(Not) Telling the Truth About Islam's Past

Barack Hussein Obama, as he now refers to himself, is the first president that I have ever feared would cause harm to America through his words to foreign peoples.

I never questioned the patriotism of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, or even Jimmy Carter (not while he was in office, anway). I never thought Bill Clinton was unpatriotic; just occasionally embarrassing.

I'm not so sure about BHO. His "World Apology Tour 2009" continued this week, and a closer examination of his anticipated Cairo Speech is very troubling. He says some things about Islam and its history that simply are not factual. Is this because he is misinformed, or is this a deliberate deception, and for whom is the deception intended if this is the case? For the Muslim world, or for American citizens?

I'm not the only one who is wondering.

Today's National Review Online carries an article entitled "Making Believe: Obama's speech was deep in fable, short on fact" by Contributing Editor Andrew C. McCarthy.

I recommend you read it in its entirety, but I am going to reprint generous portions for discussion:

The oration was called “A New Beginning.” “A Pretend Beginning” would have been a more accurate. ...

[SNIP]

... the speech was warmed-over leftist dogma sprinkled with a fictional accounting of Islam and its history. ... What the president did was promote various fictions about Islam while airbrushing truths that are not merely harsh but are the facts behind the rampage that has victimized us for much of the last three decades. That rampage, moreover, was substantially discounted in a haze of moral equivalence.

It would be bad enough to do this under any circumstances, but it is inexcusable to do it while paying only lip-service to one of the few truths the president did speak: namely, that any “partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t.”

“What it isn’t” is a religion of peace with a legacy so overflowing with achievement in science, philosophy, and the arts that civilization, as President Obama claimed, owes a great “debt to Islam.” In fact, the ledger runs heavily in the other direction.

Islam was spread by the sword — not by the allure of its still problematic message — and many of the cultural achievements within the Muslim world that the president glossed occurred despite Islam (particularly in the areas of literature, art, and music) or are more properly understood as the accomplishments (especially in science and architecture) of better-educated peoples whom Muslims conquered. The president rehearsed the claim that Islam single-handedly “carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.” This is a myth. As Robert Spencer has ably recounted, it is not true that Muslims alone preserved the works of Aristotle, Galen, Plato, Hippocrates, and other pillars of Western enlightenment. More significantly, arrested development in the Islamic world owes to an anti-intellectualism that persists to this day in enclaves holding that no education beyond the study of the Koran is necessary.

Sullivan recounts the president's de-coupling of Islamic verse to make a point that the Koran does not, in fact, make. I discussed this in a PREVIOUS POST here.

Noting a bowdlerization even this egregious does not do justice to how misleading the president’s tactic was. Though Obama portrayed Islam as having a “proud tradition of tolerance,” it has a far more consequential legacy of intolerance. Islam strives for hegemony, seeking not to co-exist but to make all the world the realm of the Muslims (dar al-Islam) while regarding those parts not under its dominion as the realm of war (dar al-Harb).

Sura 5:33 is far from aberrant, and the “Holy Koran,” quite apart from its several other commands to violence, dehumanizes Jews in several places as the children of monkeys and pigs. It admonishes that Muslims “take not the Jews and the Christians as friends and protectors” (5:51). The hadiths of the prophet are replete with tales of non-Muslims slaughtered, forced into slavery, and reduced to humiliating dhimmitude. Mohammed’s vision of the end of the world foresaw Jesus returning to abolish Christianity and impose Islam, while Jews are killed by Muslims (with the help of trees and stones, which alert the faithful, “Muslim, there is a Jew behind me — come and kill him!”

In fact, even President Obama’s cordial greeting of “assalaamu alaykum” to his Egyptian audience conveys (no doubt unintentionally) something of basic Islamic intolerance. Under sharia (Islamic law), as Spencer explains, “a Muslim may only extend this greeting — Peace be upon you — to a fellow Muslim. To a non-Muslim he is to say, ‘Peace be upon those who are rightly guided,’ i.e., Peace be upon the Muslims.”

This last paragraph is vitally important to understand -- Mr. Obama used the greeting of one Muslim to another, not the non-Muslim greeting to the Muslim. This may have through ignorance or oversight. Or it may have been an intentional signal. More importantly, how did the Muslims who heard the president's speech interpret it?

You may think that I am splitting hairs on this point, but the president, who is engaging in "mass communicatin'" and diplomacy, is representing the people of the United States, not just himself. Islamic scholars in the Middle East do not share the same understanding of constitutional government that we have. There is an Islamic principle that any territory, once ruled by Muslims, is forever Islamic and cannot be legitimately governmented by infidels.

It could be interpreted that if Obama can be considered a Muslim (though perhaps what we Christians would call a "backsliding" one), and he is leader of America, then America becomes Muslim territory, and thus Islamic rule must be consolidated and enhanced through such things as shari'a.

Back to the article:

More to the point, the president takes the risible position (as did his predecessor) that “Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism — it is an important part of promoting peace.” Islam, however, is palpably a huge part of the problem in combating violent extremism, which is serially committed by Muslims under the influence of notable religious scholars (including more than a few educated at al-Azhar University, the “beacon of Islamic learning” that co-hosted the president’s speech) who invoke some of the many scriptures the president elected not to mention.

It is true enough that Islam must be part of the solution to the promotion of peace, but for two reasons alone. First, while it is possible to ignore Islamic doctrine’s nexus to terrorism, the nexus cannot credibly be denied, and therefore the need to deal with it is unavoidable. Second, and related, there can be no peace unless Islam reforms — unless it purges its savage elements and compellingly condemns the violence committed in its name. This can’t be done as Obama and others would like to do it: by telling Muslims everything is fine, that their religion is wonderful as is, while making believe the bad scriptures don’t exist and radicals are merely a tiny fringe of crazy people. That is a strategy designed by liberals to convince other liberals who don’t need convincing, so desperate are they to believe all is well. It does nothing to discredit the violent fundamentalists in the eyes of other Muslims; in fact, it enhances their credibility because it ignores their doctrinal justifications of terror rather than offering a credible counter-construction.

Worse, assuming there is no credible counter-construction (which may very well be the case), there is an enormous amount of reform to be done — work that can only be done by Muslims. We cannot rouse them to the task by telling them we think Islam, as it currently exists, is promoting peace.

Everyone talks peace, but in seeking it, the question must always be asked: How do we get there from here? You do not travel the road to peace by pretending understandings that do not exist, and by trying to bamboozle your opponent (or your base of support) into thinking fantasy is reality. To do so is to build a peace that will not be peace at all.

Muslims who correctly understand the teachings of their religion have always known that peace comes through victory, not compromise. Compromise would be a repudiation of their faith.

I can understand that, even appreciate it.

I believe that President Obama also understands this about Islam, but for whatever reasons he doesn't want to say it aloud.

That worries me. It should you as well.