Why can't Barack Obama speak about US tolerance?

Telegraph UK ^ | Aug 28, 2010 | Toby Harnden

[opentalk]

The controversy over the 'Ground Zero mosque' has portrayed the United States as a land of bigots. Toby Harnden wonders why the US President has helped fuel this myth.

It took a Manhattan taxi driver called Ahmed Sharif to speak out for America, which is being vilified as bigoted and Islamophobic because of the controversy generated by opposition to the so-called "Ground Zero mosque".

The United States was his dream country, he enthused, and he loved New York City. "I feel like I belong here. This is the city actually [for] all colours, races, religion, everyone. We live here side by side peacefully."

...In fact, most evidence points to the US being one of the most tolerant countries in the world. A poll from you won't see cited much because it doesn't fit the prevailing narrative was recently conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute.

It found that 76 per cent of Americans would support Muslims in their community building an Islamic centre or mosque provided they followed the same rules and regulations required of other religious groups. But the 9/11 site is seen as different. After the 9/11 attacks there was no anti-Muslim backlash in the US.

Obama's ill-judged intervention, and the shrill outrage of his allies in the intelligentsia, has damaged America's standing in the world by fuelling anti-American stereotypes.

Aides to General David Petraeus, commanding troops in Afghanistan, say he is livid about the portrayal of the US as a hotbed of anti-Muslim bigotry and fears it may undermine the war effort, which is based on partnership with an Islamic regime.

Many Americans are incensed by the way that legitimate protest and questioning of Obama's policies routinely branded as racist or ignorant. They are tired of being told what to think and when to think it.

[pepsionice]

What I always find curious...is that an Islamic immigrant will leave a Islamic-friendly country...with 100-percent Islamic participation...to come to the US. They never want to explain the rest of the story, on what drove them to leave their old country.

It’d a curious thing for a real news bureau to do a five-part series to explain why Muslims are so miserable and willing to leave their Islamic-friendly country to come to the US. Just asking these questions might trigger alot of these Muslims to rethink how they got here and what they really want in life. Their religion might come second in this logical path...if they think about it long enough.

[jmacusa]

They leave because inwardly they realize they’re living in an under developed ,stifling repressive Islamist backwater and know the West is a far better place to be. They hate this fact because it clearly shows their countries and their Islamist societies are failures. This becomes more apparent to them when they arrive in a Western country. And of course it is Islams plan to dominate the West and bring it under Islamist rule. For myself I wish they’d stay where they come from.