OBAMA’S ISLAMOPHILIA WEEK: GEORGE NEUMAYR
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/07/26/obamas-islamophilia-week
While he wages a culture war on Christians, the president tells Americans not to worry about global Islam.
Last week Barack Obama marked the beginning of Ramadan by saying to Muslims that the “United States continues to stand with those who seek the chance to decide their own destiny, to live free from fear and violence, and to practice their faith freely.” While he undercuts Christianity at home — under his Obamacare abortifacient/contraceptive mandate, resistant Catholic and Protestant schools, hospitals, and charities will soon face crushing fines — he never fails to tout Islam abroad.
One would think his allies at the ACLU might cringe at his lavish tributes to global Islam as a great and blameless religion and his “Iftar dinners” at the White House. But they don’t. His undiluted enthusiasm for Islam, which amounts to a case of Islamophilia, never triggers any of the usual separation-of-church-and-state objections and anxieties from them.
The elite’s pooh-poohing of questions from Congressmen this week about Huma Abedin’s well-documented familial ties to the Muslim Brotherhood is an outgrowth of this Islamophilia. Under its chic influence, enlightened Americans are simply not supposed to care about such matters. Rather, they should welcome global Islam’s reach into the White House and the State Department. After all, “jihad” is merely a harmless concept of self-improvement, “a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community,” as Obama security adviser John Brennan has confidently put it.
Attorney General Eric Holder prides himself on refusing to identify radical Islam as a motive for terrorism. He maintained this view even after self-identified Muslim terrorists killed soldiers at the Fort Hood military base, tried to blow up a plane over Detroit on the day of Jesus Christ’s birth, and attempted to bomb tourists in Times Square.
After the Fort Hood shooting by an open jihadist in the military’s very ranks, Obama’s top brass still kept up their politically correct patter about Islam. General George Casey, the Army’s top official, fretted on talk shows about the greater tragedy that could come from the loss of “diversity” a backlash from the Fort Hood shooting might cause.
In 2010, NASA administrator Charles Bolden let slip that Obama’s Islamophilia was even affecting the nation’s space program. Bolden informed a reporter with Al Jazeera that when he took the NASA job Obama made it clear to him that “perhaps foremost he wanted to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science… and math and engineering.”
Obama’s Ramadan tribute last week made a point of thanking Muslims for their scientific endeavors: “Here in the United States, Ramadan reminds us that Islam is part of the fabric of our Nation, and that — from public service to business, from healthcare and science to the arts — Muslim Americans help strengthen our country and enrich our lives.”
Christians, on the other hand, are engaged in a war on “science” and “women,” according to Obama. Single women should live in fear, not of Islamic polygamists and honor-killing proponents, but of Christian chastity advocates and pro-life nurses, if one were to believe Obama’s rhetoric.
As Obama likes to say, America is not and never will be at “war with Islam,” even as he steps up his culture war with Christianity. Imagine if he ever spoke about the Koran as loosely as he speaks about the Bible (he once dismissed St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans as “obscure,” because of its politically incorrect treatment of sodomy). Imagine if he treated imams as arrogantly as he treats pro-life priests. He would have a holy war on his hands.
“I wish Muslims across America and around the world a blessed month, and I look forward to again hosting an iftar dinner here at the White House. Ramadan Kareem,” Obama burbled last week. He has finally found a religion that poses no threat to his “transformative” presidency.
About the Author
George Neumayr, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is co-author, with Phyllis Schlafly, of the new book, No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom.
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