A fabricated past?

Was Illinois Senate hopeful Barack Obama less than forthright about his own background and upbringing in his speech to the Democratic National Convention last month? Columnist Andy Martin makes precisely this accusation, arguing among other things that Obama has a muslim background:

Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion. I am a strong supporter of the Muslim community, and I believe Muslims have been scapegoated. Obama has a great opportunity to be forthright. Instead, he has treated his Muslim heritage as a dark secret. His grandfather was named 'Hussein.' That is an Arabic-Muslim, not African, name. Hussein was a devout Muslim and named his son, Barack Senior, 'Baraka.' Baraka is an Arabic word meaning 'blessed.' Baraka comes out of the Koran and Arabic, not Africa.

In his speech Obama claimed that Barack means "blessings" in Swahili. Not knowing Swahili, I am unable to assess the truth of this claim. My understanding, however, is that barack does mean blessings in Arabic, where the similarity to the Hebrew baruch is evident. Yet it is also true that Swahili has been considerably influenced by Arabic, much as, say, Urdu might be seen as a form of Hindi with a heavy overlay of Persian vocabulary. So Obama may indeed be telling the truth about his first name's origin.