I won’t be the first to observe that US President Obama’s Ramadan statement is so full of factual errors that it hardly contains even the whiff of truth:
On behalf of the American people, Michelle and I want to extend our best wishes to Muslims in America and around the world. Ramadan Kareem.
Nothing untrue here.
Ramadan is a time when Muslims around the world reflect upon the wisdom and guidance that comes with faith, and the responsibility that human beings have to one another, and to God.
False.
This is a time when families gather, friends host iftars, and meals are shared.
Not untrue, but misses what I think Ramadan is actually about.
But Ramadan is also a time of intense devotion and reflection – a time when Muslims fast during the day and pray during the night;
True.
when Muslims provide support to others to advance opportunity and prosperity for people everywhere.
False, unless those “people everywhere” are other Muslims.
For all of us must remember that the world we want to build – and the changes that we want to make – must begin in our own hearts, and our own communities.
Not untrue, but not Islam.
These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.
False.
Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality.
False.
And here in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America
False.
and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.
False.
And today, I want to extend my best wishes to the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world – and your families and friends – as you welcome the beginning of Ramadan.
I look forward to hosting an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan here at the White House later this week, and wish you a blessed month.
May God’s peace be upon you.
Not false.
What I don’t think others have asked, however, is why the president of the United States would make such a ludicrous statement that’s so full of falsehoods. It’s not because he actually believes it. It’s not because Barack Obama is a Muslim (despite all the evidence, I still think he’s not) and it’s not because he didn’t think anyone would read the statement or hear about it. It’s not because he wants to distract attention from the economy by extending the debate about the Ground Zero Mosque. It’s not because he just signed whatever paper was put on his desk to be signed (though this is also true).
So why?
Progressivism is a religious ideology that is based on falsehood. There is actually more that’s untrue about progressivism than about plenty of supernatural faiths. As a priest in the progressive temple, Obama can and must say things like, Islam is a religion of peace, that are so obviously false and that every sentient person on earth knows to be false because if progressivism were about saying true things, it would not be progressivism. A truthful progressivism would be something like conservatism – We know that policies x, y and z are wrong but we’ll accept them anyway – or like reaction – We know that policies x, y and z are wrong and we’ll oppose them no matter what.
Moreover, the earnest recitation of falsehoods is a test for progressives that they must take and re-take constantly to prove their progressive bona fides. Humans are destroying the environment and society must be reorganized to change it. All men (and women!) are created equal. Free trade is harmful to people who engage in it. No one thinks that any of the preceding statements is true in the sense of literal truth (ie, absolutely, factually true, existing as fact in the universe of things that are not false). But people continue saying them, as they did in the Soviet Union, because the test of someone as a progressive is his ability to internalize these lies as truths.
Note: if I were a nice guy, at this point I’d add that I sincerely wish Muslims a good Ramadan. But I hate and fear Islam, and the more I learn about it, the less tolerant and respectful I am toward it.
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At The Last Ditch, there is a hilarious response to BHO’s statement, and also a pointed one right after it. Since it doesn’t have its own URL (eventually, it will be possible to find it here, but not readily), I thought I would reprint the short post here:
The Sultan’s history lesson. On the occasion of Ramadan, thus spake Barack Hussein Obama (Peace be upon him): “… Here in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.”
Yea, forsooth, my brethren, patriotic tears well in my eyes as I envision the grave ayatollahs of Philadelphia in their turbans, beards, and fearsome eyebrows, instructing the American Founders in the precepts of sharia: Truly did those holy men make corporeal the Djinn of ’76!
Who among us can forget the tales we were told as madrasah boys of the hero Paul bin Revere, perched upon his trusty camel, watching for the lantern’s signal from the Old North Mosque? Or the Jamestown colonists’ faithful work to gather wood and build their first primitive mosque, in the midst of famine and attack by redskinned infidels? Or the devoted labor of settlers in the Caliphate of Utah to erect the great Mosque of Salt Lake City?
Emerging in fond memory now are Washington Irving’s depictions of the minarets rising over Old New York and, of course, his chilling tale about the Headless Mamluk of Sleepy Hollow. Inscribed, too, indelibly upon American culture are Ahab’s jihad against the white whale as told by the esteemed sufi Melville, the “Hijab of the Red Death” by the ascetic versifier Poe, and the haj of Huck Finn imagined by Twain, instructor of the pious.
All educated Americans know that the public benefactions of Morse, Bell, Edison, and Ford, and the flourishing of invention and productivity in America generally, were founded on the teachings of the Holy Qur’an treating political economy, property, and free inquiry. It is hardly necessary to add that it was the Prophet’s ascent and flight to Medina that inspired the devout Brothers Wright.
As the blessed chieftain Barack (PBUH) leads our procession toward the Five Pillars of Wisdom, let no small walad of the dhimmi cry out by the wayside that the Sultan has no burnoose. The scimitar of Islamic justice shall fall upon the neck of the nonbeliever! [Nicholas Strakon] Ω
Is Obama’s fantasizing about Islam in America supposed to compensate in some way for his slaughter of Mohammedans in their homelands? His immediate predecessor in mass murder practiced the same hypocrisy. It’s not just false; most of what Obama and Bush say on any subject is palpably and foolishly false; but this monstrosity of imperial propaganda adds deadly insult to deadly injury. [Henry Gallagher Fields] Ω
Obama may not be a Muslim, but he is deeply sympathetic to it as an anti-Western and anti-American force, as he is to all such forces.
In fairness, I would suspect the Dubya may have put our drivel like this on Ramadan, which would reinforce your point about leftism/progressivism.
At The Last Ditch, there is a hilarious response to BHO’s statement, and also a pointed one right after it. Since it doesn’t have its own URL (eventually, it will be possible to find it here, but not readily), I thought I would reprint the short post here:
That’s pretty funny! Who doesn’t love a little Islam humor now and then?
Obama may not be a Muslim, but he is deeply sympathetic to it as an anti-Western and anti-American force, as he is to all such forces.
Well, who could blame him for loving Islam, considering all the amazing contributions that Muslims have made to American society in the hundreds of years of deep Islamic involvement there?
In fairness, I would suspect the Dubya may have put our drivel like this on Ramadan, which would reinforce your point about leftism/progressivism.
He did. Actually I bet George Bush believed the “Islam is a religion of peace” canard much more than Barack Obama does. The former says it because he understands his own genuine Christianity as a religion of peace and he projects Christianity as “religion” onto whatever other “religions” cross his path. But the latter says it because he knows it not to be true.
That’s pretty funny! Who doesn’t love a little Islam humor now and then?
Exactly!
Actually I bet George Bush believed the “Islam is a religion of peace” canard much more than Barack Obama does. The former says it because he understands his own genuine Christianity as a religion of peace and he projects Christianity as “religion” onto whatever other “religions” cross his path. But the latter says it because he knows it not to be true.
Spot on; Dubya was an intellectual lightweight, and like many stupid Republicans, was in favour of religion (from a civic standpoint) in general, without regard to what religion, imagining them to be all the same, ultimately (which shows how unseriously he took his own faith, or how shallow his understanding of it is, else he wouldn’t be so relativist; mind you, the United Methodist Church is quite liberal; I always found it surprising how Dubya passed himself off as a true evangelical rather than merely a patrician, Texas oil man). Whereas Obama, though a crappy president, is nevertheless smarter than Bush, or at least shrewder, and, having no beliefs other than liberal relativism, is quite happy to speak out of all sides of his mouth, depending on the audience.
“But I hate and fear Islam, and the more I learn about it, the less tolerant and respectful I am toward it. ”
You’ve got to be kidding. It’s much more kind and gentle than Judaism. If Jews today and the Jews of history were in greater positions of power that would be self-evident.
Care to share what books or blogs you’re learning about Islam from? And do you think you’re being very intellectually dishonest when you let Judaism off so easily?
You’ve got to be kidding. It’s much more kind and gentle than Judaism. If Jews today and the Jews of history were in greater positions of power that would be self-evident.
@n I have been the first to say – here and in many other places – that Judaism is not the bland, pacifist, vegetarian religion that many American Jews wish it were and imagine it to be. In fact, Judaism is very much concerned with the acquisition and application of military and political power, does not recognize a separation of “church” and state, treats men as men as women as women, allows slavery and polygamy, etc. Judaism also has a concept like the corresponding jihad and crusade concepts in Islam and Christianity.
But the last truly independent Jewish state fell two and a half thousand years ago, so your claims are wildly speculative at best, and to compare Judaism unfavorably with Islam in gentleness is way out of line. Jewish law is only ever supposed to be imposed in the land of Israel. In the absolute most intolerant and unpleasant version of Jewish theocracy imaginable, someone could leave this country and move to another one, live his own life according to his own religious beliefs and a hypothetical Jewish theocracy would have no interest in him whatsoever. Islam, by contrast, does not in the end tolerate anyone on earth living outside the rule of the Quran – no matter what country, no matter what religion – and every true believing Muslim believes that the entire world must accept Islamic authority and suzerainty eventually.
Care to share what books or blogs you’re learning about Islam from? And do you think you’re being very intellectually dishonest when you let Judaism off so easily?
I read the Quran in English, I live in a country that’s ~20% Muslim and I’ve survived a couple of attempts on my life by Muslim mujahidin.
Later I also read a sampling of the scholarship on Islamic imperialism and Arab colonialism: Efraim Karsh, Bat Yeor, Mordechai Nisan, Ibn Warraq and Serge Trifkovic. Nisan’s Minorities in the Middle East was the most impressive and the one to which I’m most likely to refer in daily life, but I also found Bat Yeor’s The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude to be an excellent and serious work; Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide a bit less so. I didn’t especially care for Trifkovic or Ibn Warraq: Trifcovic’s The Sword of the Prophet struck me as little more than an apologia for Christianity, and Warraq’s Why I Am Not a Musim had more inaccuracies than I would tolerate and needed some serious revisions. I’ve never subscribed to a blog about Islam.
Now why don’t you tell me the source for your knowledge of Judaism and we can see who’s being more intellectually honest.
It’s been a few days @n and I haven’t heard from you… I’d like to know where you learned about Judaism so I can see how intellectually honest you’re being.
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