What should one make of the stark contrast with how Obama treats America's allies - such as the British; and especially the Israeli's; versus how he is dealing with our "friends" the Saudis.
From today's newspaper:
"I thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began to seek his Majesty's counsel ..."
BHO was struck by Abdullah's "wisdom and his graciousness".
"I consider the king's friendship a great blessing ...".
Surely, America's friends and allies are watching this lovefest and shaking their heads.
And surely, the Israeli's are seething. The contrast of how dismissive Obama has been so far with the Israeli leadership is truly disturbing.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Obama's Speech to "Muslim World"
I thought this piece made some good points:
Asia Times: Obama’s speech to the “Muslim world” will merely help the Islamic extremists [Tom Gross]
An editorial column in yesterday’s Asia Times warns President Barack Obama that his much hyped “address to the Muslim world” to be delivered at Cairo University tomorrow will do more harm than good.
The writer argues that since there is no such thing as a “Muslim world” – any more than there is some kind of unified “Christian world” – Obama is merely helping to boost the Muslim extremist position by pretending there is. And by choosing Cairo for such an “address to the Muslim world,” Obama is compounding his mistake, the writer explains.
(Above: A Palestinian shopkeeper sells lots of Obama mugs yesterday in “impoverished” Gaza City)
Below I have pulled out some extracts from this lengthy piece:
Why should the president of the United States address the “Muslim world,” as Barack Obama will do in Egypt this Thursday? What would happen if the leader of a big country addressed the “Christian world”? Half the world would giggle and the other half would sulk.
There is no such thing as a Christian world, of course; there hasn’t been since the Great Schism of 1054, even less so since the Reformation. Europe’s nations agreed at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 to subordinate the confessional to political sovereignty.
America, the new model of a nation, kept church separate from state. To utter the words “Christian world” would persuade the Muslim world that a foul conspiracy was afoot, perhaps a new Crusade…What does it mean to address the “Muslim world”? As a matter of practice, the Muslim world is just as fractured as the Christian world, even more so in the absence of any religious authority like the Catholic Church, which claims doctrinal authority over a billion people…To speak to the “Muslim world” is to speak not to a fact, but rather to an aspiration, and that is the aspiration that Islam shall be a global state religion as its founders intended. To address this aspiration is to breathe life into it…
Obama, the White House press office told reporters last week, will address among other issues the Arab-Israeli issue. What does it imply to raise this issue in a speech to the “Muslim world”? Nearly 700 million of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims live in Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, countries which share no linguistic or cultural affinities with the Arabs, and have only religion in common. They have no strategic interest whatever in the outcome of war or peace in the Levant. Their only possible interest is religious. Does the United States really believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is religious in origin? …
It is quite possible for the state of Israel to live in peace with nation-states whose population is mainly Muslim, to be sure. Israel has done so since 1975 with Egypt and Jordan, and has until recently maintained excellent relations with Turkey. Until the Ruhollah Khomeini revolution of 1979, Israel was an ally and arms supplier of Iran. As a matter of national interest, many Muslim-majority countries may seek peaceful and even friendly relations with the Jewish state, irrespective of what the dictates of Islamic theology might be. Rather than addressing nations with national interest, though, Obama is addressing Muslims, over the heads as it were of majority-Muslim nation states.
Even though the Koran mentions Jerusalem not once (against 832 times in the Hebrew Bible and 161 times in the New Testament), later Muslim tradition makes Jerusalem a Muslim holy place. No Muslim religious authority in Asia or Africa can or will rule that Islam can tolerate a Jewish state in Palestine with its capital in Jerusalem. There are a few Muslim voices in Europe and the US favorably disposed to co-existence with the Jewish state, but they are whispers against the roar of an ocean…
By addressing the “Islamic world” from Cairo, Obama lends credibility to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other advocates of political Islam who demand that Muslims be addressed globally and on religious terms – in contradistinction to nationalists such as Mubarak. Rather than buttress a loyal ally, Obama’s speech undermines him on his home ground. That is a lose-lose proposition…
For more comment on Obama’s “Speech to the Muslim world,” please see here.
Asia Times: Obama’s speech to the “Muslim world” will merely help the Islamic extremists [Tom Gross]
An editorial column in yesterday’s Asia Times warns President Barack Obama that his much hyped “address to the Muslim world” to be delivered at Cairo University tomorrow will do more harm than good.
The writer argues that since there is no such thing as a “Muslim world” – any more than there is some kind of unified “Christian world” – Obama is merely helping to boost the Muslim extremist position by pretending there is. And by choosing Cairo for such an “address to the Muslim world,” Obama is compounding his mistake, the writer explains.
(Above: A Palestinian shopkeeper sells lots of Obama mugs yesterday in “impoverished” Gaza City)
Below I have pulled out some extracts from this lengthy piece:
Why should the president of the United States address the “Muslim world,” as Barack Obama will do in Egypt this Thursday? What would happen if the leader of a big country addressed the “Christian world”? Half the world would giggle and the other half would sulk.
There is no such thing as a Christian world, of course; there hasn’t been since the Great Schism of 1054, even less so since the Reformation. Europe’s nations agreed at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 to subordinate the confessional to political sovereignty.
America, the new model of a nation, kept church separate from state. To utter the words “Christian world” would persuade the Muslim world that a foul conspiracy was afoot, perhaps a new Crusade…What does it mean to address the “Muslim world”? As a matter of practice, the Muslim world is just as fractured as the Christian world, even more so in the absence of any religious authority like the Catholic Church, which claims doctrinal authority over a billion people…To speak to the “Muslim world” is to speak not to a fact, but rather to an aspiration, and that is the aspiration that Islam shall be a global state religion as its founders intended. To address this aspiration is to breathe life into it…
Obama, the White House press office told reporters last week, will address among other issues the Arab-Israeli issue. What does it imply to raise this issue in a speech to the “Muslim world”? Nearly 700 million of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims live in Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, countries which share no linguistic or cultural affinities with the Arabs, and have only religion in common. They have no strategic interest whatever in the outcome of war or peace in the Levant. Their only possible interest is religious. Does the United States really believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is religious in origin? …
It is quite possible for the state of Israel to live in peace with nation-states whose population is mainly Muslim, to be sure. Israel has done so since 1975 with Egypt and Jordan, and has until recently maintained excellent relations with Turkey. Until the Ruhollah Khomeini revolution of 1979, Israel was an ally and arms supplier of Iran. As a matter of national interest, many Muslim-majority countries may seek peaceful and even friendly relations with the Jewish state, irrespective of what the dictates of Islamic theology might be. Rather than addressing nations with national interest, though, Obama is addressing Muslims, over the heads as it were of majority-Muslim nation states.
Even though the Koran mentions Jerusalem not once (against 832 times in the Hebrew Bible and 161 times in the New Testament), later Muslim tradition makes Jerusalem a Muslim holy place. No Muslim religious authority in Asia or Africa can or will rule that Islam can tolerate a Jewish state in Palestine with its capital in Jerusalem. There are a few Muslim voices in Europe and the US favorably disposed to co-existence with the Jewish state, but they are whispers against the roar of an ocean…
By addressing the “Islamic world” from Cairo, Obama lends credibility to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other advocates of political Islam who demand that Muslims be addressed globally and on religious terms – in contradistinction to nationalists such as Mubarak. Rather than buttress a loyal ally, Obama’s speech undermines him on his home ground. That is a lose-lose proposition…
For more comment on Obama’s “Speech to the Muslim world,” please see here.
Sotomayor -- Puerto Rican Nationalist ?
Now I like Puerto Rico (great weather, hotels) and Puerto Ricans, but if this stuff is true, it seems disqualifying ..... then again, we do have Hillary and Holder, those pardoners of P.R. terrorists.....
Former (?) Puerto Rican Nationalist Nominated to North American Supreme Court [Ed Whelan]
On National Journal’s new “Ninth Justice” blog, Stuart Taylor passes along history professor K. C. Johnson’s very favorable assessment of Sonia Sotomayor’s senior thesis at Princeton, as well as the “few jarring elements” that Johnson finds, including:
First, I'm curious as to when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence — as she says she does in the preface. (The position, as she points out in the thesis, had received 0.6 percent in a 1967 referendum, the most recent such vote before she wrote the thesis.) I don't know that I've seen it reported anywhere that she favored Puerto Rican independence, which has always been very much a fringe position. . . .
Second, her unwillingness to call the Congress the U.S. Congress is bizarre — in the thesis, it's always referred to as either the 'North American Congress' or the 'mainland Congress.' I guess by the language of her thesis, it should be said that she's seeking an appointment to the North American Supreme Court, subject to advice and consent of the North American Senate. This kind of rhetoric was very trendy, and not uncommon, among the Latin Americanist fringe of the academy.
We've Waived the Right to Press Sotomayor on Being a Puerto Rican Separatist Who Couldn't Bring Herself to Say "United States"? [Andy McCarthy]
Besides Ed's important post below, his separate Bench Memos post is a must read. In it, he notes what is likely to become the Left's mantra on this: namely, that if Sonia Sotomayor's meanderings on Puerto Rican separatism — and her allusion to "North American Congress" and "mainland Congress" because she couldn't bring herself to utter "United States" — were such a big deal, why did Republicans fail to object when she was nominated to the Second Circuit in 1997?
This "waiver" argument is laughable. Judge Bork, of course, was defeated as a Supreme Court nominee after breezing to confirmation for the D.C. Circuit. I'd also note the following:
Justice Alito: confirmed by only 58-42 for the Supreme Court after being unanimously in 1990 for the 3rd Circuit.
Chief Justice Roberts: confirmed by 78-22 after being confirmed for the DC Circuit in 2003 on a voice vote.
Justice Thomas: confirmed by only 52-48 after being confirmed for the DC Circuit in 1989 on a voice vote.
The failure to raise issues in lower court confirmation hearings has never been a bar to raising them for the far more consequential seats on the Supreme Court.
Former (?) Puerto Rican Nationalist Nominated to North American Supreme Court [Ed Whelan]
On National Journal’s new “Ninth Justice” blog, Stuart Taylor passes along history professor K. C. Johnson’s very favorable assessment of Sonia Sotomayor’s senior thesis at Princeton, as well as the “few jarring elements” that Johnson finds, including:
First, I'm curious as to when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence — as she says she does in the preface. (The position, as she points out in the thesis, had received 0.6 percent in a 1967 referendum, the most recent such vote before she wrote the thesis.) I don't know that I've seen it reported anywhere that she favored Puerto Rican independence, which has always been very much a fringe position. . . .
Second, her unwillingness to call the Congress the U.S. Congress is bizarre — in the thesis, it's always referred to as either the 'North American Congress' or the 'mainland Congress.' I guess by the language of her thesis, it should be said that she's seeking an appointment to the North American Supreme Court, subject to advice and consent of the North American Senate. This kind of rhetoric was very trendy, and not uncommon, among the Latin Americanist fringe of the academy.
We've Waived the Right to Press Sotomayor on Being a Puerto Rican Separatist Who Couldn't Bring Herself to Say "United States"? [Andy McCarthy]
Besides Ed's important post below, his separate Bench Memos post is a must read. In it, he notes what is likely to become the Left's mantra on this: namely, that if Sonia Sotomayor's meanderings on Puerto Rican separatism — and her allusion to "North American Congress" and "mainland Congress" because she couldn't bring herself to utter "United States" — were such a big deal, why did Republicans fail to object when she was nominated to the Second Circuit in 1997?
This "waiver" argument is laughable. Judge Bork, of course, was defeated as a Supreme Court nominee after breezing to confirmation for the D.C. Circuit. I'd also note the following:
Justice Alito: confirmed by only 58-42 for the Supreme Court after being unanimously in 1990 for the 3rd Circuit.
Chief Justice Roberts: confirmed by 78-22 after being confirmed for the DC Circuit in 2003 on a voice vote.
Justice Thomas: confirmed by only 52-48 after being confirmed for the DC Circuit in 1989 on a voice vote.
The failure to raise issues in lower court confirmation hearings has never been a bar to raising them for the far more consequential seats on the Supreme Court.
B. Hussein Obama - Muslim World Suck Up Tour - Did He REALLY Say This ??
Oh yes he did....
Welcome to America, "One of the Largest Muslim Countries in the World"! [Andy McCarthy]
Yeah, he said it. Do you think Obama would ever call America a Judeo-Christian country? Anyway, maybe we should rewrite our Constitution to make sharia part of our fundamental law, just like the State Department has done in those other Islamic democracies it is building . . .
From the New York Times:
As President Obama prepared to leave Washington to fly to the Middle East, he conducted several television and radio interviews at the White House to frame the goals for a five-day trip, including the highly-anticipated speech Thursday at Cairo University in Egypt. In an interview with Laura Haim on Canal Plus, a French television station, Mr. Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” ...
The president said the United States and other parts of the Western world “have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.... And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world,” Mr. Obama said. “And so there’s got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.”
Mind you, the total number of Muslims in the U.S. is a subject of intense debate (CAIR, for example, argues for a figure above 6 million because it wants the Muslim population to be thought greater than the Jewish population). The probability, though, is that there are no more than about 3 million Muslims living in the U.S. (See, e.g., this entry from Wikipedia (collecting varying estimates), and this one from Daniel Pipes in 2001, observing that the credible estimates put the figure back then at somewhere between 1.8 and — an unlikely high of — 2.8 million). This, it should be noted, does not translate into 3 million American Muslims, for many Muslims in the United States are are nationals of other countries (although, I suppose, by Justice Department standards, it would translate into approximately 6 million Muslim voters.)
By contrast, of the approximately 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, there are about 200 million Muslims in Indonesia, 196 million in India, 165 million in Pakistan, 132 million in Bangladesh, 75 million in Egypt, 64 million in Iran, 33 million in Morocco, 32 million in Algeria, 31 million in Afghanistan, 26 million in Iraq, 25 million in Ethiopia, 24 million in Saudi Arabia, 20 million in China, and 15 million in Russia, to name just a few countries. In fact, there are 2 to 3 times as many Muslims in Burkina Faso (approx. 7.5 million) as there are in America. So obviously, one can see why the president would say the United States is "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."
-------------------------------
Needless to say, Obama's comments have provoked much commentary and outrage today...
A poster to the Caucus blog makes the key point (even if you disagree with the poster's estimate of the American Muslim population):
As an American Muslim, I appreciate what the President is getting at. But it is a bit of an exaggeration to say that the US could be considered one of the LARGEST Muslim countries in the world. There’s still only less than 10 million of us (typically anti-Muslim bigots tend to give the lowest, low-ball estimates, while identity politics playing leaders within Muslim communities favor higher end estimates). Besides, the US is SECULAR, democratic country, not one defined by ANY religion, “racial” or ethnic group. What he perhaps could have said is that the US is one of the freest and best countries in the world to be a practicing Muslim, or for that matter a member of any or no religion.
The Largest Muslim Nation [Michael Rubin]
Andy, Jonah, aside from the factual issue here about Muslim population count, could I suggest that there is a greater problem reflected in Obama's statement? Obama has embraced cultural relativism, and argued that the United States cannot and should not impose its values on other countries. Whether we should or not is a debate for another time. But even if he chooses not to preach American values, rather than define the United States on religious terms, why not at least stand up for the values which made the United States great when describing the United States? The United States is not "a Muslim country." Nor should it be, in my opinion, a "Christian country," except in as much as Western liberalism and the core values of Christianity or Judaism or any other religion overlap with Western liberalism.
Rather, the United States is a country built on the very concepts about which Obama now seems embarrassed: freedom, liberty, respect for property, separation of church and state, constitutionalism, and rule-of-law. Rather than pander to Egyptians as if Egypt is just another constituency on a whistle-stop tour, perhaps Obama should emphasize our freedoms as the core of the American brand name.
It reminds me of an example — pointed out several years ago, I believe by Rob Satloff — of a State Department pamphlet about Muslims in America. About 90 percent of the women in its pictures were veiled. The problem is, that perhaps only 10 percent of American Muslims cover themselves. And yet, rather than send the message that Muslims in America could be free to dress however they wanted without fear of getting beaten, stabbed, or have acid thrown in their faces, the State Department chose to pander and implied acceptance of a far more conservative definition of proper Islam.
Re: Largest Muslim Nation [Andy McCarthy]
Michael, in the April 20 edition of NR, I wrote an essay called "Beyond Terrorism." The point was to argue that — as President Obama said in that interview reported on (as Jonah says, without much examination) by the Times — "the United States and other parts of the Western world 'have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.'"
The difference is that I mean it and he doesn't.
Anyway, the president and Islam's apologists in the West do not speak about the core American values you mention because, if they did, it would become painfully clear that major aspects of sharia (the Islamic legal code) are antithetical to Western democracy. The "Islam" that the president wants to "better educate" about is not the one that actually exists. In the essay, I put it this way
The Koran contains many an ode to tolerance, most of which are from Mohammed’s early Meccan period, when he was seeking to recruit converts to the new religion. Many such benign injunctions were abrogated by the contrary, brutalizing verses of the later Medinan period, when the warrior prophet spread Islam principally by the sword. That inconvenient fact is ignored by the “religion of peace” crowd, whose unparalleled favorite scripture is Sura 2:256, the instruction that there shall be “no compulsion in religion.” On the basis of this directive, they argue, à la Jacqui Smith [the British Home Secretary — or at least she was until she got sacked about five minutes ago], that jihadist violence must be anti-Islamic. A
u contraire. While militants would surely be delighted if, say, the destruction of the Twin Towers induced everyone to convert, that is not the direct goal of jihadist activity — violent or not. The goal is to induce each targeted jurisdiction to adopt sharia. The Muslim Brotherhood’s chief theoretician, Sayyid Qutb, explained that forcible jihad proceeds whenever Islam is obstructed by “the political system of the state, the socio-economic system based on races and classes, and behind all these, the military power of the government.” This system is then supplanted by Islamic law. At that point, Islam can be “addressed to peoples’ hearts and minds,” purportedly without compulsion, “and they are free to accept or reject it with an open mind.”
Jihad is not trying to convert you; it is seeking the imposition of Allah’s law. That law happens to be antithetical to bedrock American principles: It establishes a state religion, rejects the freedom of citizens to govern themselves irrespective of a religious code, proscribes freedom of conscience, proscribes economic freedom, destroys the principle of equality under the law, subjugates non-Muslims in the humiliation of dhimmitude, and calls for the execution of homosexuals and apostates. Nevertheless, its adoption produces what Islamists portray as the non-coercive environment in which people then “freely” embrace Islam. . . .
About America the Muslim Country ... [Andy McCarthy]
the President might want to have a look at Liberty & Tyranny — somebody should be able to get it for him since it is, yet again, number one on the NYT bestseller list. As I outline in a description of the relevant chapter in a review for The New Criterion, Mark
is
especially trenchant on the animating role of faith in the American founding, and, consequently, its place atop the statist hit-list. The Framers understood “that liberty and religious liberty are inseparable.” But Christianity, unapologetically, was and is America’s dominant religion and it is undeniable that Judeo-Christian values heavily influenced our founding law. The point of religious liberty was to forefend the establishment of a theocracy of the type Tocqueville discerned in the Islamic world, where the Qur’an imposed not merely religious tenets but control over every aspect of life. The Supreme Court’s fabrication of a “wall of separation” in its 1947 Everson decision (authored by one-time Klansman Hugo Black, the first justice appointed by FDR), installing official hostility to religion, was “a wretched betrayal of America’s founding.” As a result, “American courts sit today as supreme secular councils, which, like Islam’s supreme religious councils, dictate all manner of approved behavior respecting religion.”
Two Presidential Speeches in Egypt [Dana Perino]
The media is devoting a lot of time previewing President Obama’s speech that he’s giving tomorrow in Egypt. I wonder how many reporters will take the time to read President Bush’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Egypt last year — it’s worth a second look.I’ll be curious to hear what the president says. I expect he will touch on America’s respect for the Islamic faith and religious tolerance in our country (though I’m not sure he will discuss the lack of such tolerance in other countries).It’s likely that he will paint a future of the Middle East as a place of prosperity, peace, and democracy — although he has gone out of his way not to use the word “democracy” in the past, I hope he will use it tomorrow.The question I have is whether he’s willing to talk about the difficult steps on the road to that destination. In President Bush’s speech, he made specific points about supporting democracy advocates, free and fair elections, free-market entrepreneurs, and women.
Given that, the questions I have are:
* Will Obama be willing to speak out against the jailing of political dissidents in Egypt, as President Bush did?
* Will he stand firmly for free elections, even when we may not like the outcome?
* Will he support free-trade measures to help the Middle East connect itself to the global economy?
* Will he be willing to recognize all that the United States has done to protect Muslims over the past several decades — in Kuwait, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq? And not to forget the extraordinary assistance after the tsunami in South Asia and the earthquake in Pakistan (I remember well how Pakistanis up in the mountains called U.S. Chinook helicopters “angels of mercy”).
In all of my time working for him, I noticed that President Bush did not see people as “Muslims” any more than he saw them as Jews or Christians or Buddhists or atheists. He saw them as individuals, each with God-given value, each deserving the universal gift of freedom. The people of the Middle East should be treated with dignity not because they are Muslims, but because they are human beings. And it was on that premise that President Bush reached out to them.
Multiculturalism Trumps Freedom? [Victor Davis Hanson]
In a recent interview President Obama, I think, was logically trying to say that practical hurdles and costs in the real world mean that we cannot simply force other countries to chose a wiser form of consensual government than their own. Instead, he suggested that, "The message I hope to deliver is that democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion — those are not simply principles of the west to be hoisted on these countries. But, rather what I believe to be universal principles that they can embrace and affirm as part of their national identity, the danger, I think, is when the United States, or any country, thinks that we can simply impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture."
So I'm not sure what Obama ended up saying, or rather, as usual, I think he is trying to say everything and thus nothing:
Democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc. are welcome universal aspirations, regardless of culture and are all without a particular cultural pedigree?
They are largely Western principles that need not be emulated by others, especially through the use of coercion?
Under the right circumstances, such universal principles can properly mesh into Muslim national identity?
In fact, these principles cannot mesh into other cultures with different histories and cultures without an undue and improper amount of coercion?
I think Obama's multiculturalist postmodernist answer would be something like the following:
"Democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion are not properly Western principles as much as universal aspirations, but unfortunately we in the West claim them to be exclusively our own and to be superior to other narratives, and thus we try to force countries with different cultures and histories to embrace them when in fact they are not so universal or so superior after all — at least to the extent that their artificial spread requires anything other than a sort of natural osmosis."
So if Saudi Arabia beheads apostates, or the Sudan practices genocide, are we to understand that these are epiphenomena of indigenous history and culture, in a practical sense properly immune from antidotes like Western-inspired rule of law, human rights, and democracy?
Welcome to America, "One of the Largest Muslim Countries in the World"! [Andy McCarthy]
Yeah, he said it. Do you think Obama would ever call America a Judeo-Christian country? Anyway, maybe we should rewrite our Constitution to make sharia part of our fundamental law, just like the State Department has done in those other Islamic democracies it is building . . .
From the New York Times:
As President Obama prepared to leave Washington to fly to the Middle East, he conducted several television and radio interviews at the White House to frame the goals for a five-day trip, including the highly-anticipated speech Thursday at Cairo University in Egypt. In an interview with Laura Haim on Canal Plus, a French television station, Mr. Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” ...
The president said the United States and other parts of the Western world “have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.... And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world,” Mr. Obama said. “And so there’s got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.”
Mind you, the total number of Muslims in the U.S. is a subject of intense debate (CAIR, for example, argues for a figure above 6 million because it wants the Muslim population to be thought greater than the Jewish population). The probability, though, is that there are no more than about 3 million Muslims living in the U.S. (See, e.g., this entry from Wikipedia (collecting varying estimates), and this one from Daniel Pipes in 2001, observing that the credible estimates put the figure back then at somewhere between 1.8 and — an unlikely high of — 2.8 million). This, it should be noted, does not translate into 3 million American Muslims, for many Muslims in the United States are are nationals of other countries (although, I suppose, by Justice Department standards, it would translate into approximately 6 million Muslim voters.)
By contrast, of the approximately 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, there are about 200 million Muslims in Indonesia, 196 million in India, 165 million in Pakistan, 132 million in Bangladesh, 75 million in Egypt, 64 million in Iran, 33 million in Morocco, 32 million in Algeria, 31 million in Afghanistan, 26 million in Iraq, 25 million in Ethiopia, 24 million in Saudi Arabia, 20 million in China, and 15 million in Russia, to name just a few countries. In fact, there are 2 to 3 times as many Muslims in Burkina Faso (approx. 7.5 million) as there are in America. So obviously, one can see why the president would say the United States is "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."
-------------------------------
Needless to say, Obama's comments have provoked much commentary and outrage today...
A poster to the Caucus blog makes the key point (even if you disagree with the poster's estimate of the American Muslim population):
As an American Muslim, I appreciate what the President is getting at. But it is a bit of an exaggeration to say that the US could be considered one of the LARGEST Muslim countries in the world. There’s still only less than 10 million of us (typically anti-Muslim bigots tend to give the lowest, low-ball estimates, while identity politics playing leaders within Muslim communities favor higher end estimates). Besides, the US is SECULAR, democratic country, not one defined by ANY religion, “racial” or ethnic group. What he perhaps could have said is that the US is one of the freest and best countries in the world to be a practicing Muslim, or for that matter a member of any or no religion.
The Largest Muslim Nation [Michael Rubin]
Andy, Jonah, aside from the factual issue here about Muslim population count, could I suggest that there is a greater problem reflected in Obama's statement? Obama has embraced cultural relativism, and argued that the United States cannot and should not impose its values on other countries. Whether we should or not is a debate for another time. But even if he chooses not to preach American values, rather than define the United States on religious terms, why not at least stand up for the values which made the United States great when describing the United States? The United States is not "a Muslim country." Nor should it be, in my opinion, a "Christian country," except in as much as Western liberalism and the core values of Christianity or Judaism or any other religion overlap with Western liberalism.
Rather, the United States is a country built on the very concepts about which Obama now seems embarrassed: freedom, liberty, respect for property, separation of church and state, constitutionalism, and rule-of-law. Rather than pander to Egyptians as if Egypt is just another constituency on a whistle-stop tour, perhaps Obama should emphasize our freedoms as the core of the American brand name.
It reminds me of an example — pointed out several years ago, I believe by Rob Satloff — of a State Department pamphlet about Muslims in America. About 90 percent of the women in its pictures were veiled. The problem is, that perhaps only 10 percent of American Muslims cover themselves. And yet, rather than send the message that Muslims in America could be free to dress however they wanted without fear of getting beaten, stabbed, or have acid thrown in their faces, the State Department chose to pander and implied acceptance of a far more conservative definition of proper Islam.
Re: Largest Muslim Nation [Andy McCarthy]
Michael, in the April 20 edition of NR, I wrote an essay called "Beyond Terrorism." The point was to argue that — as President Obama said in that interview reported on (as Jonah says, without much examination) by the Times — "the United States and other parts of the Western world 'have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.'"
The difference is that I mean it and he doesn't.
Anyway, the president and Islam's apologists in the West do not speak about the core American values you mention because, if they did, it would become painfully clear that major aspects of sharia (the Islamic legal code) are antithetical to Western democracy. The "Islam" that the president wants to "better educate" about is not the one that actually exists. In the essay, I put it this way
The Koran contains many an ode to tolerance, most of which are from Mohammed’s early Meccan period, when he was seeking to recruit converts to the new religion. Many such benign injunctions were abrogated by the contrary, brutalizing verses of the later Medinan period, when the warrior prophet spread Islam principally by the sword. That inconvenient fact is ignored by the “religion of peace” crowd, whose unparalleled favorite scripture is Sura 2:256, the instruction that there shall be “no compulsion in religion.” On the basis of this directive, they argue, à la Jacqui Smith [the British Home Secretary — or at least she was until she got sacked about five minutes ago], that jihadist violence must be anti-Islamic. A
u contraire. While militants would surely be delighted if, say, the destruction of the Twin Towers induced everyone to convert, that is not the direct goal of jihadist activity — violent or not. The goal is to induce each targeted jurisdiction to adopt sharia. The Muslim Brotherhood’s chief theoretician, Sayyid Qutb, explained that forcible jihad proceeds whenever Islam is obstructed by “the political system of the state, the socio-economic system based on races and classes, and behind all these, the military power of the government.” This system is then supplanted by Islamic law. At that point, Islam can be “addressed to peoples’ hearts and minds,” purportedly without compulsion, “and they are free to accept or reject it with an open mind.”
Jihad is not trying to convert you; it is seeking the imposition of Allah’s law. That law happens to be antithetical to bedrock American principles: It establishes a state religion, rejects the freedom of citizens to govern themselves irrespective of a religious code, proscribes freedom of conscience, proscribes economic freedom, destroys the principle of equality under the law, subjugates non-Muslims in the humiliation of dhimmitude, and calls for the execution of homosexuals and apostates. Nevertheless, its adoption produces what Islamists portray as the non-coercive environment in which people then “freely” embrace Islam. . . .
About America the Muslim Country ... [Andy McCarthy]
the President might want to have a look at Liberty & Tyranny — somebody should be able to get it for him since it is, yet again, number one on the NYT bestseller list. As I outline in a description of the relevant chapter in a review for The New Criterion, Mark
is
especially trenchant on the animating role of faith in the American founding, and, consequently, its place atop the statist hit-list. The Framers understood “that liberty and religious liberty are inseparable.” But Christianity, unapologetically, was and is America’s dominant religion and it is undeniable that Judeo-Christian values heavily influenced our founding law. The point of religious liberty was to forefend the establishment of a theocracy of the type Tocqueville discerned in the Islamic world, where the Qur’an imposed not merely religious tenets but control over every aspect of life. The Supreme Court’s fabrication of a “wall of separation” in its 1947 Everson decision (authored by one-time Klansman Hugo Black, the first justice appointed by FDR), installing official hostility to religion, was “a wretched betrayal of America’s founding.” As a result, “American courts sit today as supreme secular councils, which, like Islam’s supreme religious councils, dictate all manner of approved behavior respecting religion.”
Two Presidential Speeches in Egypt [Dana Perino]
The media is devoting a lot of time previewing President Obama’s speech that he’s giving tomorrow in Egypt. I wonder how many reporters will take the time to read President Bush’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Egypt last year — it’s worth a second look.I’ll be curious to hear what the president says. I expect he will touch on America’s respect for the Islamic faith and religious tolerance in our country (though I’m not sure he will discuss the lack of such tolerance in other countries).It’s likely that he will paint a future of the Middle East as a place of prosperity, peace, and democracy — although he has gone out of his way not to use the word “democracy” in the past, I hope he will use it tomorrow.The question I have is whether he’s willing to talk about the difficult steps on the road to that destination. In President Bush’s speech, he made specific points about supporting democracy advocates, free and fair elections, free-market entrepreneurs, and women.
Given that, the questions I have are:
* Will Obama be willing to speak out against the jailing of political dissidents in Egypt, as President Bush did?
* Will he stand firmly for free elections, even when we may not like the outcome?
* Will he support free-trade measures to help the Middle East connect itself to the global economy?
* Will he be willing to recognize all that the United States has done to protect Muslims over the past several decades — in Kuwait, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq? And not to forget the extraordinary assistance after the tsunami in South Asia and the earthquake in Pakistan (I remember well how Pakistanis up in the mountains called U.S. Chinook helicopters “angels of mercy”).
In all of my time working for him, I noticed that President Bush did not see people as “Muslims” any more than he saw them as Jews or Christians or Buddhists or atheists. He saw them as individuals, each with God-given value, each deserving the universal gift of freedom. The people of the Middle East should be treated with dignity not because they are Muslims, but because they are human beings. And it was on that premise that President Bush reached out to them.
Multiculturalism Trumps Freedom? [Victor Davis Hanson]
In a recent interview President Obama, I think, was logically trying to say that practical hurdles and costs in the real world mean that we cannot simply force other countries to chose a wiser form of consensual government than their own. Instead, he suggested that, "The message I hope to deliver is that democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion — those are not simply principles of the west to be hoisted on these countries. But, rather what I believe to be universal principles that they can embrace and affirm as part of their national identity, the danger, I think, is when the United States, or any country, thinks that we can simply impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture."
So I'm not sure what Obama ended up saying, or rather, as usual, I think he is trying to say everything and thus nothing:
Democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc. are welcome universal aspirations, regardless of culture and are all without a particular cultural pedigree?
They are largely Western principles that need not be emulated by others, especially through the use of coercion?
Under the right circumstances, such universal principles can properly mesh into Muslim national identity?
In fact, these principles cannot mesh into other cultures with different histories and cultures without an undue and improper amount of coercion?
I think Obama's multiculturalist postmodernist answer would be something like the following:
"Democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion are not properly Western principles as much as universal aspirations, but unfortunately we in the West claim them to be exclusively our own and to be superior to other narratives, and thus we try to force countries with different cultures and histories to embrace them when in fact they are not so universal or so superior after all — at least to the extent that their artificial spread requires anything other than a sort of natural osmosis."
So if Saudi Arabia beheads apostates, or the Sudan practices genocide, are we to understand that these are epiphenomena of indigenous history and culture, in a practical sense properly immune from antidotes like Western-inspired rule of law, human rights, and democracy?
Welcome to ACORN Nation, thanks to AG Holder
D I S G R A C E F U L (I told ya so !)
The Democrats Are Already Winning the 2010 Elections — Which Is What Happens When the Justice Department Is REALLY Politicized [Andy McCarthy]
Never a dull moment with the Justice Department of Eric Holder, aka "the right man at the right time to protect our citizens in the critical years ahead."
In fact, it would be more accurate to say he's the right man at the right time to protect our non-citizens in the critical years ahead. Unbelievably (or, perhaps, entirely too believably), Holder has told Georgia that it may no longer verify identification in order to ensure that voting is done only by citizens eligible to vote. The AP reports:
ATLANTA — The Justice Department has rejected Georgia's system of using Social Security numbers and driver's license data to check whether prospective voters are citizens, a process that was a subject of a federal lawsuit in the weeks leading up to November's election.
In a letter released on Monday, the Justice Department said the state's voter verification program is frequently inaccurate and has a "discriminatory effect" on minority voters. The decision means Georgia must halt the citizenship checks, although the state can still ask the Justice Department to reconsider, according to the letter and to the Georgia secretary of state's office.
"This flawed system frequently subjects a disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register to vote," Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's civil rights division, said. King's letter was sent to Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker on Friday.
Georgia is required to seek DOJ approval before implementing voting protocols because of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (see George Will here and Roger Clegg here). Quite apart from the fact that the VRA is an anachronism in modern America, is there not something perverse about cancelling out the votes of eligible citizens — the inevitable result of permitting ineligible citizens and non-citizens to vote, as DOJ is effectively forcing Georgia to do here — under the auspices of something called the "Voting Rights Act"?
Michelle Malkin notes that Georgia's secretary of state, Karen Handel, has blasted DOJ's move:
The decision by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to deny preclearance of Georgia’s already implemented citizenship verification process shows a shocking disregard for the integrity of our elections. With this decision, DOJ has now barred Georgia from continuing the citizenship verification program that DOJ lawyers helped to craft. DOJ’s decision also nullifies the orders of two federal courts directing Georgia to implement the procedure for the 2008 general election.
The decision comes seven months after Georgia requested an expedited review of the preclearance submission.
“DOJ has thrown open the door for activist organizations such as ACORN to register non-citizens to vote in Georgia’s elections, and the state has no ability to verify an applicant’s citizenship status or whether the individual even exists. DOJ completely disregarded Georgia’s obvious and direct interest in preventing non-citizens from voting, instead siding with the ACLU and MALDEF. Clearly, politics took priority over common sense and good public policy.
Handel's letter demonstrates the absurdity of the claims by DOJ's Civil Rights Division of undue burdens simple verification — i.e., the process airport security personnel put you through if you want to get on an airplane and Amtrak randomly puts you through to get on a train — imposes on minority voters:
It is important to underscore that not a single person has come forward to say he or she could not vote because of the verification process. Further, while DOJ argues that the process is somehow discriminatory, the historic voter turnout among Hispanic and African-American voters in the 2008 general elections clearly says otherwise.
This outrage does not happen in a vacuum. It comes on the heels of the Civil Rights Division's astounding dismissal of the slam-dunk voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia (a case in which the Justice Department surrendered after it had already won), and Justice's blatant undermining of a federal law that commands states to purge their voter registration lists of ineligible voters (e.g., citizens who have died or moved out of state) in order to minimize opportunities for fraud. (See Hans von Spakovsky's incisive work on these issues, here and here). At the same time the Justice Department is busy preserving the infrastructure of fraud, congressional Democrats are filling the overflowing coffers of the notorious voter-fraud practitioners at ACORN — longtime allies of President Obama.
The Democrats Are Already Winning the 2010 Elections — Which Is What Happens When the Justice Department Is REALLY Politicized [Andy McCarthy]
Never a dull moment with the Justice Department of Eric Holder, aka "the right man at the right time to protect our citizens in the critical years ahead."
In fact, it would be more accurate to say he's the right man at the right time to protect our non-citizens in the critical years ahead. Unbelievably (or, perhaps, entirely too believably), Holder has told Georgia that it may no longer verify identification in order to ensure that voting is done only by citizens eligible to vote. The AP reports:
ATLANTA — The Justice Department has rejected Georgia's system of using Social Security numbers and driver's license data to check whether prospective voters are citizens, a process that was a subject of a federal lawsuit in the weeks leading up to November's election.
In a letter released on Monday, the Justice Department said the state's voter verification program is frequently inaccurate and has a "discriminatory effect" on minority voters. The decision means Georgia must halt the citizenship checks, although the state can still ask the Justice Department to reconsider, according to the letter and to the Georgia secretary of state's office.
"This flawed system frequently subjects a disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register to vote," Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's civil rights division, said. King's letter was sent to Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker on Friday.
Georgia is required to seek DOJ approval before implementing voting protocols because of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (see George Will here and Roger Clegg here). Quite apart from the fact that the VRA is an anachronism in modern America, is there not something perverse about cancelling out the votes of eligible citizens — the inevitable result of permitting ineligible citizens and non-citizens to vote, as DOJ is effectively forcing Georgia to do here — under the auspices of something called the "Voting Rights Act"?
Michelle Malkin notes that Georgia's secretary of state, Karen Handel, has blasted DOJ's move:
The decision by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to deny preclearance of Georgia’s already implemented citizenship verification process shows a shocking disregard for the integrity of our elections. With this decision, DOJ has now barred Georgia from continuing the citizenship verification program that DOJ lawyers helped to craft. DOJ’s decision also nullifies the orders of two federal courts directing Georgia to implement the procedure for the 2008 general election.
The decision comes seven months after Georgia requested an expedited review of the preclearance submission.
“DOJ has thrown open the door for activist organizations such as ACORN to register non-citizens to vote in Georgia’s elections, and the state has no ability to verify an applicant’s citizenship status or whether the individual even exists. DOJ completely disregarded Georgia’s obvious and direct interest in preventing non-citizens from voting, instead siding with the ACLU and MALDEF. Clearly, politics took priority over common sense and good public policy.
Handel's letter demonstrates the absurdity of the claims by DOJ's Civil Rights Division of undue burdens simple verification — i.e., the process airport security personnel put you through if you want to get on an airplane and Amtrak randomly puts you through to get on a train — imposes on minority voters:
It is important to underscore that not a single person has come forward to say he or she could not vote because of the verification process. Further, while DOJ argues that the process is somehow discriminatory, the historic voter turnout among Hispanic and African-American voters in the 2008 general elections clearly says otherwise.
This outrage does not happen in a vacuum. It comes on the heels of the Civil Rights Division's astounding dismissal of the slam-dunk voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia (a case in which the Justice Department surrendered after it had already won), and Justice's blatant undermining of a federal law that commands states to purge their voter registration lists of ineligible voters (e.g., citizens who have died or moved out of state) in order to minimize opportunities for fraud. (See Hans von Spakovsky's incisive work on these issues, here and here). At the same time the Justice Department is busy preserving the infrastructure of fraud, congressional Democrats are filling the overflowing coffers of the notorious voter-fraud practitioners at ACORN — longtime allies of President Obama.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Obama & UAW Screw the Taxpayers
The compliant media allows Obama to get away with empty claims of UAW "sacrifices", while the taxpayer gets hosed:
The U.S. taxpayer will be providing up to $115,000 in incentive and severance payments for tenured GM workers, according to the Kansas City Star.
GM is offering $20,000 cash and a $25,000 car voucher to production workers who decide to retire with their benefits.
For skilled-trades workers, the cash portion of the retirement package is $45,000 with the same car voucher.
For those not eligible to retire, GM also is offering more cash to walk away and sever all ties with the company, along with the $25,000 car voucher.
Employees with less than 10 years could get $45,000. Those with at least 10 years but less than 20 are being offered $80,000. For those with 20 years or more, it’s $115,000.
Those with 28 or 29 years at GM are being offered a bridge to retirement, with the company providing a monthly gross wage of $2,850 or $2,900 until qualifying for retirement.
So much for those massive sacrifices undertaken by the UAW to make GM such a modern, streamlined company.
(courtesy of Zero Hedge)
The U.S. taxpayer will be providing up to $115,000 in incentive and severance payments for tenured GM workers, according to the Kansas City Star.
GM is offering $20,000 cash and a $25,000 car voucher to production workers who decide to retire with their benefits.
For skilled-trades workers, the cash portion of the retirement package is $45,000 with the same car voucher.
For those not eligible to retire, GM also is offering more cash to walk away and sever all ties with the company, along with the $25,000 car voucher.
Employees with less than 10 years could get $45,000. Those with at least 10 years but less than 20 are being offered $80,000. For those with 20 years or more, it’s $115,000.
Those with 28 or 29 years at GM are being offered a bridge to retirement, with the company providing a monthly gross wage of $2,850 or $2,900 until qualifying for retirement.
So much for those massive sacrifices undertaken by the UAW to make GM such a modern, streamlined company.
(courtesy of Zero Hedge)
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Now for some humor: Ted Rall slams Obama
http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x124603932/Ted-Rall-It-s-increasingly-evident-that-Obama-should-resign
We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.
read the whole thing.....
We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.
read the whole thing.....
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