Free Republic

When Will We Learn? By M. Zuhdi Jasser It is as if we are entering a frightening surreal national enactment of Bill Murray’s 1993 film, Groundhog Day. As the President stood in the Islamic Center of Washington and helped its Muslim congregation rededicate their mosque at 50 years this week on June 27, I couldn’t help but feel this painful déjà vu. We are almost six years since 9-11 when President Bush made the same trip to the same mosque saying basically the same thing with some new nuances this time. This week the President stated, We must encourage more...

If anyone wants to know why Muslims the world over tell pollsters the United States is at war with Islam, just read President Bush's speech at the Islamic Center of Washington, especially the part about American-style religious freedom -- in the president's words, "what we wish for the world."----snip----As one who has attended a bar mitzvah at that synagogue down the road, I have news for the president: Freedom, American-style, has changed. To enter, I passed an armed guard holding an automatic weapon manning the door.

At Wednesday’s rededication ceremony of the Saudi-funded Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., President Bush missed a perfect opportunity to repudiate apologism for radical Islam, and instead announced his latest plan to get the Muslim world to stop hating America: appoint a special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Bush praised the OIC, saying, “We admire and thank those Muslims who have denounced what the Secretary General of the OIC called ‘radical fringe elements who pretend that they act in the name of Islam.’” The special envoy’s mission, Bush said, would be to “listen and learn” to OIC...

Conservative blogs and some talk show hosts are bashing President Bush for speaking to a Muslim group on Wednesday and for announcing the appointment of a representative to an international Muslim organization. Since 9/11, Bush has consistently maintained that Islamic terrorism is limited to a relatively small number of radicals, and that almost all Muslims are peaceful people who, in the USA at least, only want for their children the same things that everyone else does. My position on this is a little complicated.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has been quietly engaging the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Officials said the State Department has approved a policy that would enable U.S. diplomats to meet and coordinate with Brotherhood leaders in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and other Arab states. They said the program would first be restricted to elected officials from the Brotherhood and eventually be extended to their political chiefs. "The region is going Islam," an official said. "We see this in nearly every country in the Middle East. We either understand it and engage with it or find ourselves completely out of the picture." The...

Amid growing criticism that his administration hasn't focused enough on engagement in the Middle East, US President George W. Bush on Wednesday announced that he would appoint an envoy to an organization of Muslim states and endorsed British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the new Quartet representative. Blair was appointed on Wednesday. Bush, speaking at the rededication of the Islamic Center of Washington, said the creation of an American envoy posting to the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference was "an opportunity for Americans to demonstrate to Muslim communities our interest in respectful dialogue and continued friendship." Bush's latest effort...