Obama Ramadanadingdong

Posted by Pamela Geller Aug 13th 2010 Comments (121)

NOTE: Don't forget to read the comments.

Barack Obama this week extended his “best wishes to Muslims in America and around the world” and wished them a “Ramadan Kareem.” And he wrote, as he did in last year’s Ramadan message also, about “the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.”

Which principles do we hold in common? Death for apostates? The legitimacy of honor killing? I don’t begin to know what Obama is talking about here. Other religions are not tolerated in Muslim countries. Churches and synagogues do not exist in some Islamic countries, notably our “ally” Saudi Arabia, and where they do exist, they are constantly targeted and in myriad instances attacked. Churches in Nigeria and Indonesia have been attacked just recently.

Where is the dignity of women living under Sharia? Women’s rights under Islam are practically non-existent. Oppression, subjugation and gender apartheid define the treatment of women in Islam. Islamic anti-semitism defines the faith. Islamic aggression and intolerance of the Jews and the Jewish state have become the rallying cry of the ummah and the OIC-driven UN – abetted by Obama.

Obama also says that “Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality.” Diversity? Where is the diversity? Non-Muslims are anging on in Muslim countries only as tiny, persecuted minorities. Maybe Obama doesn’t know, or doesn’t care, that the word abd in Arabic means both “black” and “slave,” and that throughout Islamic history Arabs have exalted themselves above non-Arab Muslims. Even today in Darfur, Arab Muslims are terrorizing and killing non-Arab Muslims.

“And here in the United States,” Obama went on, “Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country. Islam has always been part of America? Really? Since when? And as for the “extraordinary contributions to our country,” all I can think of is 9/11. To what else would Obama be referring?

While on its face, Obama’s goal of reconciliation with the Islamic world seems to explain his obsession with all things Muslim, it is hard to reconcile his obsession with dar al Islam and his rejection of Christianity in myriad ways. Take, for example, when Georgetown University covered over the monogram “IHS” – an abbreviation for the Greek form of the name of Jesus Christ — because it was inscribed on a pediment on the stage when President Obama spoke at the university last year, and Obama told Georgetown to cover up all Christian signs and symbols there. Or Obama’s cancellation of the National Day of Prayer service at the White House. Or that Obama has still not joined a church, after being in office a year and a half.

The world’s preeminent historian of Islamic anti-Semitism, Bat Ye’or, saw this coming last year when she commented on Obama’s June 4, 2009 speech to the Muslim world in Cairo:

Pres. Barack Obama was elected, by an overwhelming majority, on a program in which America’s rapprochement with Islam stands pre-eminent. This is a legitimate political aim in the quest for world peace. The questions are: how to achieve it, and why there is no reciprocal effort from the Muslim world represented by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). This body could express its regrets for over a millennium of jihad wars, land expropriations, enslavements, and humiliations of the conquered non-Muslim populations on three continents.

That’s right: where is the mutual respect? Obama keeps reaching out to the Islamic world, and where are they reaching out to us? Where is the respect for the West and our unending patience and charity toward the Muslim world, and our increasing subjugation to Islamic law in the West? Defaming Islam is the great crime nowadays. Defaming Christianity and Judaism is the sport of the day, but dare to insult Islam and they’ll smear and maybe even prosecute you, the way the Dutch are prosecuting Geert Wilders. Free speech be damned in the age of jihad.

The OIC will never apologize, of course, because there is no self-criticism or self-examination in Islam, but the leader of the waning free world would never think to mention that kind of thing in his Ramadan greetings. It wouldn’t be in keeping with the spirit of the season.