Our dilemma seems to be that we should "wait and see," but if we wait too long or see too much, then what happens? (BtB Feb.2009)
President Barack Obama tours the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt on June 4, 2009. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza) .... The photograph may not be manipulated in any way or used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement of the President...
I noticed during Obama's Cairo speech that he said, "revealed." I think I even wrote it on the back of some envelope; it's around here somewhere. But then I forgot to blog or tweet it. Something else must have happened in the meantime, I can't imagine what it was, maybe another Czar?
Anyway, Frank Gaffney noticed it as well. And he got paid to write about it in the Washington Times. Where is that envelope?
During his White House years, William Jefferson Clinton -- someone Judge Sonia Sotomayor might call a "white male" -- was dubbed "America's first black president" by a black admirer. Applying the standard of identity politics and pandering to a special interest that earned Mr. Clinton that distinction, Barack Hussein Obama would have to be considered America's first Muslim president.
This is not to say, necessarily, that Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim any more than Mr. Clinton actually is black. After his five months in office, and most especially after his just-concluded visit to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, however, a stunning conclusion seems increasingly plausible: The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich.
What little we know about Mr. Obama's youth certainly suggests that he not only had a Kenyan father who was Muslim, but spent his early, formative years as one in Indonesia. As the president likes to say, "much has been made" -- in this case by him and his campaign handlers -- of the fact that he became a Christian as an adult in Chicago, under the now-notorious Pastor Jeremiah A. Wright.
With Mr. Obama's unbelievably ballyhooed address in Cairo Thursday to what he calls "the Muslim world" (hereafter known as "the Speech"), there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself. Consider the following indicators:
• Mr. Obama referred four times in his speech to "the Holy Koran." Non-Muslims -- even pandering ones -- generally don't use that Islamic formulation.
• Mr. Obama established his firsthand knowledge of Islam (albeit without mentioning his reported upbringing in the faith) with the statement, "I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed." Again, "revealed" is a depiction Muslims use to reflect their conviction that the Koran is the word of God, as dictated to Muhammad.
• Then the president made a statement no believing Christian -- certainly not one versed, as he professes to be, in the ways of Islam -- would ever make. In the context of what he euphemistically called the "situation between Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs," Mr. Obama said he looked forward to the day ". . . when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon them) joined in prayer."
For those infidel heathen who may be unfamiliar, Isra (or more accurately, Al-Israa') is the "miraculous Night Journey" of their prophet, which established for Muslims the sanctity of Jerusalem, that is, "the whole of Jerusalem and not only the mosque." Longtime BtB readers will remember the story...especially the part about their prophet docking Avraham's winged horse at the Al-Boraq Wall (known to Jews as the Kotel or Western Wall).
Now back to Frank:
... the term "peace be upon them" is invoked by Muslims as a way of blessing deceased holy men. According to Islam, that is what all three were - dead prophets. Of course, for Christians, Jesus is the living and immortal Son of God.
In the final analysis, it may be beside the point whether Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim. In the Speech and elsewhere, he has aligned himself with adherents to what authoritative Islam calls Shariah -- notably, the dangerous global movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood -- to a degree that makes Mr. Clinton's fabled affinity for blacks pale by comparison.
Certainly read it all, and then you might want to go back to that March 6, 2007 Nicholas Kristof column in the New York Times. You know the one:
... Mr. Obama would bring to the White House an important experience that most other candidates lack: he has actually lived abroad. He spent four years as a child in Indonesia and attended schools in the Indonesian language, which he still speaks.
“I was a little Jakarta street kid,” he said in a wide-ranging interview in his office (excerpts are on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground). He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school, but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics — and more likely to be aware of their nationalism — if he once studied the Koran with them.
Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”
Moreover, Mr. Obama’s own grandfather in Kenya was a Muslim. Mr. Obama never met his grandfather and says he isn’t sure if his grandfather’s two wives were simultaneous or consecutive, or even if he was Sunni or Shiite. (O.K., maybe Mr. Obama should just give up on Alabama.)
I have been after Mr. Kristof - and Whatshisname, the ombudsman - ever since, asking that they release the tape Kristof must have made of that interview so that the American people could hear Hussein Obama for themselves, maybe even sing along with his call to prayer and learn to emulate his "first-rate accent."
But that was mostly before the election, when it might have made a difference. Now that he's starting to speak Arabic in public and quote the Holy Koran [as "revealed" by their god to their founding prophet] maybe it's not such a big deal anymore.
And besides, from what I hear, the Jewish people are perfectly safe in the world since Rahm Emanuel works in the West Wing of the White House. If anything threatening comes up, I'm sure he'll tell his rabbi and his rabbi will tell other rabbis, and pretty soon we'll all be aware.
I just don't know what we'll be able to do about it at that late date.
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