Making Believe; Obama’s speech was deep in fable, short on fact

National Review ^ | June 05, 2009 | Andrew C. McCarthy

[Sergeant Tim]

The president rehearsed the claim that Islam single-handedly “carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.” This is a myth. As Robert Spencer has ably recounted, it is not true that Muslims alone preserved the works of Aristotle, Galen, Plato, Hippocrates, and other pillars of Western enlightenment. More significantly, arrested development in the Islamic world owes to an anti-intellectualism that persists to this day in enclaves holding that no education beyond the study of the Koran is necessary.

The president, moreover, insisted on pulling from the Muslim apologists’ playbook the expurgation of Islamic scripture in order to render it congenial to Western sensibilities. We were treated to the hidebound claim that terrorist violence is anti-Islamic because what Obama takes pains to call “the Holy Koran” teaches that “whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.” This conveniently decoupled Sura 5:32 from the next verse (5:33), which, though unmentioned by Obama, is well known by Muslims to read: “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land, is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: That is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the hereafter.”

[cripplecreek]

I especially enjoyed the part where he said he was closing GITMO and getting us out of Iraq. The muslims seemed to enjoy it as well. Wonder how they’ll feel a year from now when neither has happened?

[OldNavyVet]

“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land, is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: That is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the hereafter.”

See my tagline ...

[DooDahhhh]

Obama does not write his speeches; we need to look further to find out where this drivel is coming from.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

No doubt the Muslim world is ready to receive the Gitmo folks with open arms.

[DJ MacWoW]

Thanks for posting. Good article.

Second, and related, there can be no peace unless Islam reforms — unless it purges its savage elements and compellingly condemns the violence committed in its name. This can’t be done as Obama and others would like to do it: by telling Muslims everything is fine, that their religion is wonderful as is, while making believe the bad scriptures don’t exist and radicals are merely a tiny fringe of crazy people. That is a strategy designed by liberals to convince other liberals who don’t need convincing, so desperate are they to believe all is well.

[Leg Olam]

He lies and spins with every word.

Nothing more than a sh#t salesman with a mouthfull of samples.

[livius]

Worse, assuming there is no credible counter-construction (which may very well be the case), there is an enormous amount of reform to be done — work that can only be done by Muslims. We cannot rouse them to the task by telling them we think Islam, as it currently exists, is promoting peace

Good article. The only thing that can "reform" Islam is its total erradication, because as McCarthy points out, it is vicious and violent, root and branch, and its scriptures are the very things that contain the violence. But they've got to realize this themselves, and the only thing that will make them realize it is not sweet reason - that might work on a few of the less brainwashed - but simply putting our heel down on them so that whatever violence they attempt in obedience to their religion is crushed immediately. That's the only thing Muslims have ever understood.

Some people think Bambi was being naive, but I personally think he's fully aware of this and it is not naivete but sheer arrogance that makes him think he can tell Muslims what their religion is. It's probably his religion, too, to the extent that he has one. But what he really sees is Bambi as the Great Leader of Islam, and this means that he has got to get them to accept him as its spokesman and the one who understands more about it than anybody in the world. That was what he was trying to do with Catholics at ND, and it's typical of his approach.

He doesn't think of himself as president of the United States (which is probably why his presidential seal on the podium in the mosque didn't have those words around it as it usually does), but as ruler of the world - on all levels. Obama is the firmest believer in his own cult.

[Oratam]

Let’s kill this “dark ages” myth while we’re at it, too.

[IceAge]

O seems to live in the moment only. He makes all these promises that thinking people “know” he can never fulfill.
It’s as if he has dreamed of these things his whole life and lives in a fairytale world where all he has to do is make promises and a magic wand will make them happen.

When it only take $$ to fulfill a promise, he just prints more $$ and it’s a done deal. What happens when he finds out the printing press is out of ink?????

He’s finding out closing Gitmo isn’t that easily done. Other nations don’t want to bail him out and he’s showing his true colors by dissing a couple of European leaders on this trip.

[FatherofFive]

there can be no peace unless Islam reforms — unless it purges its savage elements and compellingly condemns the violence committed in its name. This can’t be done as Obama and others would like to do it: by telling Muslims everything is fine, that their religion is wonderful as is, while making believe the bad scriptures don’t exist and radicals are merely a tiny fringe of crazy people.

Unfortunately, Islam cannot be reformed. Ann Coulter has the real solution.

[Matchett-PI]

“He lies and spins with every word. Nothing more than a sh#t salesman with a mouthfull of samples.” ~ Lee Heggy123

Or as Krauthammer puts it:

Charles Krauthammer tears into Obama on his speech today calling it “Abstract, vapid, and self-absorbed”
VIDEO (2 minutes) http://www.floppingaces.net/2009/06/04/the-kraut-tears-into-obama-speech-calling-it-%e2%80%9cabstract-vapid-and-self-absorbed%e2%80%9d/

<>

Krauthammer Blasts Obama on the Israeli Settlement Issue
IBD/The Lid ^ | 6/4/09 | The Lid
Posted on Thursday, June 04, 2009 10:32:54 PM by Shellybenoit
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2265149/posts

Via his actions over the past two weeks or his speech in Cairo today, it is clear that president Obama is putting most of the blame for the lack of Middle East peace on Israel and the settlements. His demand of a settlement building freeze requires a prohibition on construction inside the footprint of communities that today are de facto Israeli territory. These are the city-settlements that have long been slated for inclusion into Israel in any final-status agreement, with equivalent Israeli territory awarded to the future Palestinian state through land swaps.

Obama has chosen to ignore previous agreements between Israel and the United States. Agreements that were used to sell Israel on agreeing to the “road map.” The President talks a lot about the importance of dialogue, diplomacy, and humility. He even says that the United States will no longer impose its will on other nations, his actions toward Israel are very much at odds with his words.

Obama has been turning up the pressure. His demand during today’s speech in Cairo was nothing less than throwing Israel under the bus. Charles Krauthammer agrees, he suggests that Obama’s stance toward the settlements is not only bad for Israel, but bad for the United States: ...... (End excerpt)

<>

TARIQ RAMADAN, ‘MUSLIMS WANT RESPECT AND HUMIILITY’ (Obama read Ramadan’s script)
ANSAmed ^ | June 3 2009 | ANSA staff
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2265223/posts

[Miss Didi]

RUSH: Okay. I know we're not supposed to criticize Obama's speech here. I know it's going way off the reservation here to do this. But, folks, that is outrageous. This is simply outrageous. It was absurd, in fact. Let's see. Where do we start here? "It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra." No. The origins of algebra trace back to the ancient Babylonians. They were not Muslims. Algebra was temporarily developed by the ancient Greeks and later the English. "Our magnetic compass, tools of navigation," Islam gave us these? No. "Recent research suggests that the compass may have been discovered by Central Americans, but if they didn't do it, the Chinese are then its discoverers. In either case, be it the Chinese or the Central Americans, the compass was discovered centuries before the advent of Islam."

Now, what am I supposed to say? I'm not supposed to say this stuff. Now, let's see, let's see. "Our mastery of pens and printing..." Has anybody ever heard of Gutenberg? I didn't know Gutenberg was a Muslim. "Our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed..."? Are there Nobel Prizes for Medicine awarded to Muslims I have missed? "Islamic has given us some majestic arches and soaring spires..." Well, sorry, folks, but arches and spires predate the arrival of Islam by centuries. I mean, come on, folks. Arches? Anybody heard of Rome? He also talked about the great gift, "timeless poetry and cherished music." The only problem there is that music -- and musical instruments especially -- are forbidden in most Islamic traditions. And it should be unnecessary to have to note Islam's "religious tolerance" has been demonstrated. Okay, I'm... Take it away.

President Obama's Cairo Speech: Outrageous, Absurd, Embarrassing

[Califreak]

What else can we expect from a pretend president?

[meandog]

Worse, it was full of historic inaccuracies! Our great leader failed in noting that Morocco, a muslim country, was the first to recognize the new nation of the United States in 1777 without explaining WHY it did so...it was because Mohammad III, the Moroccan sultan at the time, was trying to appease the Barbary Coast pirates which we eventually had to subdue—thanks in part to Navy hero Stephen Decatur. He also claimed Arabs were the first to use the compass well, hello, did he forget the Chinese used it (as documented by Marco Polo in his book) centuries before it appeared on any Arab dhow. As well he claimed Arabs invented pens and writing—I suppose he believes that cuneiform applies here—but writing was also a part of Asian culture long before A-rabs began dabbling in clay.

[two23]

Affirmative Action Figure gives speeches written by a government employee...I’m not impressed.
The lies and inaccuracies are obvious to anyone who has enough brains and religion to not become brainwashed.
It’s all delivered in manipulative, 3-word bursts, designed to make the audience hang onto every word while they are mesmerized by his his hand, head and chin motions.
Fools indeed.
Pray for America and Israel

[achilles2000]

You can thank Petrarch for that one.

[achilles2000]

Why always go to the East? Moses and Plato didn’t know how to write? Arabs have created virtually nothing on their own except the misery of Mohammadanism. The “achievements” were really those of the Christian cultures the muslim Arabs overran in North Africa and the Middle East.

[SeminoleSoldier]

No doubt the Muslim world is ready to receive the Gitmo folks with open arms.

Red carpet, parades, confetti, medals, and honor guards too. In the movie Munich, the scene I found most infuriating was the (accurate) scene where the released terrorist's receive hero's welcomes in their raghead country.

[MrB]

Notice that he does a lot of this and his fawning crowds never really catch on.

He’ll say something right now to get an applause line, implying that the implementation is imminent, then “something” always comes up to “delay” the implementation.

[PogySailor]

He was repeating the same Islamic Supremacy B.S. that the Muslim Brotherhood spews.

[Aria]

This a.m. I got an email with photos of the $200 million Airbus that a Muslim crew were taking delivery of. Brand new. The crew was so stupid that after a series of glaring errors they crashed it into a wall without ever taking off.

I once flew out of Dar Islam airport. The airport toilets didn’t even work - there was a big barrel of water in the bathroom that was somehow supposed to fix the problem. The shopkeepers all had flashlights because the electricity continually went out in the airport. It was midnight and so hot in there that people’s shirts were wet.

It was a giant relief to get to Amsterdam - civilization as we know it. Whatever the Muslims did or not do in the past, their subservience to their religion hasn’t led to anything very productive for centuries.

[Aria]

This a.m. I got an email with photos of the $200 million Airbus that a Muslim crew were taking delivery of. Brand new. The crew was so stupid that after a series of glaring errors they crashed it into a wall without ever taking off.

I once flew out of Dar Islam airport. The airport toilets didn’t even work - there was a big barrel of water in the bathroom that was somehow supposed to fix the problem. The shopkeepers all had flashlights because the electricity continually went out in the airport. It was midnight and so hot in there that people’s shirts were wet.

It was a giant relief to get to Amsterdam - civilization as we know it. Whatever the Muslims did or not do in the past, their subservience to their religion hasn’t led to anything very productive for centuries.

[Mrs. B.S. Roberts]

“He lies and spins with every word.

Nothing more than a sh#t salesman with a mouthfull of samples.”

YOU HAVE STATED IT PERFECTLY!

[Kandy Atz]

He is a liberal politician. Its in his blood to lie, distort or tell the current audience whatever they want to hear. Liberals are devoid of integrity and don’t really believe in a supreme being, therefore they see nothing wrong with “adapting” their message for the audience when necessary. The state-run media never questions the hypocrisy or truthfulness of their words or actions.

That is why I despise liberals so much. They will hide whatever sick core values they might have through bogus photo-ops and ridiculous pandering speeches like Obama’s Cairo crap.

Honestly, I have more respect for the really nutty left code pink types. At least you know what they really believe.

[the invisib1e hand]

You are getting very sleepy...

[Kandy Atz]

And I missed the most important point. I really don’t think Obama is a muslim. I believe, like most liberals, he thinks religion is for the ignorant. He is more “evolved”.

Obama believes he is ABOVE all religion and his “superior intelligence” and “charming personality” will bring the world together in a happy utopian paradise with him in charge.

[KeyLargo]

Poll to freep:

Tonight’s Poll

Are you concerned that President Obama seems compelled to continue to apologize for the United States wherever he travels?
Yes 45% 3682
No 55% 4471
Total Votes: 8153

http://loudobbs.tv.cnn.com/

[beachn4fun]

Thank God for people like Rush who will shed the light on the lies spread by liberal idiots!

[meandog]

Please add me to your bubblehead list (former RM1/SS—SSBN 598, 658, diesel boat SS-576)

[AuH2ORepublican]

BTTT

[Vendome]

Well here is an exhaustive response to the fairy tales of Barry.

 

It is a very long read and I don't know how the author had time to write this between yesterday and today:

 

Platitudes and naivete: Obama's Cairo speech

 

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026426.php

 

[Sergeant Tim]

Thanks. It is to the same link as posted above in McCarthy’s article (by him).

[Vendome]

I wanted to point it out.

[CaspersGh0sts]

Agreed. I hear people ignorantly refer to Medieval Europe as living in the Dark Ages. Funny how the foundations of Western theology, reason, and probably the greatest architectural achievements on earth all came out of this “backward” medieval Europe. Let’s not forget the emergence of nation states through the oversight of a growing and increasingly unified chuch, either.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"The president rehearsed the claim that Islam single-handedly “carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.” This is a myth. As Robert Spencer has ably recounted, it is not true..."

Moreover, ONLY in the Christian West did the classical tradition develop into the scientific, legal, philosophical, and cultural tradition of synthesis in the university, blending, harmonizing, and balancing Greek philosophy, Judaeo-Christian morality, the rule of law, and anything like representative institutions and human rights. Byzantine Greek scholars fled the East and Constantinople when it fell. But the West already had a vibrant intellectual tradition. The pursuit of truth, justice, and representative institutions are part of the Western heritage.

Apparently, they didn't cover this for the One at Columbia or Harvard.

[STARWISE]

~~~PING to truth !

###

Islam was spread by the sword — not by the allure of its still problematic message — and many of the cultural achievements within the Muslim world that the president glossed occurred despite Islam (particularly in the areas of literature, art, and music) or are more properly understood as the accomplishments (especially in science and architecture) of better-educated peoples whom Muslims conquered.

The president rehearsed the claim that Islam single-handedly “carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.” This is a myth.

As Robert Spencer has ably recounted, it is not true that Muslims alone preserved the works of Aristotle, Galen, Plato, Hippocrates, and other pillars of Western enlightenment.

More significantly, arrested development in the Islamic world owes to an anti-intellectualism that persists to this day in enclaves holding that no education beyond the study of the Koran is necessary.

The president, moreover, insisted on pulling from the Muslim apologists’ playbook the expurgation of Islamic scripture in order to render it congenial to Western sensibilities. We were treated to the hidebound claim that terrorist violence is anti-Islamic because what Obama takes pains to call “the Holy Koran” teaches that “whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.”

This conveniently decoupled Sura 5:32 from the next verse (5:33), which, though unmentioned by Obama, is well known by Muslims to read: “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land, is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: That is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the hereafter.”

Noting a bowdlerization even this egregious does not do justice to how misleading the president’s tactic was.

Though Obama portrayed Islam as having a “proud tradition of tolerance,” it has a far more consequential legacy of intolerance. Islam strives for hegemony, seeking not to co-exist but to make all the world the realm of the Muslims (dar al-Islam) while regarding those parts not under its dominion as the realm of war (dar al-Harb).

What Obama means by “an innocent” and what many Muslims take the term to mean are different.

Sura 5:33 is far from aberrant, and the “Holy Koran,” quite apart from its several other commands to violence, dehumanizes Jews in several places as the children of monkeys and pigs. It admonishes that Muslims “take not the Jews and the Christians as friends and protectors” (5:51).

The hadiths of the prophet are replete with tales of non-Muslims slaughtered, forced into slavery, and reduced to humiliating dhimmitude. Mohammed’s vision of the end of the world foresaw Jesus returning to abolish Christianity and impose Islam, while Jews are killed by Muslims (with the help of trees and stones, which alert the faithful, “Muslim, there is a Jew behind me — come and kill him!”

In fact, even President Obama’s cordial greeting of “assalaamu alaykum” to his Egyptian audience conveys (no doubt unintentionally) something of basic Islamic intolerance. Under sharia (Islamic law), as Spencer explains, “a Muslim may only extend this greeting — Peace be upon you — to a fellow Muslim. To a non-Muslim he is to say, ‘Peace be upon those who are rightly guided,’ i.e., Peace be upon the Muslims.”

[Jeff Head]

I'm not so sure it was unintended.

Just not recognized by the vast majority in the west.

THE AUDACITY OF TRUTH ABOUT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA'S UPBRINGING

[Oratam]

I'm bad with dates but my understanding is the long, slow decline of Roman authority sort of came to a thud about the 5th century. Then there was a millenium of slowly advancing culture rising out of that collapse evident in the growth of towns and cities, trade, population growth, consolidation of kingdoms, etc.

Things were improving in general until the 14th century when things went to pot again when the Black Death causes a devestating population collapse and near halt to all economic activity. It took about a century for things to improve but the memory is lasting and THAT century created the impression that the previous millenium was a "dark" age.

I think it was a French medieval scholar named Pirenne who advanced this thesis but old myths are hard to dispel.

I forget, what was this thread originally about???

[Fred Nerks]

Just picked this up on another thread, blessings to the FReeper who posted it:

“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar (mohammed), the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent god; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE...Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant...While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon the earth, and good will towards men”

John Quincy Adams
Sixth President of The United States of America
1830

[achilles2000]

Petrarch - poet, pornographer, and blackmailer - coined the phrase - it was propaganda for what is propagandistically called the “Renaissance”. If it was the rebirth of anything, the Renaissance was a rebirth of classical paganism replete with retrograde political philosophy (effectively the deification of the state, which led to the doctrine of the Divine right of Kings), degenerate morals, humanism (again not the “nice” thing people assume it to be), corruption of the church, and a host of other things. The Renaissance, in effect, is what the Reformation reformed.

[Bhoy]

I think everyone’s missing the point. Lord O is speaking (and always does) to only one group: the ignorant who voted for him & who he expects will vote for him again. He doesn’t care what anybody thinks. He knows that nobody will challenge him because we’re afraid of rioting in the streets. Of being called racists. He can say whatever he wants. He can throw anybody he wants under any bus.