The American Thinker - “one of my most favorite and thoughtful blogs,” according to Rush Limbaugh - reports that President Obama flashed a “Muslim gang sign” at an event last year by pointing his index finger upwards.
F.W. Burleigh, “author of It's All About Muhammad, a Biography of the World's Most Notorious Prophet,” wrote for the conservative website that an “astonishing photo” of Obama during a summit with African leaders shows him “flashing the one-finger affirmation of Islamic faith to dozens of African delegates.” According to Burleigh, “the one-finger display is the distinctive Muslim gang sign” and “With his forefinger in the air, Obama affirmed his membership in this tribe.” He also postulates that Muslim African leaders present at the event were “all smiles” because “They knew what Obama's upright forefinger meant.” The post also includes an image in which an “ISIS fighter displays the gang sign.”
Conservatives have spent much of Obama's presidency laying out ludicrous theories for how Obama is secretly Muslim.
There are two main flaws with Burleigh's argument. First, video of the event captured from two angles indicates that Obama was actually wagging his finger, not pointing it. (Burleigh criticized the editors of the paper that published the photo for captioning it “finger wagging,” claiming that they "did not understand what they were looking at.)
Second -- and it's difficult to believe we need to point this out -- many, many other world leaders have previously been photographed pointing their index fingers upward, suggesting either that Burleigh's argument is nonsense, or that several other recent U.S. and foreign leaders were secret Muslims.