Obama's disconnect with the Islamic world

I was going avoid blogging until May but it is all too much.

President Obama is in Turkey spreading his gospel of hope and change, and sucking up to the Muslims.

He declared that the United States is not at war with Islam. Gee, that rings a bell. Oh yeah, it was that George Bush guy who used to say that regularly.

Hmmm. That doesn’t seem to be much of a change.

Is Obama leaving troops in Iraq? Yes. Is he sending more to fight Muslims in Afghanistan? Yes. So how is this a different message from the previous one?

Maybe this is the change. He has declared the U.S. to be in a partnership with the Muslim world “in rolling back a fringe ideology that people of all faiths reject."...

I wonder what he means and who he is talking about. First, where would we find this “fringe ideology”? In the Koran and the Hadith, that’s where. If the Koran is the ineffable word of God, as Muslims claim, how can it be a fringe ideology?

And who are the faiths that are rejecting it? The head of the Church of England has been pushing for the introduction of Sharia law. The Pope has fallen all over himself to kiss Islamic ass after a strong start in naming the real problem.

What Muslim community has disavowed the tenets of the Koran and the examples of Mohammed that require Islam to be the dominant faith and required infidels to submit or die? Name just one, Mr. Obama. There is a problem, to do so would be to admit that the Koran is not the word of God. And if you admit that, then you open the doors to a reformation.

What Muslim community asked to be a partner with the United States in fighting this “fringe ideology”, anyway? The idea of a partnership is that it is a two-way street. See below for the Turkish Prime Minister's idea of a partnership.

Then there was this “pants dropper”.

"We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over so many centuries to shape the world for the better, including my own country.”

Fourteen hundred years of jihad, and counting. How does this make the world better and exactly what has been the contribution of Islam to the richness of American life, besides a greater attention to national security after 9/11?

Did Mr. Obama read the remarks of Turkey’s Prime Minister from a few days earlier?

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rejected attempts to call Turkey the representative of moderate Islam. "It is unacceptable for us to agree with such a definition. Turkey has never been a country to represent such a concept. Moreover, Islam cannot be classified as moderate or not," Erdoğan said, speaking at Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.

So who was Obama trying to partner with in tackling the “fringe ideology”? Wasn’t that always supposed to be the “moderate” Muslims, who Turkey disavows? Maybe he should try his hopey-changey speeches on Hamas and Hezbollah, because the Turks aren’t buying into it.

Erdoğan pointed to the lack of dialogue between different religions and cultures, which has led to distressing incidents in the world history.
"The animosity, unfortunately, strengthens the scenarios that there is a so-called clash of civilizations in the world. Those, who defend such speculations, may go further to identify the terrorism with Islam which is based on peace," he maintained, adding that the situation helps those who try to globalize Islamophobia.

So, the real problem in the world is not Islamic imperialism, it the “irrational fear” of Islam.

Erdoğan also wanted Western societies to be more open to cooperation and dialogue with the East. "It should be known that adopting a malicious and offending approach toward the sensitive issues of Islamic world by hiding behind some democratic freedoms like freedom of speech and right of free publication is unacceptable," he said.

Yup, we sure wouldn’t want the cornerstone of our civilization, free speech, to stand in the way of the Islamic world.

Drawing attention to the importance of mutual understanding and respect, Erdoğan stated that he believes and respects Moses and Jesus, and accepts them as prophets. "I expect the same attitude from a Jew or a Christian toward my own prophet," Erdoğan noted. He underlined the importance of Turkey’s European Union membership in terms of establishing connections between the West and the East....

As Robert Spencer points out, in Jihad Watch, from where I pulled these quotations, saying that Moses and Jesus were prophets in a line of Islamic prophets, ending with Mohammed, is not the same as saying that Muslims accept the depiction of Moses in the Old Testament and that of Jesus in the New Testament. In short, those books are false, and only the Koran is the truth.

Mr. Obama may not see this as a clash of civilizations but Mr. Erdoğan does not harbour the same delusion.