He Is Barack Obama. He Doesn’t Need to Know the Facts.

Barack Obama may not approve of Israel, but he has fond memories of hearing the muezzin’s call to prayer — which he has recited in Arabic, as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” As for Islam itself, he gave an address in Cairo where he said that “I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning, and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt’s advancement. Together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress.” He had nothing but praise for Islam: “I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive” — he meant ”mutually exclusive” — “and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings… As the Holy Koran tells us, ‘Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.'”

And he delivered himself of still more of this treacly nonsense:

As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam – at places like al-Azhar University – that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.

I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America’s story. The first nation to recognise my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President John Adams wrote: “The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.” And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, served in government, stood for civil rights, started businesses, taught at our universities, excelled in our sports arenas, won Nobel prizes, built our tallest building [and destroyed our tallest buildings], and lit the Olympic torch. And when the first Muslim-American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our founding fathers – Thomas Jefferson – kept in his personal library.

Jefferson’s ownership of a Qur’an meant only that he was curious about Islam, not that he approved of it. There is no evidence that he ever read it.

Does Obama really believe any of this stuff about the wonderfulness of Islam? Yes, I’m afraid so. He doesn’t know much about history, and “don’t know much about geography,” either. Doesn’t he know that the Treaty of Tripoli, which ended attacks on American shipping by the Barbary Pirates, came about because American warships fought the Muslim corsairs in the Mediterranean?

But he’s learned that he can get away with that ignorance. No one calls him out. He slides through life, being given awards and respect that he does not deserve. He was a scofflaw, who had a pile of fifteen parking tickets from Somerville that he failed to pay until seventeen years later, two weeks before he announced his bid for the presidency. He was made president of the Harvard Law Review, despite never having written a single law review article, but only a short unsigned student case comment (volume 103, page 823) analyzing the Illinois Supreme Court case Stallman v. Youngquist.

Obama was given a Nobel Peace Prize for nothing he had done, but only in the hope that in the future he might do something to deserve it. And we are all still waiting for him to do something — anything — that might retroactively justify that prize. He now bestrides the world like a colossus, furrows his brow to indicate thoughtfulness, delivers his platitudes and plongitudes, picks up yet another honorary degree, and then goes his merry way as the Great Man whose proof of greatness no one can quite pinpoint.

I doubt that Obama, the sudden scholar of Islam, has read the Qur’an, especially such hair-raising passages as 3:110 (Muslims are the “best of peoples”), 5:51 (“Do not take Christians and Jews as friends, for they are friends only with each other”), 8:12 (where Allah says “’I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip”), 8:60 (“And prepare against them [the unbelievers] whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know, whom Allah knows”); 9:29 (“Fight those who do not believe in Allah, or the Last Day”), 47:4 (“So when you meet the disbelievers, strike necks until you have thoroughly subdued them, then bind them firmly”), and 98:6 (Non-believers are “the most vile of created beings”).

But he doesn’t have to read the Qur’an to understand Islam. He has heard the azan at sunset in Indonesia, the “sweetest sound in the world.” He knows the splendors of Islam, and the vast contributions of Muslim thinkers, scientists, and artists, as he recounted them so fawningly in his speech at Al-Azhar University.

I am equally convinced that he has never read the hadith in the most authoritative recensions of Bukhari and Muslim. He doesn’t know, for example, that Muhammad has said “I have been victorious through terror” and “war is deception.” He does not know that Muhammad claimed that “Islam is to dominate and not to be dominated.” He doesn’t know that Muhammad married little Aisha when she was six, and had sexual intercourse with her when she was nine and he was 54. Nor does he know that, despite this pedophilia, Muslims regard Muhammad as the “Model of Conduct” (uswa hasana) and the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil).

He is Barack Obama, and doesn’t need to know any of this. And only a racist or an Islamophobe would dare to point that out.