A look at Obama's speech to Muslims--The Grand Jihad continues

I've been working my way through Andrew McCarthy's book, The Grand Jihad. I wanted to share a section with you that was eye-opening. In June 2008 Pres. Barack Obama took a trip to the Middle East. Why? He wanted to blaze "a new beginning" in the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. McCarthy analyzes Obama's speech in Cairo, showing how our President sees Islam much differently than most of us do: "The speech was excruciating, combining fictional accounts of Islamic history and doctrine, a woefully ignorant explanation of Israel's claim to its sovereign territory, and an execrable moral equivalence drawn between southern slave owners in early America and modern Israelis besieged by Palestinian terror." Let's see what he means.

He starts by noting Obama's reference to American history. The President quoted John Adams as saying the U.S. had no disagreement with Muslims when he signed the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796. However, Obama skipped history leading up to this Treaty. The Barbary states of North Africa (Muslim nations) were using the ports to wage a war of piracy and enslavement against all shipping that passed through the Strait of Gibraltar. More than 1 million Europeans and Americans were sold into slavery as a result of this. The United States, with no help from any nation, felt forced to sign this treaty. So, Adams was not complimenting Muslims out of respect and love; he was forced into it to avoid more piracy by Muslims.

In his speech Obama later played up Muslim cultural achievements. But McCarthy says these achievements actually occurred despite Islam (especially in the areas of literature, art, and music). It was the conquered people who produce the accomplishments, not the Muslims who were invading their territory. The President claimed Islam single-handedly "carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment." But this is a myth, according to the author. It is not true that Muslims alone preserved the works of Aristotle, Galen, Plato, Hippocrates, and other pillars of Western Enlightenment. The truth is, arrested development in the Islamic world over the last several hundred years is due to a strong anti-intellectualism that is so prevalent today. Many Islamic authorities say that no education beyond the study of the Quran is necessary.

Then Obama began quoting from the Koran to show how peaceful this religion is. He took one verse (Sura 5:32) and read it: "Whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind." But Obama failed to read the very next verse, which is well known by Muslims: "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and his messenger... is execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land." Obama also neglected other verses which command Muslims to violence, dehumanized Jews as children of monkeys and pigs, and order Muslims not to take Jews or Christians as friends and protectors.

Later in the speech, Obama talked about a Jewish homeland. He made a basic argument that the Jewish nation was established to sooth the guilty consciences of Europeans who are embarrassed about the Holocaust. He makes it sound like the Jews have no legal, historic, or moral rights to the land of Israel. McCarthy says this is false. Jews have a claim upon the land because they are the only people for whom Israel was ever their nation, which it was for hundreds of years -- centuries before the Arabs and Muslims came on the scene area, so, according to the author, legal, historical, and moral claims of Jews predate Adolph Hitler by many centuries. In fact, the League of Nations in 1922 did not endorse the creation of the Jewish state but rather the reconstitution of it.

Coupled with this reference to the Jews, Obama then talked about the Palestinians and their problems. He, of course, stressed that they were poor people struggling in refugee camps waiting for a life of peace and security. The truth is different; the Arabs could easily have created a Palestinian state during the twenty years (1948 -- 1967) that Jordan and Egypt held the West Bank and Gaza, respectively. But the Arab states decided not to do this. Before that, the Palestinians had been offered a homeland in 1936 and 1947, and Israel renewed the offer in 1967 and 2000. Why do the Palestinians turn down these offers? McCarthy says their goal is to destroy Israel, not to coexist in peace and security.

There is more to this speech that Obama gave in Cairo. But this is important material, and I don't want to rush past it. I'd rather you had a chance to read this, digest it, and think about it. More to follow.