Obama's Muslim Childhood
Contradictions
"I Have Never Been a Muslim"
"Barry Was Muslim"
"My Muslim Faith"
"My Whole Family Was Muslim"
"His Middle Name Is Hussein"
"He Was Interested in Islam"
Discovering the Truth
Questions about Obama's Truthfulness
by
Daniel Pipes
The Washington Times
September 10-14, 2012
The Washington Times
September 10-14, 2012
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Barack Obama
has come out swinging against his Republican rival, sponsoring television
advertisements that ask, "What is Mitt Romney hiding?" The allusion
is to such relatively minor matters as Romney's prior tax returns, the date he
stopped working for Bain Capital, and the non-public records from his service
heading the Salt Lake City Olympics and as governor of Massachusetts.
Obama defended his demands that Romney release more information about himself, declaring in Aug. 2012 that "The American people have assumed that if you want to be president of the United States that your life's an open book when it comes to things like your finances." Liberals like Paul Krugman of the New York Times enthusiastically endorse this focus on Mitt Romney's personal history.
Obama defended his demands that Romney release more information about himself, declaring in Aug. 2012 that "The American people have assumed that if you want to be president of the United States that your life's an open book when it comes to things like your finances." Liberals like Paul Krugman of the New York Times enthusiastically endorse this focus on Mitt Romney's personal history.
If Obama and his supporters wish to focus on
biography, of course, this is a game two can play. Already, the temperate,
mild-mannered Romney
criticized Obama's reelection campaign as "based on falsehood and dishonesty"
and a television ad
went further, asserting that Obama "doesn't tell the truth."
Not
always truthful: Obama claimed Kenyan birth in 1991 to sell his
autobiography.
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A focus on openness and honesty are likely
to hurt Obama far more than Romney. Obama remains the mystery candidate with an
autobiography full of gaps and even fabrications. For example, to sell his
autobiography in 1991, Obama falsely claimed that he "was born in
Kenya." He lied about never having been a member and candidate
of the 1990s Chicago socialist New Party; and
when Stanley Kurtz produced evidence to
establish that he was a member, Obama's flacks smeared and dismissed Kurtz.
Obama's 1995 autobiography, Dreams from
My Father, contains a torrent of inaccuracies
and falsehoods about such his maternal grandfather, his father, his
mother, his parents' wedding, his stepfather's father, his high school friend,
his girlfriend, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
As Victor Davis
Hanson puts it, "If a writer will fabricate the details about
his own mother's terminal illness and quest for insurance, then he will
probably fudge on anything."
Into this larger pattern of mendacity about
his past life arises the question of Obama's discussion of his faith, perhaps
the most singular and outrageous of his lies.
Contradictions
Asked about the religion of his childhood
and youth, Obama offers contradictory answers. He finessed a Mar. 2004
question, "Have you always been a Christian?" by replying: "I
was raised more by my mother and my mother was Christian." But in Dec. 2007
he belatedly decided to give a straight answer: "My mother was a Christian
from Kansas. … I was raised by my mother. So, I've always been a
Christian." In Feb. 2009,
however, he offered a completely different account:
I was not raised in a particularly
religious household. I had a father who was born a Muslim but became an
atheist, grandparents who were non-practicing Methodists and Baptists, and a
mother who was skeptical of organized religion. I didn't become a Christian
until … I moved to the South Side of Chicago after college.
He further elaborated this answer in Sept. 2010,
saying: "I came to my Christian faith later in life."
Which is it? Has Obama "always been a
Christian" or did he "become a Christian" after college?
Self-contradiction on so fundamental a matter of identity, when added to the
general questioning about the accuracy of his autobiography, raises questions
about veracity; would someone telling the truth say such varied and opposite
things about himself? Inconsistency is typical of fabrication: when making
things up, it's hard to stick with the same story. Obama appears to be hiding
something. Was he the areligious child of irreligious parents? Or was he always
a Christian? A Muslim? Or was he, in fact, something of his own creation – a
Christian/Muslim?
Obama provides some information on his
Islamic background in his two books, Dreams
and The Audacity of Hope (2006). In
2007, when Hillary Clinton was still the favored Democratic candidate for
president, a number of reporters dug up information about Obama's time in
Indonesia. Obama's statements as president have provided important insights
into his mentality. The major biographies of Obama, however, whether friendly
(such as those by David Maraniss, David Mendell, and David Remnick) or hostile
(such as those by Jack Cashill, Jerome R. Corsi, Dinish D'Souza, Aaron Klein,
Edward Klein, and Stanley Kurtz), devote little attention to this topic.
I shall establish his having been born and
raised a Muslim, provide confirming evidence from recent years, survey the
perceptions of him as a Muslim, and place this deception in the larger context
of Obama's autobiographical fictions.
"I Have Never Been a Muslim"
Obama readily acknowledges that his paternal
grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, converted to Islam. Indeed, Dreams (p. 407) contains a long quote
from his paternal grandmother explaining the grandfather's reasons for doing
so: Christianity's ways appeared to be "foolish sentiment" to him,
"something to comfort women," and so he converted to Islam, thinking
"its practices conformed more closely to his beliefs" (p. 104). Obama
readily told this to all comers: when asked by a barber (p. 149), "You a
Muslim?" for example, he replied, "Grandfather was."
Obama presents his parents and stepfather as
non-religious. He notes (in Audacity, pp. 2006, pp. 204-05), that
his "father had been raised a Muslim" but was a "confirmed
atheist" by the time he met Barack's mother, who in turn "professed
secularism." His stepfather, Lolo Soetoro,
"like most Indonesians, was raised a Muslim," though a non-practicing,
syncretic one who (Dreams, p. 37) "followed a brand
of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu
faiths."
As for himself, Obama acknowledges numerous
connections to Islam but denies being a Muslim. "The only connection I've
had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father's side came from that
country," he declared in Dec. 2007.
"But I've never practiced Islam. … For a while, I lived in Indonesia
because my mother was teaching there. And that's a Muslim country. And I went
to school. But I didn't practice." Likewise, he said in Feb. 2008:
"I have never been a Muslim. … other than my name and the fact that I lived
in a populous Muslim country for 4 years when I was a child I have very little
connection to the Islamic religion." Note his unequivocal statement here:
"I have never been a Muslim." Under the headline, "Barack Obama
Is Not and Has Never Been a Muslim," Obama's first presidential campaign
website carried an even more emphatic statement in Nov. 2007,
stating that "Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim,
was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."
"Barry Was Muslim"
But many pieces of evidence argue for Obama
having been born and raised a Muslim:
(1) Islam
is a patrilineal religion: In Islam, the father passes his faith to the
children; and when a Muslim male has children with a non-Muslim female, Islam
considers the children Muslim. Obama's grandfather and father having been
Muslims – the extent of their piety matters not at all – means that, in Muslim
eyes, Barack was born a Muslim.
(2) Arabic
forenames based on the H-S-N trilateral root: All such names (Husayn or
Hussein, Hasan, Hassân, Hassanein, Ahsan, and others) are exclusively bestowed
on Muslim babies. (The same goes for names based on the H-M-D root.) Obama's
middle name, Hussein, explicitly proclaims him a born Muslim.
Obama's
registration document at Santo Fransiskus Asisi, a Catholic school, in
Jakarta. (Click to
enlarge)
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(3) Registered
as Muslim at SD Katolik Santo Fransiskus Asisi: Obama was registered at a
Catholic school in Jakarta as "Barry Soetoro." A surviving document
correctly lists him as born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961; in addition, it lists
him having Indonesian nationality and Muslim religion.
(4) Registered
as Muslim at SD Besuki: Although Besuki (also known as SDN 1 Menteng) is a
public school, Obama curiously refers to it in Audacity (p. 154) as "the Muslim school" he attended in
Jakarta. Its records have not survived but several journalists (Haroon Siddiqui
of the Toronto Star, Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times, David Maraniss of
the Washington Post) have all confirmed
that there too, he was registered as a Muslim.
(5) Islamic
class at Besuki: Obama mentions (Audacity,
p. 154) that at Besuki, "the teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made
faces during Koranic studies." Only Muslim students attended the weekly
two-hour Koran class, Watson reports:
two of his teachers, former Vice Principal
Tine Hahiyari and third-grade teacher Effendi, said they remember clearly that
at this school too, he was registered as a Muslim, which determined what class
he attended during weekly religion lessons. "Muslim students were taught
by a Muslim teacher, and Christian students were taught by a Christian
teacher," said Effendi.
Andrew Higgins of the Washington Post quotes Rully Dasaad, a former classmate, saying
that Obama horsed around in class and, during readings of the Koran, got
"laughed at because of his funny pronunciation." Maraniss
learned that the class included not only studying "how to pray and how to
read the Koran," but also actually praying in the Friday communal service
right on the school grounds.
Obama
with his class at SD Besuki, a public school, in Jakarta.
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(6) Mosque
attendance: Maya
Soetoro-Ng, Obama's younger half-sister, said her father (namely,
Barack's stepfather) attended the mosque "for big communal events,"
Barker found that "Obama occasionally followed his stepfather to the
mosque for Friday prayers." Watson reports:
The childhood friends say Obama sometimes
went to Friday prayers at the local mosque. "We prayed but not really
seriously, just following actions done by older people in the mosque. But as
kids, we loved to meet our friends and went to the mosque together and
played," said Zulfin Adi, who describes himself as among Obama's closest
childhood friends. … Sometimes, when the muezzin sounded the call to prayer,
Lolo and Barry would walk to the makeshift mosque together, Adi said. "His
mother often went to the church, but Barry was Muslim. He went to the
mosque," Adi said.
(7) Muslim
clothing: Adi recalls about Obama, "I remember him wearing a
sarong." Likewise, Maraniss
found not only that "His classmates recalled that Barry wore a
sarong" but written exchanges indicating that he continued to wear this
garment in the United States. This fact has religious implications because, in
Indonesian culture, only Muslims wear
sarongs.
(8) Piety:
Obama says
that in Indonesia, he "didn't practice [Islam]," an assertion that
inadvertently acknowledges his Muslim identity by implying he was a
non-observant Muslim. But several of those who knew him contradict this
recollection. Rony Amir describes Obama as "previously quite religious in
Islam." A former teacher, Tine Hahiyary, quoted in the Kaltim Post, says the future president
took part in advanced Islamic religious lessons: "I remember that he had
studied mengaji." In the context
of Southeast Asian Islam, mengaji Quran means to recite the
Koran in Arabic, a difficult task denoting advanced
study.
In summary, the record points to Obama
having been born a Muslim to a non-practicing Muslim father and having lived
for four years in a fully Muslim milieu under the auspices of his Muslim
Indonesian stepfather. For these reasons, those who knew Obama in Indonesia
considered him a Muslim.
"My Muslim Faith"
In addition, several statements by Obama in
recent years point to his Muslim childhood.
(1) Robert Gibbs, campaign communications
director for Obama's first presidential race, asserted in Jan. 2007:
"Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a
committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago."
But he backtracked in March 2007,
asserting that "Obama has never been a practicing Muslim." By
focusing on the practice as a child, the campaign is raising a non-issue for
Muslims (like Jews) do not consider practice central to religious identity.
Gibbs added, according to a paraphrase by Watson, that "as a child, Obama had spent time in the neighborhood's
Islamic center." Clearly, "the neighborhood's Islamic center" is
a euphemism for "mosque"; spending time there again points to Obama's
being a Muslim.
(2) He may have made faces and horsed around
in Koran class but Obama learned how to pray the salat in religion class; his former teacher at Besuki, Effendi,
recalls that he would "join the other pupils for Muslim prayers."
Praying the salat in of itself made
Obama a Muslim. Furthermore, he still proudly retains knowledge from that
long-ago class: in March 2007, Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times, witnessed as Obama
"recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them
[to Kristof] with a first-rate accent." Obama recited not the salat itself but the adhan, the call to prayer (typically
chanted from minarets). The second and third lines of the adhan constitute the Islamic declaration of faith, the shahada, whose very utterance makes one
a Muslim. The full adhan in its Sunni
iteration (skipping the repetitions) goes as follows:
God is the greatest.
I testify that there is no deity but God.
I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.
Come to prayer.
Come to success.
God is the greatest.
There is no deity except God.
I testify that there is no deity but God.
I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.
Come to prayer.
Come to success.
God is the greatest.
There is no deity except God.
In the eyes of Muslims, reciting the adhan in class in 1970 made Obama a
Muslim then – and doing so again for a journalist in 2007 once again made Obama
a Muslim.
(3) In a conversation with George
Stephanopoulos in September 2008, Obama spoke of "my Muslim faith,"
only changing that to "my Christian faith" after Stephanopoulos
interrupted and corrected him. No one could blurt out "my Muslim
faith" unless some basis existed for such a mistake.
(4) When addressing Muslim audiences, Obama
uses specifically Muslim phrases that recall his Muslim identity. He addressed
audiences both in Cairo (in June 2009)
and Jakarta (in Nov. 2010)
with "as-salaamu alaykum," a greeting that he, who went to Koran
class, knows is reserved for one Muslim addressing another. In Cairo, he also
deployed several other pious terms that signal to Muslims he is one of them:
• "the Holy Koran" (a term mentioned five times): an exact
translation from the standard Arabic reference to the Islamic scripture, al-Qur'an al-Karim.
• "the right path": a translation of the Arabic as-sirat al-mustaqim, which Muslims ask
God to guide them along each time they pray.
• "I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the
region where it was first revealed": non-Muslims do not refer to Islam as revealed.
• "the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed … joined in
prayer": this Koranic tale of a night journey establishes the leadership
of Muhammad over all other holy figures, including Jesus.
•
"Moses, Jesus, and
Mohammed, peace be upon them": a translation of the Arabic 'alayhim as-salam, which pious Muslim
say after mentioning the names of dead prophets other than Muhammad. (A
different salutation, sall Allahu alayhi
wa-sallam, "May God honor him and grant him peace," properly
follows Muhammad's name, but this phrase is almost never said in English.)
Obama
speaking about Islam in Cairo in June 2009.
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Obama's saying "Peace be upon
them" has other implications beyond being a purely Islamic turn of phrase
never employed by Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians. First, it contradicts
what a self-professed Christian believes because it implies that Jesus, like
Moses and Muhammad, is dead; Christian theology holds him to have been
resurrected, living, and the immortal Son of God. Second, including Muhammad in
this blessing implies reverence for him, something as outlandish as a Jew
talking about Jesus Christ. Third, a
Christian would more naturally seek peace from
Jesus rather than wish peace on him.
(5) Obama's overblown and inaccurate
description of Islam in the United States smacks of an Islamist mentality. He
drastically overestimates both the number and the role of Muslims in the United
States, announcing in June 2009
that "if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we'd be one of
the largest Muslim countries in the world." (Hardly: according to one listing of Muslim
populations, the United States, with about 2.5 million
Muslims, ranks about 47th largest.)
Three days
later, he gave a bloated estimate of "nearly 7 million American
Muslims in our country today" and bizarrely announced that "Islam has
always been a part of America's story. … since our founding, American Muslims
have enriched the United States." Obama also announced the dubious fact,
in Apr. 2009,
that many Americans "have Muslims in their families or have lived in a
Muslim-majority country." When ordering religious communities in the
United States, Obama always gives first place to Christians but second place
varies between Jews and Muslims, most notably in his Jan. 2009
inaugural speech: "The United States is a nation of Christians and
Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers." Obama so wildly overestimates
the Muslim role in American life that they suggest an Islamic supremacist
mentality specific to someone coming from a Muslim background.
In the aggregate, these statements confirm
the evidence from Obama's childhood that he was born and raised a Muslim.
"My Whole Family Was Muslim"
Several individuals who know Obama well perceive
him as Muslim. Most remarkably, his half-sister, Maya
Soetoro-Ng, has stated: "My whole family was Muslim." Her
whole family, obviously, includes her half-brother Barack.
In June 2006,
Obama related how, after a long religious evolution, he "was finally able
to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and
affirm my Christian faith" with an altar call.
But when his pastor at Trinity United, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was asked (by Edward Klein, The Amateur, p. 40), "Did you
convert Obama from Islam to Christianity?" Whether out of ignorance or
discretion, Wright finessed the question, replying enigmatically: "That's
hard to tell." Note his not rejecting out of hand the idea that Obama had
been a Muslim.
Barack's 30-year-old half-brother who met
him twice, George
Hussein Onyango Obama, told an interviewer in March 2009 that
"He may be behaving differently due to the position he is in, but on the
inside Barack Obama is Muslim."
"His Middle Name Is Hussein"
Muslims cannot shake the sense that, under
his proclaimed Christian identity, Obama truly is one of them.
Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan, the prime minister of Turkey, has referred to Hussein as a "Muslim" name.
Muslim discussions of Obama sometimes mention his
middle name as a code, with no further comment needed. A conversation
in Beirut, quoted in the Christian
Science Monitor, captures the puzzlement. "He has to be good for Arabs
because he is a Muslim," observed a grocer. "He's not a Muslim, he's
a Christian," replied a customer. No, said the grocer, "He can't be a
Christian. His middle name is Hussein." The name is proof positive.
Despite
knowing better, Asma Gull Hasan "can't seem to accept that Obama is not
Muslim."
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The American Muslim writer Asma Gull
Hasan wrote in "My Muslim President Obama,"
I know President Obama is not Muslim, but
I am tempted nevertheless to think that he is, as are most Muslims I know. In a
very unscientific oral poll, ranging from family members to Muslim
acquaintances, many of us feel … that we have our first American Muslim
president in Barack Hussein Obama. … since Election Day, I have been part of
more and more conversations with Muslims in which it was either offhandedly
agreed that Obama is Muslim or enthusiastically blurted out. In commenting on
our new president, "I have to support my fellow Muslim brother,"
would slip out of my mouth before I had a chance to think twice. "Well, I
know he's not really Muslim," I would quickly add. But if the person I was
talking to was Muslim, they would say, "yes he is."
By way of explanation, Hasan mentions
Obama's middle name. She concludes: "Most of the Muslims I know (me
included) can't seem to accept that Obama is not Muslim."
If Muslims get these vibes, not
surprisingly, so does the American public. Five polls in 2008-09 by the Pew Research
Center for the People and the Press asking "Do you happen to
know what Barack Obama's religion is?" found a consistent 11-12 percent of
registered American voters averring that he's really a Muslim, with much larger
percentages among Republicans and Evangelicals. This number increased to 18
percent in an Aug. 2010
Pew survey. A March 2012
poll found about half the likely Republican voters in both Alabama and
Mississippi seeing Obama as a Muslim. Pew's June-July
2012 survey found that 17 percent saying Obama is a Muslim and 31
percent not knowing his religion, with just 49 percent identifying him as a
Christian. This points to an even split between those who say Obama is a
Christian and those who do not.
That those who see him as Muslim also
overwhelmingly disapprove of his job performance points to a correlation in
their minds between Muslim identity and a failed presidency. That such a
substantial portion of the public persists in this view points to a bedrock of
reluctance to take Obama at his word about being a Christian. This in turn
reflects the widespread sense that Obama has played fast and loose with his
biography.
"He Was Interested in Islam"
While attending school in Indonesia, Obama
famously attended Koranic class; less known, as he recalled in Mar. 2004,
was his "studying the Bible and catechisms" at the Asisi school. As
each of these classes were intended just for believers, attending both was
irregular. Several of his former teachers there confirm Obama's recollection.
Here are three of them on this topic:
• Obama's first-grade teacher at Asisi, Israella Dharmawan, recalled
to Watson of the Los Angeles Times: "At that time,
Barry was also praying in a Catholic way, but Barry was Muslim. … He was
registered as a Muslim because his father, Lolo Soetoro, was Muslim."
• Obama's former third-grade teacher at Besuki, Effendi, told Anne
Barrowclough of the Times (London),
that the school had pupils of many faiths and recalled how students attended
classes on their own faiths – except for Obama, who alone insisted on attending
both Christian and Islamic classes. He did so even against the wishes of his
Christian mother: "His mother did not like him learning Islam, although
his father was a Muslim. Sometimes she came to the school; she was angry with
the religious teacher and said 'Why did you teach him the Koran?' But he kept
going to the classes because he was interested in Islam."
•
An administrator at Besuki,
Akhmad Solikhin, expressed (to an Indonesian newspaper, the Kaltim Post, Jan. 27, 2007, translation
provided by "An American
Expat in Southeast Asia," quote edited for clarity) bafflement
at Obama's religion: "He indeed was registered as Muslim, but he claims to
be Christian."
This double religiosity, admittedly, is
being discussed at a time when Obama is an international personality and when
the nature of his religious affiliation had taken on political overtones;
still, that three figures from his Indonesian past independently made this same
point is striking and points to the complexity of Barack Obama's personal
development. They also raise the inconclusive but intriguing possibility that
Obama, even at the tender age of six through ten, sought to combine his
maternal and paternal religions into a personal syncretic whole, presenting
himself as both Christian and Muslim. In subtle ways, he still does just that.
Discovering the Truth
In conclusion, available evidence suggests
that Obama was born and raised a Muslim and retained a Muslim identity until
his late 20s. Child to a line of Muslim males, given a Muslim name, registered
as a Muslim in two Indonesian schools, he read Koran in religion class, still
recites the Islamic declaration of faith, and speaks to Muslim audiences like a
fellow believer. Between his non-practicing Muslim father, his Muslim
stepfather, and his four years of living in a Muslim milieu, he was both seen
by others and saw himself as a Muslim.
This is not to say that he was a practicing
Muslim or that he remains a Muslim today, much less an Islamist, nor that his
Muslim background significantly influences his political outlook (which, in
fact, is typical of an American leftist). Nor is there a problem about his
converting from Islam to Christianity. The issue is Obama's having specifically
and repeatedly lied about his Muslim identity. More than any other single
deception, Obama's treatment of his own religious background exposes his moral
failings.
Questions about Obama's Truthfulness
Yet, these failings remain largely unknown
to the American electorate. Consider the contrast of his case and that of James
Frey, the author of A Million Little
Pieces. Both Frey and Obama wrote inaccurate memoirs that Oprah Winfrey
endorsed and rose to #1 on the non-fiction bestseller list. When Frey's
literary deceptions about his own drug taking and criminality became apparent,
Winfrey tore viciously into him, a library reclassified his book as fiction,
and the publisher offered a refund to customers who felt deceived.
In contrast, Obama's falsehoods are blithely
excused; Arnold
Rampersad, professor of English at Stanford University who teaches
autobiography, admiringly called Dreams
"so full of clever tricks—inventions for literary effect—that I was taken
aback, even astonished. But make no mistake, these are simply the tricks that
art trades in, and out of these tricks is supposed to come our realization of
truth." Gerald Early,
professor of English literature and African-American studies at Washington
University in St. Louis, goes further: "It really doesn't matter if he
made up stuff. … I don't think it much matters whether Barack Obama has told
the absolute truth in Dreams From My Father.
What's important is how he wanted to construct his life."
How odd that a lowlife's story about his
sordid activities inspires high moral standards while the U.S. president's
autobiography gets a pass. Tricky Dick, move over for Bogus Barry.
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is president of the
Middle East Forum. © 2012 by Daniel
Pipes. All rights reserved.
Den yparxoune filoi alla symferonta Sava. Kalio arga para pote. An pesei to Israil meta einai i kostena. Episis an pesei i kostena to Israil teliose. Oi grammes anefodiasmou pernane apo tin Mesogeio Ellada Kypros. To elega se pollous apo to to 2000. Alla kalitera pou to pirane xampari. EMEIS pote tha to paroume xampari??
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