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by BEN SHAPIRO3 Feb 20161,747
On Wednesday, President Obama, who has become the executive branch equivalent of a professional Salon.com commenter troll, took his traveling roadshow of perverse failure to the Islamic Society of Baltimore.
There, he lectured Americans – as always – on our own intolerance, the glories of Islam, and how if we just gaze longingly into his eyes, our souls will be set free of the baser matter surrounding them.
First, a note: the Islamic Society of Baltimore has significant ties to terror supporters. Its former imam, Mohamed Adam el-Sheikh, presided over the mosque for 18 years and justified Palestinian suicide bombings in the pages of The Washington Post, as well as founding the radical Muslim Brotherhood-associated Muslim American Society.
Now, on to President Obama’s speech.
Obama began by stating that the ISB is as American as apple pie (minus the whole former imam who supported suicide bombing thing). He then said, “So the first thing I want to say is two words that Muslim Americans don’t hear often enough — and that is, thank you. Thank you for serving your community. Thank you for lifting up the lives of your neighbors, and for helping keep us strong and united as one American family. We are grateful for that.”
So, no bitter clinger talk for those who worship Allah. Got it.
Then he moved on to his real message: Americans who aren’t nice like President Obama are super duper mean to Muslims. Never mind the fact that, according to FBI statistics, 60.3 percent of all hate crimes based on religion target Jews, as opposed to 13.7 percent targeting Muslims. Muslims who must fear intolerant Americans, and must rely on President Obama’s great goodness to protect them from the slobbering, yabbering masses who would emerge en masse on the streets of the United States, armed with pitchforks and torches, to roust them from their homes and do them harm. Here’s Obama:
I know that in Muslim communities across our country, this is a time of concern and, frankly, a time of some fear. Like all Americans, you’re worried about the threat of terrorism. But on top of that, as Muslim Americans, you also have another concern — and that is your entire community so often is targeted or blamed for the violent acts of the very few.
Oh. Well, statistically, virtually all suicide bombings across the planet are conducted by Muslims. Hundreds of millions of Muslims hold extreme beliefs. In the United States, as Mark Krikorian wrote at National Review in December, “Muslims account for only about 1 percent of the U.S. population but account for about half of terrorist attacks since 9/11. That means Muslims in the United States are about 5,000 percent more likely to commit terrorist attacks than non-Muslims.”
But statistics are Islamophobic, so Obama merely ignored them. Instead, he focused on the “inexcusable political rhetoric against Muslim Americans that has no place in our country,” lamenting “the threats and harassment of Muslim Americans have surged.” No statistics, just anecdotal evidence, followed. And then more scaremongering:
[Y]ou also could not help but be heartbroken to hear their worries and their anxieties. Some of them are parents, and they talked about how their children were asking, are we going to be forced out of the country, or, are we going to be rounded up? Why do people treat us like that? Conversations that you shouldn’t have to have with children — not in this country. Not at this moment. And that’s an anxiety echoed in letters I get from Muslim Americans around the country. I’ve had people write to me and say, I feel like I’m a second-class citizen… These are children just like mine.
So Obama’s adding to his fictional family of victims once again. First, there was Trayvon. Then there was his fictional son who got hurt playing football. Now he’s got fictional Muslim children. That family’s growing by leaps and bounds!
That wasn’t Obama’s only fiction here. Who, exactly, is talking about “rounding up” Muslims? Who is talking about forcing Muslims out of the country? What brand of verbal cow-vomit is this?
It was just Obama setting up the strawman for its ceremonial Islamic sacrificial burning, apparently. Obama called for Americans to “tackle this head on,” to be “honest and clear about it,” to “speak out.” He then began gibbering platitudes until someone had to tap him on the shoulder and remind him where he was:
Islam is rooted in a commitment to compassion and mercy and justice and charity….The world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are as diverse as humanity itself…. Here’s another fact: Islam has always been part of America… Jefferson and John Adams had their own copies of the Koran.
He did not quote what Jefferson and Adams once said about their dealings with Islamic pirates:
The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.
Probably best for Obama to ignore that.
Ignore it he did, and instead called for changes to American media and culture to be nicer to Islam. He suggested that “our television shows should have some Muslim characters that are unrelated to national security.” Sounds great! Let’s start an #OscarsSoIslamophobic campaign, which will work fantastically well until Muslims around the world riot when somebody does an improper depiction of Mohammed.
After attempting unsuccessfully to carve off the Islamic State from Islam, Obama then set forth four points.
First: “We are all God’s children. We’re all born equal, with inherent dignity.” Obama could say that to the wide swaths of Muslims sanguine about the stabbing of Jewish children in Jerusalem and the shooting of Christian ones in Syria; instead, he chose to direct that at the inhabitants of the most tolerant nation in the history of humanity.
Second: “[W]e have to stay true to our core values, and that includes freedom of religion for all faiths… if we’re serious about freedom of religion – and I’m speaking now to my fellow Christians who remain the majority in this country – we have to understand an attack on one faith is an attack on all religions.” Well, not necessarily. An attack on the teachings of Satanism is not an attack on Christianity. An attack on the nature of Islam is not an attack on Judaism. Not all religions are the same, contrary to Obama’s presumably-treasured COEXIST bumper sticker. And it’s rather insulting directing his ire toward American Christians rather than the hundreds of millions of Muslims around the planet responsible for the vast majority of religious warfare, bloodshed, and targeted violence.
But Obama continued, “We have to be consistent in condemning hateful rhetoric and violence against everyone. And that includes against Muslims here in the United States of America.” “Hateful rhetoric” is not violence, although Obama would lump the two together. Doing that is a dangerous violation of free speech. But Obama doesn’t care about that – after all, the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam, remember?
Third: “[T]he suggestion is somehow that if I would simply say, these are all Islamic terrorists, then we would actually have solved the problem by now, apparently…. I refuse to give [ISIL] legitimacy. We must never give them that legitimacy. They’re not defending Islam.” It would, in fact, help for Obama to acknowledge our enemies and their ideology. Wishing their philosophy into the corn field won’t work; no serious Muslim takes Obama’s interpretation of Islam seriously, anymore than serious Jews take Obama’s interpretation of Judaism seriously. But Obama is too busy wishing, and lecturing Americans that the best way to thwart radical Islam is to “celebrate and lift up the success of Muslim Americans,” as though ISIS cares whether we have White House Ramadan dinners other than to think us weaklings and fools. That’s not a case against White House Ramadan dinners – it is a case that such dinners make no difference in the fight against radical Islam.
Fourth: “Muslims around the world have a responsibility to reject extremist ideologies that are trying to penetrate within Muslim communities.” Nice of Obama to get around to this one. But he promptly said that Muslims were doing enough, and put the responsibility on Americans to “amplify them more.” So actually, the Muslims are doing just fine, it’s the Islamophobic Westerners who are, as always, the problem.
Hilariously, Obama added this note:
[I]n the discussion I had before I came out, some people said, why is there always a burden on us? When a young man in Charleston shoots African Americans in a church, there’s not an expectation that every white person in America suddenly is explaining that they’re not racist.
LOL. Let me expand: LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. President Obama and the entire media blamed the Confederate damn flag for Charleston, and then lectured us on the continuing racism of white Americans.
But back to Obama’s demagoguery:
We will — I will — do everything I can to lift up the multiplicity of Muslim voices that promote pluralism and peace….We can’t give in to profiling entire groups of people. There’s no one single profile of terrorists…. We are one American family. We will rise and fall together. It won’t always be easy. There will be times where our worst impulses are given voice. But I believe that ultimately, our best voices will win out. And that gives me confidence and faith in the future.
Obviously, Obama believes that the greatest threat to America is the cruel voices of those like Donald Trump, not the stealthy recruitment of Muslim radicals. He believes that Americans need his lectures, and Muslims just need reassurance that we care about them. He believes a lot of things that simply aren’t true.
And so more Americans will die.
Which means he will give us more speeches about Islamic peace and American intolerance.
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News, Editor-in-Chief of DailyWire.com, and The New York Times bestselling author, most recently, of the book,The People vs. Barack Obama:The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.
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