Obama’s Odd Ramadan Message

It has been customary for Presidents going back to at least Carter, to issue special messages on religious holidays, including the Muslim holy day of Ramadan. GW Bush took great pains in his messages to convey the idea that the United States was not at war with Islam.

Obama, not surprisingly, goes above and beyond the call of duty with his greeting for this year’s Ramadan

On behalf of the American people, Michelle and I want to extend our best wishes to Muslims in America and around the world. Ramadan Kareem.

Ramadan is a time when Muslims around the world reflect upon the wisdom and guidance that comes with faith, and the responsibility that human beings have to one another, and to God.  This is a time when families gather, friends host iftars, and meals are shared.  But Ramadan is also a time of intense devotion and reflection – a time when Muslims fast during the day and pray during the night; when Muslims provide support to others to advance opportunity and prosperity for people everywhere.  For all of us must remember that the world we want to build – and the changes that we want to make – must begin in our own hearts, and our own communities.

These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings. (?) Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality. (??) And here in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country. (???) And today, I want to extend my best wishes to the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world – and your families and friends – as you welcome the beginning of Ramadan.

I look forward to hosting an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan here at the White House later this week, and wish you a blessed month.

May God’s peace be upon you.

As this Washington Times oped notes, Obama seems to have rewritten US history and given “Islam a prominence in American annals that it has not earned”.

That Islam has had a major role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings may come as a surprise to Muslim women. Young Afghan girls who are having acid thrown in their faces on the way to school might want to offer their perspectives. That Islam is “known” for diversity and racial equality is also a bit of a reach. This certainly does not refer to religious diversity, which is nonexistent in many Muslim-majority states. This is a plaudit better reserved for a speech at the opening of a synagogue in Mecca.

Most puzzling is the president’s claim that “Islam has always been part of America.” Islam had no influence on the origins and development of the United States. It contributed nothing to early American political culture, art, literature, music or any other aspect of the early nation.

Throughout most of American history, the Muslim world was perceived as remote, alien and belligerent.

Read on as the article makes that case.

He is so off the mark you almost wonder if he’s using taqiyya.

Obama has a history of exaggerating the contributions of Islam to the world. He did the same thing during his speech to the Muslim world, last year, which Robert Spencer summed up as platitudes and naivete, and Michelle Malkin called Rainbows and unicorns and a world without the j-word.

Melanie Phillips was alarmed to hear Obama using common Islamic boilerplate.

He appears to be a doubling down on a strategy of  what Charles Krauthammer termed, “imperial condescension and adolescent diplomacy” with the Islamic world in the hopes that that will make them like us more.

Apparently no one ever taught him, “honesty is the best policy”.