Barack Obama’s awful moral equivalence speech at the UN deserves a second post. He actually said this:
The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. Yet to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see when the image of Jesus Christ is desecrated, churches are destroyed, or the Holocaust is denied. Let us condemn incitement against Sufi Muslims, and Shiite pilgrims. It is time to heed the words of Gandhi: “Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.” Together, we must work towards a world where we are strengthened by our differences, and not defined by them. That is what America embodies, and that is the vision we will support.
But what if the prophet of Islam married a child and changed from man of peace to violent warlord as his political situation changed? Is that slander, or merely getting at the “historical” Muhammad? What if he did and said things that may have been acceptable in his context but which we find anathema now? What if his teachings tend to create violent, backward societies that fail to peacefully coexist with the rest of the world? Can we not point these things out? Historians constantly “revise” their views of other historical figures. Should Muhammad be exempt from this? If he is, why isn’t Jesus or Moses? Who gets to decide what’s slander and what is just a fact, or a different interpretation? Show your work.
There’s more.
Let’s rewind the speech to the paragraph that preceded the one above.
The future must not belong to those who target Coptic Christians in Egypt – it must be claimed by those in Tahrir Square who chanted “Muslims, Christians, we are one.” The future must not belong to those who bully women – it must be shaped by girls who go to school, and those who stand for a world where our daughters can live their dreams just like our sons. The future must not belong to those corrupt few who steal a country’s resources – it must be won by the students and entrepreneurs; workers and business owners who seek a broader prosperity for all people. Those are the men and women that America stands with; theirs is the vision we will support.
Obama has just drawn an equivalence between “slandering” a historical figure and actually targeting — pursuing and killing — living, breathing people. In the second sentence of that paragraph he donates the future, on our behalf, to people we don’t know and who may not even exist. What if the chanters in Tahrir are the same people now targeting Copts in a more lawless Egypt? Many of the people who said nice things in Tahrir Square went on to back the Muslim Brotherhood, if they weren’t Brotherhood operatives themselves. And why wouldn’t they, when the US Director of National Intelligence said the Muslim Brotherhood was “mostly secular”? Some of them went on to attack women including journalist Lara Logan. Some of them chant “democracy” with one side of their mouths and “Death to America!” with the other, knowing that “democracy” often means one man, one vote, one time. Obama is handing the future to his simple fantasy of what the Arab Spring was like, not the complex reality of it.
As for Obama’s call that the future should not belong to “those corrupt few who steal a country’s resources,” that would be news to his friend Richard Trumka and the other leaders of the unions whose agenda Obama shares and which he carries. He plundered GM and handed majority share to the unions, while cutting non-union workers at Delphi out of their benefits. Does Obama realize that he is guilty of violating a major religion’s tenets, and that he is also guilty of being a corrupt kleptocrat? I think he’s aware of both, and he doesn’t mind either one.
Isn’t the very existence of Christianity and Judaism considered an insult to Islam?
What a bunch of convoluted twaddle from the supposed second coming of Shakespeare. Can’t he say something that makes some sense?
“Who gets to decide what’s slander and what is just a fact, or a different interpretation?”
Avoiding having to answer that question is the exact reason we have a 1st Amendment. If only we had a President who understood that.
The first quoted paragraph is basically saying we need to make blasphemy illegal.
Obama is not an American. I don’t care where he was born; his mind does not work like an American’s mind.
One needn’t be born here to be (or become) an American. Obama proves that the reverse is also true: you don’t need to be foreign born in order to be un-American.
What if you just don’t think it is true? What if you think he was a schizophrenic who made most of it up? Or that maybe he did see something, but it was Satan, not God at work? What if you went to the Moon and discovered it was the monolith that made him do it, and it had nothing to do with divine bengs? What if he was just some fool from the future who managed to slip through a time portal and set up shop? Do we let the fraud go on?
Some of the above are more silly than others, but not this one–When we have abandoned the Enlightenment, what then?
Incidentally, here’s why we have to be able to “slander” the “Prophet”–if I was trying to set up something–a plot, an arc, a storyline– so as to convince people of the future that men of a certain time saw something miraculous, I wouldn’t let the plot involve those men then going off and conquering as vindication they were present at miracles–because it would muddy the waters, because did they follow for the divine acts, or…the women and the booty?
Instead, I would choose a way that caused men to be willing to sacrifice their lives for absolutely no Earthly benefit whatsoever, but merely because they believed. Making them either complete and total idiots, or men who saw something.
I don’t know what the truth is, but Islam does not exactly have the position of front runner with me. Thus, the President can go to blazes.
Let me post here again the masterwork that our CFBLEACHERS has written (at #36) about Bridget’s column:
Didn’t expect much else from O’bumblehead: Nice words of noble sentiment, ignoring reality, read from a teleprompter; iow his standard MO, standard BS. (“Strengthened by our differences” while “not being defined by them”? LOL!)
What I did expect was the US Director of National Intelligence to be — sufficiently intelligent to realize that to the Mewslim Botherhood there is no such thing as “mostly secular”; that Islam is a package deal explicitly denying any separation between the secular and the spiritual; and, that therein lies its (and our) main problem! — Or, was he just not saying it, in the interest of PC?!
O’bungler is guilty on all counts you mention — and dozens more. Bad, but so what, because in another 42 days we’ll get to remove him from office, and hopefully he’ll retire to Chicago ?!
Really, really bad is when a well-paid civil servant entrusted with our national safety, who will probably outlast Da O in office, gets it wrong. There needs to be found a way to remove such guys for incompetence and/or cowardice, without either waiting for the next Admin to maybe do it, or incurring multi-year and expensive litigation! Tired of being Moohammered! Really am!
– A’jad’s face, A-hole.