"He understands that there are scurrilous attack e-mails going on underground that distort his religious affiliation and worse, but his judgment is that he trusts the American people more than that," David Axelrod, a top Obama strategist, told the Washington Post on Thursday, November 29.

"He genuinely believes…that people want to have a president that the world looks at and says, 'I believe this guy has an understanding of us and how we fit together on the pl.' "

Since launching his quest for the Democratic White House ticket, Obama has been facing a smear campaign going as far as describing him as a Muslim in disguise.

Obama, a son of an atheist Kenyan father and a white American mother did not practice religion, was born and spent much of his childhood in Hawaii.

He lived from ages 6 to 10 in Indonesia with his mother and Muslim stepfather.

Obama regularly mentions his time living and attending school in Indonesia and the fact that his Kenyan grandfather was a Muslim.

But opponents are playing the connection and suggestion there is more than meets the eye.

The Insight, a conservative online magazine, earlier claimed Obama spent at least four years in a Muslim seminary in Indonesia, which he denied.

The rumor later snowballed with Inte reports and media outlets suggesting he was a Muslim just like his Indonesian stepfather.

Human Events, another conservative magazine, has published a package of articles called "Barack Obama Exposed."

One of them was titled "The First Muslim President?"

Obama, a member of a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, repeatedly set the record straight.

"If I were a Muslim, I would let you know," the charismatic 45-year-old senator said recently.

• Benefit?  

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), America's main Muslim rights advocacy group, believes the continuous playing on Obama's Muslim ties is an attempt to blemish his image.

"The underlying point is that if you can somehow pin Islam on him, that would be a fatal blow," said Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR communications director.

"It's offensive. It speaks to the rising level of anti-Muslim feeling in our society."

Recent polls have shown rising hostility toward Muslims in politics.

In an August poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 45 percent of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a Muslim candidate compared with 25 percent about a Mormon candidate.

"It is not clear whether that negative sentiment will affect someone who has lived in a Muslim country but does not practice Islam," said the Post.

The latest poll among US voters showed Obama and his Democratic rival Senator Hillary Clinton tied with a 29 percent approval rate each.

Obama usually invokes his multicultural heritage as an advantage over his rivals.

"The day I'm inaugurated, I think this country looks at itself differently, but the world also looks at America differently.

"Because I've got a grandmother who lives in a little village in Africa without running water or electricity; because I grew up for part of my formative years in Southeast Asia in the largest Muslim country on Earth."

Last June, a poll by the Washington-based Pew Research Center found that the US image has plummeted deeply across the world, even among allies, with foreign policy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan topping a long list of factors.

"It's good for America to have a president who has diversity at many levels in his background," believes CAIR's Hooper.

"That would be a benefit in reaching out to the rest of the world, particularly the Islamic world."