Obama’s old photo surfaces that was kept secret ‘to protect his presidency’

WASHINGTON: A 13-year-old photo of Barack Obama posing with the Nation of Islam’s leader that was kept secret in order to protect the former president’s career, a US-based journalist has claimed.

Askia Muhammad snapped the photo of Obama smiling alongside Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan during a Congressional Black Caucus meeting in 2005.

Muhammad, who revealed the photo on Thursday, told the Trice Edney News Wire that he ‘gave the picture up at the time and basically swore secrecy’ out of concern that it could have ‘made a difference’ and damaged Obama’s political future.

The former president was an Illinois Senator at the time the photo was taken.

The picture was also taken before conspiracy theories developed that Obama was not born in the United States and is a Muslim.

Here is the picture: Obama with ‘controversial’ black religious leader

 

Who is Nation of Islam’s leader Louis Farrakhan?

Louis Farrakhan is the Nation of Islam’s spiritual and political leader, and a community leader for African American Muslims.

He has been accused of appealing to black racism and anti-Semitism, and numerous inflammatory remarks are attributed to him – including expressions of admiration for Adolf Hitler.

Farrakhan has made Anti-Semitic remarks in the past.

In March 2016, Farrakhan praised then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as the only candidate who hadn’t taken money from the ‘Jewish community’.

Throughout Obama’s presidential campaign, conservatives pushed multiple conspiracy theories about Obama’s religion and supposed ties to Islam.

His followers defend him as a respectable role model to young black men – preaching the virtues of self-respect, the family and Islam.

But to his enemies, Mr Farrakhan is at best an irresponsible rabble-rouser and at worst a dangerous racist and anti-Semite.

The father-of-nine has been dubbed a “black racist” after using inflammatory language in speeches.

A BBC report attributes the following statements with Farrakhan.

In the past he has called white people “devils” and Jews “bloodsuckers”.

He once called Judaism a “gutter religion” and said Adolf Hitler was a “wickedly great man”.

 

Journalist Muhammad told the news site that the photo was kept a secret until after Obama secured the Democratic nomination to run for president and ‘all the way up until the inauguration’.

‘Then for eight years after he was president, it was kept under cover,’ Muhammad said. ‘It absolutely would have made a difference.’

Muhammad recalled on Thursday that a ‘staff member’ for the CBC contacted him ‘sort of in a panic’ after he took the photo.

‘I sort of understood what was going on,’ Muhammad told Talking Points Memo, which published the photo Thursday.

Muhammad said he ‘promised and made arrangements to give the picture to Leonard Farrakhan’, the minister’s son-in-law and chief of staff.

He said he gave away ‘the disk’ from his camera but ‘copied the photograph from that day onto a [computer] file.’

‘Realizing that I had given it up, I mean, it was sort of like a promise to keep the photograph secret,’ Muhammad said.

Muhammad told the site that he was afraid the photograph would be ‘damaging politically’ if it were released and feared the possibility of someone breaking into his apartment looking for it.

He said he ‘felt a little bit more at ease’ after Farrakhan claimed in 2016 that Obama visited his home in Chicago.

Muhammad contacted Farrakhan in autumn 2017 with the ‘final manuscript’ for a self-published book containing the photo.

At a 2008 presidential debate in Cleveland, Obama said he had ‘been very clear’ in his ‘denunciation’ of Farrakhan’s remarks in the past.