Barack Dressed in Muslim Clothes

As seen on Drudge Report

Barack Obama wearing nomadic clothes given to him during a 2006 visit to Kenya.

Yusuf Garaad Omar, head of the BBC's Somali Service, writes :

These are the normal clothes that nomadic people wear. The head turban is especially used by elderly people as a suggestion of respect. It is something that has no meaning whatsoever in Somalia culture. If you see someone dressed like that in Somalia, you think it is a nomadic person -- that is all. There is no religious significance to it whatsoever. It is mainly the nomadic people who use it. Some of them are religious, some are not.

News has traveled the world. As the Sydney Morning Herald wrote:

The website The Drudge Report, which broke the story, said the image came from the Clinton campaign.

"Everybody knows that whether it's me or Senator Clinton, or Bill Clinton, that when you travel to other countries they ask you to try on traditional garb that you have been given as a gift," Senator Obama later told a San Antonio, Texas, radio station.

"The notion that they would try to use this to imply in some way that I'm foreign, I think is, you know, unfortunate," he told another station in Dallas.

The Clinton campaign issued a response but did not deny staff had circulated the photo.

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