved for Muslim children in a government school system that mandated Islamic instruction at that time for all children attending public school in Indonesia."