It is clear President Barack Obama suffers from a serious mental disconnect in his thinking about Islam. Those responsible for drawing attention to it, the media, suffer it as well—by willingly accepting his narrative on Islam.
For six years, we have borne witness to Obama’s repeated assertions Islam is a peaceful religion. Neither terrorist attacks conducted in the name of Allah in the West nor ongoing massive turmoil in Muslim lands have dissuaded him from making outlandish assertions.
If “Islamophobist” ascribes one with prejudicial concerns about Islam, if a basis exists for such concerns due to clearly identifiable tenets unique to Islam’s teachings, yet, despite this, if one continues ignoring these truths, perhaps it is appropriate to describe one fearing truth about Islam as an “Islamophobia-phobist.”
It is clear Obama suffers this malady. He refuses to acknowledge concerns over the violence Islam inherently breeds.
The disconnect in Obama’s reasoning is this: Islam is a peaceful religion; therefore, any Muslim undertaking violence in its name is not Muslim but a hijacker of the religion.
Obama would have us believe Muslims are “peace virgins”: One undertaking an act of violence loses this virginity and is no longer entitled status as a Muslim.
But anyone who reads the Koran and understands Islam’s tenets must question its credentials as a religion of peace. Armed with such an understanding, one senses Allah’s deep seeded hatred for those failing to embrace Islam and an unquenchable thirst for violence against non-Muslims doing so.
The Koran is a license for Muslims to kill non-believers. Some Muslims choose to utilize that license; many do not. Non-Muslims are left to ponder whether non-violent Muslims are adhering to the non-Islamic belief all human life is valued or whether their Allah-given right to do violence only temporarily lies dormant.
The authority for this license flows from an Islamic teaching that cannot be denied: the supremacy of Islam’s ideological doctrine to which all other religions must submit. Thus, while followers of all religions may well believe theirs is superior to others, Islam is unique among them for demanding others submit to it. The failure to do so gives rise to “grievances” among Islam’s faithful.
Author Raymond Ibrahim’s May 14, 2015 article “Islamic Supremacism: The True Source of Muslim ‘Grievances’” best explains this. The bottom line is, since the Koran teaches Islamic superiority, the existence of other religions is an affront to Islam, giving rise to Muslim grievances. The only way other religions avoid these grievances is submission to it, adhering strictly to what Islam allows non-Muslims to do.
Ibrahim notes this “supremacist birthright” drove Muslims to spread Islam through out much of the Middle East and into Europe—until their sense of entitlement was “dramatically humbled after European powers defeated and colonized much of the Muslim world.”
Today, however, Ibrahim adds, Muslims have come to realize the sword is no longer needed to force itself upon a West proving much more malleable in capitulating “to Islamic mores—in the name of tolerance, multiculturalism, political correctness, or just plain cowardice.”
The source document for non-Muslim submission to Islam is “The Conditions of Omar”—supposedly evolving from the milieu of Islam’s 9th century conquests over non-believers. However, many scholars suggest it was a forgery born out of the imagination of Muslim religious leaders seeking to re-write history. Nonetheless, Muslims today believe it is the religious authority for submission to Islam and how non-believers must behave.
Ibrahim reports all actions today by non-believers give rise to what he calls the “How Dare You?!” phenomenon—i.e., how dare you do anything forbidden by Omar’s conditions? While the media and Islamic apologists link Muslim mayhem to products of their grievances, what goes missing from the debate is “the supremacist” rationale Muslims attach to their grievances—justified by their supremacy birthright. By accepting the validity of these grievances, other religions acquiesce in Islam’s supremacy.
“In short,” Ibrahim correctly points out, “anytime non-Muslims dare to overstep their Sharia-designated ‘inferior’ status—which far exceeds drawing cartoons—supremacist Muslims become violently aggrieved… ‘grievances’ …not predicated on any human standards of equality or justice (but) only a supremacist worldview.”
The ongoing violence in the world today, whether Muslim-on-non-Muslim or Muslim-on-Muslim, stems from a “supremacy chip” Islam has on its shoulder. It leaves but two paths for conflict resolution: Islam changes by renouncing its perceived supremacy as justification for imposing itself upon other religions or other religions change by submitting to Islam’s perceived supremacy. Failure to embark upon one path or the other means perpetual war between Islam and all other religions.
This perpetual war—despite Obama’s assertions Islam is peaceful—was made clear by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s statement in a recently released recording, “Islam was never a religion of peace. Islam is the religion of fighting.”
The severity of Obama’s Islamophobia-phobia was evident as, for the sixth time in giving a State of the Union Address, he said nothing about Islam’s inherent threat to the West. His 2015 Address suggested such conflict was all behind us, saying about the two wars fought since 9/11, “The shadow of crisis has passed.”
Muslims are fighting a perpetual war—some violently, some not. We fail to comprehend we are under attack as Obama fails even to acknowledge existence of such a threat. His Islmophobiaphobia has America heading down the path of submission to Islam.
One would hope a media entrusted to safeguard our human liberties would challenge Obama’s Islamophobiaphobic disconnect. Sadly, it has failed to do so.
An example of Obama’s influence manifested itself in a recent CNN interview. CNN’s Carol Costello and guest Dean Obeidallah of the Daily Beast discussed a May 8th Saturday Night Live (SNL) skit raising the issue of Islamic intolerance.
In the skit, actors portrayed television show contestants secretly given a subject to draw for teammates to then guess the subject matter. All went well until a contestant, given the subject of “Prophet Muhammad,” became gripped with fear it would earn him a death sentence by offended Muslims.
During the interview, Obeidallah called “radical Islam” a “made-up idea.” More shockingly, Costello made no effort to challenge the grossly inaccurate claim. Obeidallah’s comment and Costello’s lack of response was so ludicrous, one would have thought it to be a continuation of the SNL skit.
Islamophobia-phobia, over time, can prove fatal. It happens after enough freedom-loving people and the institutions supposedly safeguarding them are infected to the point, that which they fear talking about, sufficiently spreads to kill them.
