The Obama Administration, Islam, and Other Things

Earlier, Uncle Cephas went on record against deliberate Qur'an burnings (http://unclecephas.blogspot.com/2010/09/lost-teaching-opportunity.html) as well as against Islamic triumphalism. He has not changed his opinion. But now that there have been riots in Afghanistan over inadvertent burnings of defaced Qur'ans by American military personnel and that the perpetrators of the burning may be put on trial, it's time to re-examine the question of Obama's relationship to the Islamic faith, his commitment to American valaues, and general qualifications to be president.

No, Barak Obama is not a Muslim, save in the eyes of Sharia, which holds any child of a Muslim father is a born Muslim. Nor is Obama a non-citizen by birth. Even if, as his senile grandmother affirmed, he was born in Mombassa Kenya, there is no evidence that his mother, Stanley Anne Dunham, was anything other than an American citizen with the legal qualifications to transmit citizenship to offspring born abroad. This is one reason why Obama's Indonesian-born half-sister entered the USA on an American passport rather than on an immigrant visa. But, for the record, Uncle Cephas accepst that our current President was born in Hawaii rather than Kenya.

The big problem is that Barack Obama and the administration he leads are sacrificing the protection of their own country and its values to gain the good opinion of people who will never have a good opinion of the USA.

No administration spokesman seems to have made a point of observing that the burnt Qur'ans originally had been used by incarcerated terrorists to pass messages concerning escape plots, and probably the killings of Afghans as well as NATO forces. In Sunni Islam, the marking or writing in the Qur'an is an act of blasphemy. Yet none of the ire of the Afghan street seems to fall on the original defacers. Nor has anyone bothered to note that the Afghan riots have killed far more Afghans than foreigners. Rather, all is focused on retraining and possibly disciplining Americans who were going about their legally mandated military duties.

This is similar to the administration's failure to take a teaching moment to explain the First Amendment in the wake of Terry Jones' ill-advised public burning of the Qur'an. The uppermost concern is to placate the volatile opinion of enemies rather than speak up for the values and Constitution which administration members are sworn to uphold.

As for religious affiliation, Obama's religion seems to be political expediency. He was a devout member of the United Church of Christ for as long as it could help him in the world of South Chicago politics. But, before the Organization of Islamic Countries in Cairo, he repeats the "Peace Be Upon Him" mantra at the mention of Jesus, as if Jesus is just a dead man, rather than the Risen One of whom we must ask peace.

Obama does not "get" the importance of theological doctrine in either Christian or Muslim discourse. It is among the large lacunae in his and his administration's intellectual furniture, and matched only by the firmness of his and his minions' belief in their belonging to the true cognoscenti.

So far, the Obama administration's attempt to win the goodwill of the Islamic world has borne no fruit. Iraq is in the process of sliding towards either sectarian civil war or becoming a new satrapy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The USA has made no headway in winning Afghan hearts and minds, and in that conflict, remains heavily dependent on that miasma of Islamic bigotry, injustice, corruption, and treachery called Pakistan. The "Arab Spring" towards which the Obama showed so much goodwill is showing itself a fountain of greater Islamic bigotry, the brunt of which is being borne by the Coptic Christians of Egypt and the small, dwindling Jewish community of Tunisia. Even the OIC's chair Isahnoglu (who as a Turk should know a lot better) has gone on record as saying that the Qur'an burning is an act of deliberate malice by the American government. Perhaps a moment of lucidity in this administration is appearing in Secretary Clinton's cautioning against arming the Syrian opposition. But this is a late awakening after interventions in Libya and connivance in Mubarak's fall.

Finally, the Obama administration has probed the cultural and legal fence around the First Amendment by first floating the idea that all physicians should be trained in abortion procedures regardless of conscience, and more recently that religious employers must purchase contraceptive coverage for their employees. Here, the president shows himself part of an anti-Christian secular liberal culture gone to seed. Seeing traditional Christianity of any sort as "the" theocratic danger, it will subvert the First Amendment to weaken it.

So, with obsequiousness towards enemies and cunning plots against friends, Obama's America lurches towards becoming ludicrous, as well as corrupt.

Obama's Keystone Kop-outs

The recent Arizona law allowing police to look into the immigration status of a a person already arrested or under investigation has popped open the follies of the current U.S. Government. Eric Holder, the nation's top lawyer, it now appears, does not read. In accepting Mexican President Felipe Calderon's chutzpah in criticizing the Arizona law, Mr. Obama and the honorable members of the House and Senate who applauded him show an appalling lack of perspective. Undersecretary of State Michael Posner's tinny apologies in the face of China's criticism of the Arizona law show him--and perhaps Hillary Clinton, his boss--a mere ninny. Or, perhaps, the issue reveals a government that would rather accuse other Americans of bigotry and racism than face up to a host of serious international problems.

Felipe Calderon's performance before the US Congress was chutzpah ranking with that of the man who murdered his parents with an axe and then pleads for mercy on the grounds that he is an orphan. The Mexican government has long regarded emigration to El Norte as its own safety valves; yet at the same time, its own ambassador to the United Nations has admitted that Mexico cannot lecture the USA on how it treats Mexican illegals in view of Mexico's own treatment of Guatemalans and Salvadoreans who enter Chiapas illegally. Further, given that illegal entry is a misdemeanor in the USA and a felony in Mexico renders President Calderon's speech all the more fatuous, and the applause given by American Senators and Representatives all the more craven.

China's lecturing the USA on the Arizona law is an inexcusable insult, and Undersecretary Posner's tinny apologies and mea culpas are worse. Even within China gives no welcome to desperate North Koreans who cross the Yalu and Tumen Rivers. This population, like American illegals, lives in the shadows, only with no access to public education for its children. Far from allowing debate on how to treat such people, the Chinese government offers bounties to Chinese who turn them in, and gives its law enforcement discretionary authority to shoot them. Whereas Arizona could not deny illegals the protections of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments even if it wanted to, Communist China regards such protections as extreme cases of irrational bourgeois sentimentality. China's leaders, observing Posner's performance, probably now see America as all the more contemptible.

Illegal immigration is indeed a complex problem. It reveals serious problems inherent in the society and government of America's neighbor to the south. It does indeed raise a host of humanitarian issues. The Arizona law does have the potential to unleash discriminatory actions. When police chiefs from several western states express concerns over the Arizona law, the nation should listen. But the law should spark a common sense dialogue about national interest and the character of America's international partners and rivals--not polarization that is geared only to short-term political gain. The Obama government has now shown the world America the Inept.

Another Version

WIth fannies high, Obama's marching minions
Go prancing down America's main drag!
It's time to pack up all your un-PeeCee opinions,
Whether in blog, in airwaves, or in mag! (repeat last line)

The media, subservient and gaga
Care not that Geitner cheats the IRS
Of cunning pol's tale they have made a sacred saga--
"Messiah'a come!" They loudly doth profess. (repeat last line)

Our youth will be regimented and vapid,
The better formed to serve our leader's will.
Social transformation will be sudden and quite rapid
Till all us Yankees live on trash and swill (repeat last line)


Can you name that tune?

At the RIsk of Speaking Ill of a Leader of our People...

With Fannies high, Obama's marching minions
Go prancing down America's main drag.
It's time to pack up all your un-PeeCee opinions,
Whether in speech, on airwaves, or in mag.
It's time to pack up all your un-PeeCee opinions,
Whether in speech, on airwaves, or in mag.

The media, subservient and ga-ga,
Care not that Geitner cheats the IRS.
Chicago pol's tale has become a sacred saga,
"Messiah's come!" They loudly doth profess.
Chicago pol's tale has become a sacred saga,
"Messiah's come!" They loudly doth profess.

His entourage is full of Maoists, Truthers,
Alinsky fans, and commies like Van Jones.
No Colbert dares to stand up as a comic spoofer--
Such things are now deeply forbidden zones.
No Colbert dares to stand up as a comic spoofer--
Such things are now deeply forbidden zones.

You're in the way if you're not with the program!
It's criminal to disagree, demurr--
No matter if his plans will bankrupt the whole country,
You must roll over, play dead, wag and purr!
No matter if his plans will bankrupt the whole country,
You must roll over, play dead, wag and purr!

Next thing, our youth will join in brown battalions
To sing and chant our fearless leader's name.
And prance along like well-trained gelded stallions,
To once-free people's deep and lasting shame.
And prance along like well-trained gelded stallions,
To once-free people's deep and lasting shame.

With Fannies high, Obama's marching minions
Go prancing down America's main drag.
It's time to pack up all your un-PeeCee opinions,
Whether in speech, on airwaves, or in mag.
It's time to pack up all your un-PeeCee opinions,
Whether in speech, on airwaves, or in mag.

Anyone out there recognize the tune that his song fits? No apologies are offered to its author.

LIberals Sticking their Feet in Others' Mouths

Daniel Pipes has recently disparaged “Sheikh Obama” for questionable remarks about Islam:

"Religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam." Here, Obama follows his predecessor in presenting himself as an interpreter of Islam. I ridiculed "Imam Bush" for telling Muslims about true Islam and its distortion, and now I must ridicule "Sheikh Obama" for the same. He's a politician, not a theologian. He's now a Christian, not a Muslim. He should steer completely clear from the topic of who are good or bad Muslims. (December 10, 2009)-- http://www.danielpipes.org

In his comments, Pipes has laid a finger on a peculiarly American penchant for policing the consciences of others from outside.

A commentator on Pipes’ blog charges that Obama is, in fact, a Shi’ite Muslim practicing Taqiyya, or presenting himself as something else to a hostile audience. More likely, Mr. Obama knows next to nothing about the merits of either side of the struggle for the early Islamic Caliphate that gave rise to divisions between Sunni, Shi’ah, and Ibadi. Indeed, Mr. Obama’s praise for Islam and appeals to his own Muslim heritage while speaking to the assembled delegates of the Islamic world in Cairo following his protestations of being a Christian during the U.S. presidential campaign suggest that Mr. Obama’s religious identity is tailored to the community he wishes to persuade and influence; that he is a politician who sees all religions as equally useful rather than a believer in the truth of any one of them.

But is it not presumptuous for either Mr. Bush or Mr. Obama to claim to fathom all the intricacies of the Islamic doctrine of jihad, or when points of ethics shared by Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are to trump the call to jihad? At best, both recent U.S. presidents possess only a rudimentary knowledge of Islamic doctrine.

Both, however, are claiming the post-enlightenment liberal’s presumption to stand in judgment over all prior traditions, while denying the right of others to challenge his own presuppositions about reason, justice, and the nature of reality.

Many an American liberal who cannot tell whether the book of Job is in the Old or New Testament, prides himself on his disparagement of “organized religion”, and has not darkened the door of a house of worship in years dares to tell Evangelicals who oppose abortion or homosexual marriage that they are “un-Christian”. Nancy Pelosi has presumed to lecture the Pope on how the encyclicals of his predecessors are somehow cryptically pro-abortion; even though it is clear even to God-bless-King-Billy Presbyterians that the Pope, not the U.S. Speaker of the House, is the ultimate interpreter of Roman Catholic doctrine.

Perhaps such attitudes did much to drive both Evangelicals and Roman Catholics away from the Democratic Party—the political home of many of the most outspoken American militant godless--for which their grandparents voted in droves. It is also likely that such attitudes, which expects the Islamic world, with its very different set of values and historical experience, to share a set of core ethical principles with secularized Americans, will only exacerbate America’s relations with that quarter of the world.