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The family line

From a clarification posted in December on the website of the U.S. State Department's “Identifying Misinformation Team” in response to the claim by Cairo's Al-Azhar Islamic Academy that President George W. Bush had a grandfather, also named George Bush, who wrote Life of Mohammed, an out-of-print book insulting to Muslims.

U.S. biblical scholar Reverend George Bush did write a book titled Life of Mohammed in 1830.

Reverend Bush was NOT the grandfather of the current president. Reverend Bush was the cousin of Obadiah Bush, who was the great-great-great-grandfather of the current president. This makes the Reverend Bush a distant relative of the current president, five generations removed, but NOT his direct ancestor.

The Al-Azhar Department of Research, Translation, and Writings claims that the book describes Arabs and Muslims as being “degenerate races, insects, rats, and snakes.”

The word “degenerate” is used twice, both times in a characterization of the state of the Christian Church at the time of Mohammed. There are two references to snakes, neither of them in a characterization of Arabs or Muslims. Word searches find no instances of the words “insects” or “rats,” although in one section Reverend Bush does compare Muslims to locusts.

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SEE ALSO: Biography—History and criticism; Cairo; Christianity; Egypt; Errors, inventions, etc.; Family; Bush, George; Bush, George W.; Islam; Islam and politics; Muhammad, Prophet; Relations; The life of Mohammed: founder of the religion of Islam, and of the empire of the Saracens (Book)

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