Worst potus ever...
Obama Knows Best
Will a reporter ever ask the president what he knows about Islamic doctrine?
April 5, 2016
Hugh Fitzgerald
...
Obama’s optimistic certainty is a thing of wonder. For how does he know that “our Muslim populations feel themselves to be Americans”? Does a Pew poll suffice? Do we have reason to believe that Muslims, eager to dampen the suspicions of non-Muslims, and well-versed in taqiyya, might actually answer such a poll by providing the soothing answers they know are desired, and speak not what they feel, but what they think they ought to say? And does Obama think that the definition of “feeling oneself to be an American” is self-evident? Does someone’s merely living within a given geographic area, and attaining the citizenship associated with that geographic area – living in the United States, say, and acquiring American citizenship through naturalization or birth– mean that that someone feels himself “to be an American”? What does it mean to “be an American”? Would it not mean, in the most important and irreducible sense, that you subscribe to the Constitution, that document at the heart of our civil religion, which means to subscribe to a shared set of beliefs? And these beliefs would include the individual’s right to the freedom of speech and to the freedom of religion, and a belief that the legitimacy of any government depends on its reflecting, however imperfectly through elections, the will expressed by the people. Islam, on the other hand, insists on limiting the freedom of speech (if, for example, such speech is held to blaspheme Muhammad or otherwise call aspects of Islam into question) and the freedom of religion (punishing apostates even with death), and ascribing legitimacy to a government or ruler insofar as that government or ruler reflects the will expressed by Allah in the Qur’an, rather than—as in the American system — the will expressed by the people through elections.
Obama has yet to be asked, by some intrepid interviewer, to tell us exactly what his cavalier assertion that “our Muslim populations feel themselves to be Americans” means to him. Nor has he been asked, either, if he has read the Qur’an and familiarized himself with the Hadith, and if he detects any contradictions between those canonical texts and the Constitution of the United States. As far as I know, not once in all of the hundreds of interviews Obama has granted over the past seven years has anyone asked him that most important question: what do you know about Islamic doctrine, and how do you know it? Jeffrey Goldberg practically filled most of the latest issue of The Atlantic with his Obama interview, and there were plenty of questions about terrorism and ISIS and the Middle East, but he did not take the opportunity to ask Obama about his knowledge of Islam. He’s President; therefore he surely must know what he’s talking about; he’s got a small army of wonderful experts, led by the likes of Ben Rhodes and John Brennan, to fill him in by providing bullet-ridden executive summaries for every occasion; Islam and Obama go all the way back to the dreams of his father, and the melodious sound of the muezzin’s wail in Indonesia, so he must have a grasp of the subject; don’t dare to cross-question him; when it comes to Islam, it’s ipse-dixit all the way.
Obama officiously lectures the Europeans, telling them that we Americans do something right and they should learn from us about the “integration” of their Muslim population. But surely the most important difference is a matter of math — that the percentage of the population in this country that is Muslim is far smaller than in Europe. In the United States it is about 1%, while in Europe the percentage of the population that is Muslim ranges from 5% to 10%. Isn’t it worth finding out what, historically, has happened in Western countries as the percentage of the population that is Muslim increases? Might we end up concluding that “integration” becomes harder pari passu with the increase in the Muslim population, and that the putative American success in integrating Muslims has mostly to do with numbers?
...
Obama’s policy on Muslim matters — at home and abroad — has been a blend of certainty and sanctimony. One hopes that his replacement will at least forego those lectures that, with unhappy regularity, Obama keeps inflicting on our European allies. And possibly, just possibly, that next president will become a sudden scholar of Islam, and read a relevant book or two that Obama overlooked. You know the ones I have in mind.
Obama Knows Best
Obama Knows Best
Will a reporter ever ask the president what he knows about Islamic doctrine?
April 5, 2016
Hugh Fitzgerald
...
Obama’s optimistic certainty is a thing of wonder. For how does he know that “our Muslim populations feel themselves to be Americans”? Does a Pew poll suffice? Do we have reason to believe that Muslims, eager to dampen the suspicions of non-Muslims, and well-versed in taqiyya, might actually answer such a poll by providing the soothing answers they know are desired, and speak not what they feel, but what they think they ought to say? And does Obama think that the definition of “feeling oneself to be an American” is self-evident? Does someone’s merely living within a given geographic area, and attaining the citizenship associated with that geographic area – living in the United States, say, and acquiring American citizenship through naturalization or birth– mean that that someone feels himself “to be an American”? What does it mean to “be an American”? Would it not mean, in the most important and irreducible sense, that you subscribe to the Constitution, that document at the heart of our civil religion, which means to subscribe to a shared set of beliefs? And these beliefs would include the individual’s right to the freedom of speech and to the freedom of religion, and a belief that the legitimacy of any government depends on its reflecting, however imperfectly through elections, the will expressed by the people. Islam, on the other hand, insists on limiting the freedom of speech (if, for example, such speech is held to blaspheme Muhammad or otherwise call aspects of Islam into question) and the freedom of religion (punishing apostates even with death), and ascribing legitimacy to a government or ruler insofar as that government or ruler reflects the will expressed by Allah in the Qur’an, rather than—as in the American system — the will expressed by the people through elections.
Obama has yet to be asked, by some intrepid interviewer, to tell us exactly what his cavalier assertion that “our Muslim populations feel themselves to be Americans” means to him. Nor has he been asked, either, if he has read the Qur’an and familiarized himself with the Hadith, and if he detects any contradictions between those canonical texts and the Constitution of the United States. As far as I know, not once in all of the hundreds of interviews Obama has granted over the past seven years has anyone asked him that most important question: what do you know about Islamic doctrine, and how do you know it? Jeffrey Goldberg practically filled most of the latest issue of The Atlantic with his Obama interview, and there were plenty of questions about terrorism and ISIS and the Middle East, but he did not take the opportunity to ask Obama about his knowledge of Islam. He’s President; therefore he surely must know what he’s talking about; he’s got a small army of wonderful experts, led by the likes of Ben Rhodes and John Brennan, to fill him in by providing bullet-ridden executive summaries for every occasion; Islam and Obama go all the way back to the dreams of his father, and the melodious sound of the muezzin’s wail in Indonesia, so he must have a grasp of the subject; don’t dare to cross-question him; when it comes to Islam, it’s ipse-dixit all the way.
Obama officiously lectures the Europeans, telling them that we Americans do something right and they should learn from us about the “integration” of their Muslim population. But surely the most important difference is a matter of math — that the percentage of the population in this country that is Muslim is far smaller than in Europe. In the United States it is about 1%, while in Europe the percentage of the population that is Muslim ranges from 5% to 10%. Isn’t it worth finding out what, historically, has happened in Western countries as the percentage of the population that is Muslim increases? Might we end up concluding that “integration” becomes harder pari passu with the increase in the Muslim population, and that the putative American success in integrating Muslims has mostly to do with numbers?
...
Obama’s policy on Muslim matters — at home and abroad — has been a blend of certainty and sanctimony. One hopes that his replacement will at least forego those lectures that, with unhappy regularity, Obama keeps inflicting on our European allies. And possibly, just possibly, that next president will become a sudden scholar of Islam, and read a relevant book or two that Obama overlooked. You know the ones I have in mind.
Obama Knows Best
