"The truth is clear," said Indra Madewa, the president's childhood neighbor, who played daily with the boy he knew as "Barry," a chubby American from Hawaii. "We know he's busy, but we just want to refresh his memory." What Madewa and other old friends want to remind Obama about won't bring any joy to those in the United States who contend that the president is a closet Muslim. The truth, they say, is this: While Obama went to Besuki, a mostly Muslim school, for less than a year, he spent most of his four years in Indonesia studying at Santo Fransiskus Asisi, a Roman Catholic school run at the time by a stern Dutch priest. Classes began and ended each day with Christian prayers.
The Wright kind of prayers?
Fed up with being airbrushed out of the picture, the Catholic school finally decided to push back. "I said, 'This is not fair: We have to do something,' " recalled Boy Garibaldi Thohir, an Asisi graduate who, in addition to running an energy company, is spearheading a drive to reclaim Obama for St. Francis.
You can have him.
"Facts are facts," he said. "We want to explain to the world a fact of life: Obama went to Asisi for nearly three years." The school recently put up a big board outside his first-grade classroom; it features inspirational quotes from Obama and Saint Francis.
I wonder if I could guess which was which?