None Dare Call It 'Islam'

First of all, Islam has not “been woven into the fabric of our country since its founding,” as Obama said yesterday in his speech about combatting terrorism. Indeed, like most of his public pronouncements, the speech was a Lillian Hellman performance as described by Mary McCarthy: every word including “and” and “but” was a lie.

Has there ever been a more anti-American president than Barack Hussein Obama, representative of the Weatherman left, student of Bill Ayers, the Reverend (“God Damn America”) Wright, and Saul Alinsky? There have been ostentatiously incompetent presidents before — Jimmy Carter leaps to mind — but has there ever been an anti-American president before BHO? I can’t think of anyone who even comes close. Even the bumbling fool Carter was a patriot. No one would accuse Barack Obama of being an American patriot (much though he likes its beaches and country clubs).

Every American should attend to what Obama has said about combating terrorism. Here he is last September: “Now let’s make two things clear,” he said. “ISIL is not ‘Islamic.’ No religion condones the killing of innocents.”

“ISIL is not ‘Islamic.’” Really? Was the Ayatollah Khomeini “Islamic?” How about Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan: is he “Islamic”? A few years ago, Erdogan told the world that the phrase “moderate Islam” is “ugly” because “Islam is Islam.” Democracy, he said, is just an express stop on the train whose destination is Islam.

Who, in fact, speaks for Islam? Who gets to say what it is and isn’t?

The Saudis, the biggest and richest Sunni nation? They torture bloggers for “insulting Islam,” stone adulteresses, maim thieves, and treat women like chattel. Do they represent Islam? Last month in this space, I dilated on this question: “Who Speaks for Islam?”

 We are assured that it’s not the group that now calls itself Islamic State … [W]e know that they don’t speak for Islam because our political leaders and our media have told us so. It’s the same with Boko Haram, the Nigerian Muslim group. This morning, quoting the Australian journalist Andrew Bolt, I noted that they had kidnapped and sold into sex slavery 300 Nigerian school girls. That was before I saw the story that Boko Haram had just invaded another town killing as many as 2000. Boko Haram appears to believe that they represent Islamic teaching, but no: our leaders have assured us that that is not the case. Ditto about Syria: this summer an adulteress or two were stoned to death, but that, of course, was the work not of Islam but of “extremists,” if not quite “lone extremists.”

But let’s return to the president’s speech. “No religion,” he says, “condones the killing of innocents.” Can Obama really be that ignorant of the glorious history of Islam and the glittering deeds of Mohammed?

We have it on the highest (for Muslims, the only) authority that he regularly slaughtered innocents. Consider, to take just one example, the year 627 siege of Medina, then home to a Jewish tribe. After a couple of weeks, the inhabitants surrendered unconditionally. Mohammad then had the 600-800 men butchered, and sold the women and children into slavery.

“We are not at war with Islam,” Obama said yesterday. “We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.” Let’s see, that would be the Iranians? No, no: we like them now, remember? After all, the president of the United States has reversed himself and is doing everything he can to assure that the radical Shia state can acquire nuclear weapons. He doesn’t say that, of course, but actions — including non-actions — speak louder than words. Where are those unperverted Muslims of whom the presidents is so fond? In the common rooms of American universities? Maybe. In our cities and suburbs? Perhaps. But I think we can agree that it is not (to make an arbitrary and woefully incomplete list) the people behind such actions as

• The 9/11 terrorist attacks (mostly Saudis involved in that little escapade)
• The Bali nightclub bombing
• The Ft. Hood “workplace violence” event
• The London tube and bus bombings
• The Madrid train bombing
• The Boston Marathon carnage
• The Charlie Hebdo and Jewish supermarket slaughter last month (“folks shot in a deli” was how Obama described the latter)
• The Danish shootings just a few days ago by another “Allahu Akbar”-shouting chap.

Islam, or perversion of Islam? At some point, as Hillary Clinton might put it, what difference does it make? Under Barack Obama, it is painfully clear that “we are not at war with Islam.” The trouble is, it has become increasingly obvious to everyone except Barack Hussein Obama that Islam is at war with us.