Obama brother works with ‘Koresh-style’ cult leader – Best man at president’s wedding featured at Texas conference

Yisrayl Hawkins and Malik Obama

NEW YORK – President Obama’s half-brother from Kenya, Abongo Malik Obama, will return Friday to the U.S., not to visit the White House as he has done before, but to begin a partnership with a cult leader in Texas who has been compared to David Koresh and Jim Jones.
Malik will be in Abilene, Texas, to attend the Peaceful Solution Character Education Convention hosted by known polygamist Yisrayl Hawkins, head of a group called the House of Yahweh, reports Arabic-speaking Islam researcher Walid Shoebat.
Among his various predictions as a self-proclaimed prophet, Hawkins has proclaimed that a “nuclear baby” born in 2007 will grow up to cause a nuclear holocaust in which one-third of the earth’s population will be annihilated.
In 2008, Hawkins was prosecuted in Baird, Texas, after being charged with performing polygamous weddings and forcing children as young as 11 to work at his 44-acre compound, the the Associated Press reported at the time.
“But this isn’t the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ ranch, which authorities raided last month in Eldorado after receiving reports that underage girls were being forced to marry much older men,” the AP noted.
“This is the House of Yahweh: a different, even darker sect that the state has been investigating for years.”
In 2009, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the bigamy charges against Hawkins were dropped in his Callahan County court case, because a Class A misdemeanor bigamy charge had a two-year limitation and the charges dated back to 2005. There also was a resource limitation when the trial judge granted a change in venue from Callahan County to Parker County, Texas.
Hawkins, however, pleaded “no contest” to four counts of child labor violations for which he was assessed a $2,000 fine, 100 hours of community service and 15 months probation for each count.
The Abilene Reporter-News reported the sect was founded in 1980 by “Buffalo Bill Hawkins,” a former Abilene policeman fired for having beer in his patrol car.
After founding the sect, Hawkins changed his name to Yisrayl Hawkins, setting a standard in the group for members to change their last name to Hawkins, with the convention of adopting a new first name with an unusual spelling that typically incorporates at least one letter Y.