Susan MacAllen
One of the more ridiculous stumbles from the Obama administration in recent days was the revelation that Obama feels that it must be a chief mission of NASA to do outreach to Muslim countries. According to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Obama charged NASA with the task of performing outreach to Muslim nations, in which they should be assured of their own contributions to math and science. Despite some embarrassed backpedaling by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs when questioned about the appropriateness of the assignment, the story seems to be legitimate. U.S. Representative Pete Olson (R-TX), member of the Space and Aeronautics House Subcommittee, confirms that Bolden told members of the committee the same thing before revealing it in an interview with Al Jazeera in June.
While rather silly on the surface, this story is disturbing on several levels. Perhaps the most important is that our president is bent on throwing our tax money into stroking the egos of Muslim nations. Although each administration throws away tax dollars in its own uniquely crazy manner, this administration in particular has the appearance of being totally oblivious to where the money comes from – from us. Their spending of it is consistently disrespectful to the average American taxpayer and that taxpayer’s interests, and this is one more example. Muslim countries and their misguided religio-political ideologies have threatened the lives and well-being of American citizens for years, and now we are paying to make them feel better about themselves? Of course, NASA has extremely limited funding nowadays, thanks to Obama, but that is beside the point – that we are spending money against America’s interests.
But let’s go deeper. Why should we stroke their egos? And why is it important to Barack Obama that we do so? After all, this is a man who even before his election talked about just sitting down and having a friendly talk with the likes of Iranian President neo-Hilter Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as Iran staged Holocaust denial summits, funded terrorist operations, and threatened the existence of Israel. Perhaps, just perhaps, this was an early signal that Obama’s priorities are out of whack. But there was an even earlier sign: his book, Dreams From My Father, in which he waxes sentimental about his Muslim father and heritage. In the book, Obama states outright that given the choice, he will always stand for Muslims.
In short, Barack Obama seems to have a romanticized idea about the Muslim world, one in which there is really no room for many of its uglier realities. And how can we expect the leader of the United States to protect the United States from the threat of radical Islam when he won’t admit to any real danger? Like many of our Washington leaders, Obama lives in a world where Islam is just one more religion, preaching tolerance and peace, born of a romantic, exotic culture much more exiting than an average American enjoys, where suicide bombers, hate-spewing imams, and stonings of impure women in remote villages, is only a product of some radical element that is bent upon hijacking the rest of what Obama speaks of as the “great religion.”
It is a bit disturbing that our president is stubbornly set in this La La Land of Muslim fantasy. It is more disturbing that he would use tax dollars to play into that fantasy. It is most disturbing that his ignorance, and his stubborn refusal to ever consider that he might be uneducated and just plain wrong on the subject (of course, according to many quarters in government at this date, this man is notorious already for lacking the humility to ever consider his own fallibility), is leading our nation down a very dangerous path.
Writer and Islam expert Robert Spencer has written at length about the myth of Muslim contribution to science. Spencer fairly points out that during what is referred to as the Golden Age of Islam in the early Middle Ages, Muslims developed various elements of medical science, algebra, established the first pharmacies, and established the first formal examinations of competence for physicians and pharmacists, amongst other accomplishments.
But he points out two problems: first, all of these accomplishments were built upon and developed from the knowledge of other, non-Islamic cultures. For example, much of their knowledge of science came from the Greek world, and although the concept of “zero” is often attributed to Islamic culture, it was actually developed centuries before, which is proven by other resources. In some cases, treatises and other formal writings which introduced these concepts to the world, were researched and written by Europeans in the Arabic language. In short, Islamic culture took information from other cultures; however, every culture builds upon knowledge from other cultures and takes it further – that is how the human race advances knowledge.
The second problem that Spencer points to is that a myth has grown up that Islam was responsible, or super-responsible, for the advancement of science and mathematics in the early medieval period. It is a glorification of Islamic culture above all others, and it is dishonest and takes away from the contributions of others. The issue is that many in the Muslim world pretend that such knowledge originated only with Islam, and some outside the Muslim world like to believe it. This is all happening while the Islamic world has failed to advance in modern times in any of these areas. The Golden Age ended quickly; over the centuries Islam has clashed with the progress of science, and has murdered the creativity of Muslim peoples. There has been arguably no contribution from Muslim countries for ten centuries. And yet, Obama finds it necessary to pat the Muslim nations on the back – not other nations such as his own, who have made real modern contributions to science?
There is a growing mood existing in this country, in Europe, everywhere where there is a secular progressive movement - that allows Islam to rob from other cultures, and protects Islam even when it threatens the safety of others. Giving credit where it is not due disparages other cultures and unfairly lifts a culture that is by its own admission determined to impose its way of life on the West. Lifting it unjustifiably contributes to the myth that it is harmless, as it seeks to infiltrate Western countries. And unfortunately, the person who is arguably the most powerful man in the world, the U.S. President, buys enthusiastically and naively into the myth. His willful ignorance contributes to an environment where the real threats that Islam imposes, the real hatred that it nurtures for other ways of life, are ignored. And we can’t afford to ignore it much longer.
It was amusing and not a little chilling to watch the televised exchange a few weeks ago between U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the House Judiciary Committee, when Holder absolutely refused to say that “radical Islam” was even one element in the reasons why suicide bombers would attack on U.S. soil. His verbal acrobatics as he repeatedly avoided the phrase were in the end so obvious that the result was hilarious (it has become a YouTube favorite). This he did, despite the fact that not one of these recent incidents has involved a non-Islamic motive. This, despite the fact that the bombing being discussed, the failed attempt in Times Square, was one in which the defendant ended up screaming to the judge and courtroom that Islam is the reason! One can only shake one’s head and wonder what kind of fantasy Obama and Holder and the rest of the administration are holding onto.
The goal here is not to disparage a religion. Or a people. Heaven knows that the majority of the Muslim people are under the thumb of a political ideology wrapped up in a religious wrapper, one that they themselves hardly seem to understand. Rather, our calling is to insist upon the truth for the sake of our own survival and safety. The truth is that millions of Muslim people are slave to a violent, intolerant ideology called Islam, and that this ideololgy has pestered and menaced the Judeo-Christian world since its birth in the 7th century, and that it is now a rapidly increasing threat to us all – in a way that we have not seen since Muslim armies conquered Spain and penetrated deep into France, and continuously attacked the rest of the Mediterranean coast of Europe in the early Middle Ages. Their motive was not land or riches, which they already had in abundance. It was one thing: the advance of Islam and the eradication of the infidel.
We have yet to hear exactly what “mainstream, moderate” Islam even is. No one offers a concrete definition. Many insist upon speaking of “radical Islam” or “Islamic extremists” as if there is a definite division between the two groups – those who practice radical Islam and those who are moderate believers. But the two obviously share many things – the same scripture, the same laws, the same cultural traditions, the same outlook that there are two sorts of people in the world as defined by Mohammad: Muslim and Infidel. Why do we have no definition of moderate Islam? Because there isn’t any. True Islam as defined by the Koran speaks of justice and peace, certainly. It speaks of justice when it is speaking of justice for Muslims. It speaks of peace when it speaks of submission of “infidels”.
In Islam there is little concern for non-Muslims; there is no talk of love for fellow man in the Christian sense, no idea of forgiveness, no idea of compassion for one’s enemy; the most basic tenet of Islam – Mohammad’s chief motive - is not to love your enemy, but to bring the world to Islam, by force or otherwise. Moderate practitioners of Islam are continuously silent in the face of rising violence in the Islamic world. They are silent as “radical” imams preach hate on Western soil, and arrange to build mosques mere feet from the site of the World Trade Center horror. They are silent when bomber after bomber attempts to infiltrate peaceful Western societies. Why? Is it because they themselves are not quite sure about the real motive of Islam? Or is it because they know the motive all too well?
At any rate, here we are with a president and administration that romanticizes Islamic culture to the real detriment of our own. This is happening simultaneously with the effort of the progressive Left to demonize American culture, squelch the traditional influence of Christian religion, and revise American history. The job of the President of the United States is not to protect other nations. It is not to stroke the self esteem of other peoples. It is to protect and nurture THIS nation. Obama needs to get over the love affair with the Muslim world, educate himself about the realities of Islam, its origins and political motives, and start thinking about gaining a small bit of honest affection and concern for his own country.
FamilySecurityMatters.org contributing editor Susan MacAllen writes a political blog, ASKEW ataskew.blogharbor.com, and has written on an extensive array of subjects for over 20 years. She has studied and written on Islam and Islamic culture and influence extensively. She has lived overseas and been intimately involved in the French culture since the Muslim immigrant population emerged in greater numbers in the south of France in the early 1980s.
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