Politics

FACT CHECK: Did Barack Obama Say, ‘If The Political Winds Should Shift, I Will Side With The Muslims’?

No featured image available

An image shared on Facebook claims former President Barack Obama wrote that “if the political winds should shift, I will side with the muslims” in his 2006 book “The Audacity of Hope.”

Verdict: False

The quote misrepresents what Obama said in the book. There is no evidence that Obama ever said or wrote the statement attributed to him in the Facebook post.

Fact Check:

The conspiracy theory that Obama secretly practices Islam dates back over a decade and has been debunked numerous times. The viral image appears to play on that conspiracy theory, claiming Obama wrote on page 261 of his 2006 book “The Audacity of Hope” that “if the political winds should shift, I will side with the muslims.”

But this is inaccurate. The quote does not appear on page 261 or any other page of the book. The Daily Caller News Foundation also found no evidence to suggest Obama ever said or wrote the statement elsewhere.

The purported quote, which has been circulating online for years, seems to be a misrepresentation of what Obama did say on page 261.

On that page, Obama discusses what he learned from meeting with Arab and Pakistani Americans in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He notes that they told him about “detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors that have shaken their sense of security and belonging.” They sought assurances “that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction,” according to Obama. The passage never mentions religion.

A reference to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II makes it clear that Obama is talking about the two groups in the context of discrimination.

“They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly,” reads the passage. “They need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II.”

This is not the first time a fake quote attributed to the former president has circulated. Check Your Fact recently debunked a claim that Obama said he would not “allow white people to kill Africans with their toxic vaccines.”