Posted on 01/17/2009 2:33:47 PM PST by Steelfish
From The Sunday Times January 18, 2009 Obama reaches out to Muslims Sarah Baxter in Washington
BARACK OBAMA is planning to reach out to the Islamic world, seeking a rapprochement with Muslim opinion alienated by the Bush administration. He believes a personal initiative will dramatise his wish to reassure Muslims, and intends to give a speech in an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office as a sign of his engagement.
He has not said where. Egypt and Pakistan are obvious possibilities, but there has been speculation that he could choose Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, where he spent part of his childhood.
Obama will be sworn in as president with his full Muslim-sounding name of Barack Hussein Obama, in keeping with White House tradition. “This Tuesday, we can reaffirm our own veneration and love for our country and our democracy,” he said yesterday in a radio address. “We can once again provide an example to the world.”
His inauguration presents a “unique opportunity to reboot America’s image in the world and also in the Muslim world in particular”, he said in an interview.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Here we go ...
Yes lets welcome the Muslim world to the US, and in a couple months have hundreds if not thousands of Americans dead in their own back yards.
To express a measure of the Obamaloon’s naivety would require scientific notation.
If we needed any further proof of a Marxist lib, this is certainly a strong contender.
Folks, they just don’t get more stupid.
How about Tehran?
Should read: “...reaches back...”
The radical Islam world doesn’t like Bush because he fought back and didn’t let them have their way which means killing Americans every chance they can. Obama thinks this is a bad thing for some reason.
Oh sure.
Jimmah Carter
William Blye Clinton
How about Jakarta? Islamabad?
I did NOT see that comin’
...and to further prove how nice we are to muzzies, we will remove all immigration restrictions and requirements from muzzielands during BHO’s term. Then we can be just like the hellholes that England, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and France have become.
Seriously, there is as good a chance that the Muslim world (and especially the Iranians and Al Qaeda) will take exactly that line as that they will accept Obama 'reaching out'. 'Reaching out' is taken as a sign of weakness in cultures based on shame. In the short run it would be nice is they accepted his 'reaching out'. In the long-run it would be better if they issued fatwas along the lines of my 'mad-mullah-mode' utterance above.
There can be no accounting for stupidity. Although this was to be expected, Obama being . .
Let the show begin...
He needs to do this so he can bring back a “prayer rug” which he will receive as a “gift” from wherever he goes. That is how he will explain away its presence in the Oval Office. It would look bad if he just brought the one he has at home.
Real smart dipshit. Better have Biden at the ready.
I was thinking Dearbornistan.
This guy is REALLY dangerous.
I see Mr. Soetoro is doing his thing.
The outreach issue notwithstanding, - What a lot of gibberish!
“This Tuesday, we can reaffirm our own veneration and love for our country and our democracy,”
[He means “affirm,” not “reaffirm.” I wouldn’t quibble with this, but for a Harvard educated genius he’s grammatically and rhetorically challenged. He should not speak without the prompter.]
“We can once again provide an example to the world.”
[I don’t even know what this is supposed to mean.]
His inauguration presents a “unique opportunity to reboot America’s image in the world and also in the Muslim world in particular”, he said in an interview.
[”and also in the Muslim world in particular”.....yikes!!]
***...intends to give a speech in an Islamic capital***
Dearborne, Mich?
Yeah, the terrorists of the Muslim world are going to be so completely surprised and pleased by this niceness that they’re just going to STOP...! This is brilliant..!
Wow! All that schooling, and apparently this genius never set foot on a SCHOOL YARD....
Sure, he’s just going to take their breaths away, suuure....!
How about Tehran?
How about the Islamic capital, mecca?
"President-elect Barack Obama's aides say he is considering making a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office," the New York Times reports. Problem is, where?Clearly it would be cheating for Mr. Obama to fly to Detroit, talk to Dearborn's 30,000 Arab residents and call it a day. And Male and Ouagadougou, while certainly majority Muslim, can't really be what Mr. Obama's aides have in mind when they talk about locales for a high-profile speech that would seek to mend rifts between the United States and the broader Muslim world.So Burkina Faso and the Maldives are out. But that leaves a whole swath of Islamic capitals, all ready to be spruced up for Mr. Obama to make his speech. I've thought hard about this, and asked a few people--diplomats even--which capital Mr. Obama should pick.
The consensus, after an entire day of reporting, is Cairo.
Commentary's Abe Greenwald responds, quite persuasively, that this "is a terrible idea. An Obama speech there would be read as a shameful acceptance of Mubarak's oppressive rule." Greenwald raises some other objections:
The global problems generating from within the Muslim world today are so odious and so obviously self-inflicted that any honest speech on the matter would offend and enrage Muslims the world over. At the same time, because of these very problems, a softball speech about Islam's current role in global affairs would look like cowardly capitulation. If Obama splits the difference and mixes lukewarm praise with lukewarm condemnation, the stunt will be seen rightly as meaningless.Seems to us, though, that there is another alternative: clarity. Obama could speak frankly about the repression, misrule and fanaticism that are sadly common in the Muslim world, while at the same time repudiating anti-Muslim extremism in the West.
Which leaves the question of where to deliver it. Greenwald argues that the question itself points to the futility of the enterprise:
Obama's search for this generic thing called "an Islamic capital" in which to make a speech would be the first official indication that the U.S. considers Islam itself to be the problem. He should scrap the idea, and put his energy into dealing with the unique problems of Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan.But there is a city that, although not a national capital, is for all intents and purposes the capital of all Islam--a place where Obama could credibly speak to all Muslims, Sunni and Shiite, from Morocco to Malaysia to Michigan.
Not only that, but Obama's very presence--along with that of his secretary of state, chief of staff, the rest of his entourage and the traveling press from all over the world--would demonstrate that Islam is a more tolerant faith than many Westerners, including this columnist, have thought.
Is it really that simple? Can we be serious? Yes, we can.
All the new president has to do is give a speech in Mecca.
The real trouble will come when America accepts Europe’s Muslims as religious refugees.
Next: Obama Reaches Out To Working Americans
Says “Kneel down and give me your money.”
That would be ingenious.
You can only travel to Mecca if you are a Muslim. If you’re an infidel they won’t allow you in.
We have to fight this serpent with everything we’ve got.
How would they be refugees when they are accepted now in Europe?
And that would be the acid test: Would the Moslems let Obama enter Mecca?
"Get a hold of yourself...."
Why? They won’t leave Europe. They have a little paradise going on over there. That’s one thing we don’t need to worry about. However we may have to absorb lots of regular Europeans who can’t stand it anymore over there. I think that would be a smart thing to do. Kinda like giving all the Jews the state of Idaho and shipping our muzzies over to that Palestinian hellhole. Sounds like a great idea to me.
I think the tide is turning in Europe (outside the UK.) Even center/left parties are recognizing the trouble they are.
If history is any lesson, the situation there is unsustainable (and survival of the fittest will kick in). It can happen sooner than anyone might think.
Doesn't have to reach far, does he?
It won’t be long until the Muslims in Europe drive the indigenous Europeans to radicalism, because of their beliefs and actions.
The round up will happen...and they’re going to want to come here.
How about Gaza?
Or he could go to Kenya..and see his museum there too!
Why not? He’d just be doing his hajj.
He has to go to Indonesia. There’s some unfinished business there concerning some pesky birth records. The trip to Kenya will follow shortly...
Friends of ours in the UK have said the tide is turning slowly. IT has to..
0bama is a muslim at heart I really believe. He is doing the same thing that the terrorists did...break the laws under the ok because he has a greater goal otherwise it would be cut the throat time..His plans are not in our iterest and when the 0prahized wake the hell up it will be too late because the rest of us Paul Revere types will be paying the price right along with them..
Like it or not. To them he’s an apostsate. Obama’s conversion to another faith, in short, makes him a murtadd.
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5286 http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5354
First Muslim President?
An islamic capital? How about Dearborn, MI?
Why not? Malcolm X went to Mecca. But any Christians or Jews in the press corps would have to remain behind.
In one of his travelogues Michael Palin was crossing Saudi Arabia. When the highway got near Mecca there was a bypass for non-Muslims to use because they had to avoid Mecca.
Doesn't have to reach far, does he?
Isn't there a big ol' Islamic Dome on the north side of the beltway?
Seems I remember seeing it on vacation one year. That would be close enough.
I don’t like him ,so hot.
Nothing whips up recruitment better than having a poster boy for The Enemy.
Radical Islam has a hard-on for Bush/Cheney. Radical Islamists might hate GWB on a personal level, but on a political level they needed people like Bush/Cheney. They needed a boogeyman.
The irony is that the “enemy” in the War on Terror was DELIBERATELY not defined on specific religious lines. It was about the nature of a number of power-mad totalitarian groups who abuse religion to keep the sheep in line with a rod of iron to back it up - and they despise the West purely because the West sees them for what they really are: gangsters who aspire to totalitarian regimes run for their own profit.
Saddam Hussein was an apostate.
The Taleban (totalitarian ambitions on Afghanistan).
Bin Laden (who’s after Saudi Arabia)
North Korea elevates its leaders to near-godhood.
Iran has had the moderates and the hardliners duking it out ever since the theocratic regime was established.
The sad thing is that Bush’s INARTICULACY was a constant PR gift to Radical Islam.
For example, Bush polarised the world with his “You’re either with us or against us” rhetoric. To an American patriot, this statement has meaning because the answer would be an unequivocal “I’m with you” to anything Bush then went and did.
To anyone else in the world, the statement was ambiguous.
“With us” on the right of the USA to defend itself? Most said yes.
“With us” on invading Afghanistan? To get Al Qaeda, most would’ve said yes.
“With us” on invading Iraq? Many countries wanted the U.N. inspections to complete first but were still open to the idea of multi-lateral military action.
“With us” on Gitmo? Now it does get tricky, because some countries couldn’t say yes even if they wanted to, if any of their own citizens were being held in Gitmo.
“With us” on waterboarding? Well, that’s anyone with an objection to torture, and who knows that the USA called it torture before it started using the technique, put on the spot...
And so it goes on.
Who’s “With us” on proposing to attack Iran? Even people who were in favour of the action in Iraq, are now saying that things would have to be done differently for an attack on Iran to be viable.
Plus, invading a THIRD Islamic country... well, if the War on Terror wasn’t about Islam to begin with it sure as hell would be if we did attack Iran!
Who’s “With us” on the idea of attacking Russia or South Korea? Well, unless we pull out of the Middle East or have loads of allies, either idea is just plain nuts. We could conscript, but the idea of unionised ex-GM workers working to rule on defending the country... not for me.
So you see, the minute GWB drew the line in the sand but didn’t say what the line was for, he invited people to cross it and be “against” America. And Al Qaeda profited immensely from that.
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