To everyone who whines because Obama talks about Christianity, read this: [View All]

When Fox News aired a report in January claiming that Sen. Barack Obama had been educated at a radical Muslim madrassa, his campaign beat the story back — hard — with the candidate himself going on television to call it “ludicrous” and a “smear.”

And his aggressive defense worked, or so it seemed at the time: The notion that Obama has secret Muslim roots faded from the mainstream media, and even from most conservative blogs and magazines.

But rather than vanish, the whispered smear campaign appears to have gone underground, and in its purest form: Obama himself, according to a pair of widely circulated anonymous e-mails, is a Muslim.

“Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background,” warns an e-mail titled “Who Is Barack Obama,” that was circulating in South Carolina political circles this summer and sent to Politico by a South Carolina Democrat.