Fitzgerald: Barack Obama, The New York Times, that Iftar Dinner, and the rewriting of history

"The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan --- making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago." -- Barack Obama, speaking on August 14, 2010, at the "Annual Iftar Dinner" at the White House

Really? Is that what happened? Was there a "first known iftar at the White House" given by none other than President Thomas Jefferson for the "first Muslim ambassador to the United States"? That's what Barack Obama and his dutiful speechwriters told the Muslims in attendance at the 2010 "Annual Iftar Dinner," knowing full well that the remarks would be published for all to see. Apparently Obama, and those who wrote this speech for him, and others who vetted it, find nothing wrong with attempting to convince Americans, as part of their policy of trying to win Muslim hearts and Muslim minds, that American history itself can be rewritten. A little insidious nunc pro tunc backdating, to rewrite American history. And that rewrite of American history has the goal of convincing Americans, in order to please Muslims, that the United States and Islam, that Americans and Muslims, go way back.

As Obama so unforgettably put it in his Cairo Speech (possibly the most inaccurate, the most cavalier about historical truth, of any speech by any President in American history):

As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam -- at places like Al-Azhar -- 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 -- (applause) -- 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. (Applause.)
I also know that Islam has always been a part of America's story. The first nation to recognize 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, they have served in our government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at our universities, they've excelled in our sports arenas, they've won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, 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. (Applause.)

We could go through those two appalling paragraphs with such historians and keen students of history as Gibbon, John Quincy Adams, Tocqueville, Jacob Burckhardt, and Winston Churchill, but that is for another occasion. We could point out that the highly selective quotation - for example from John Adams, whose views on Islam are falsely implied by quoting such a statement as "the United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims" which was mere pleasing rhetoric, and that phrase "in itself" left open the possibility of other reasons for enmity, including Muslim hostility. Not John Adams himself but his son John Quincy Adams (our most learned President), who was far more knowledgeable about Islam, was to write about that:

The precept of the koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.

But John Adams himself drew conclusions about Muslims and Islam that were far from favorable. John Adams' unfavorable view of Islam was obscured and turned on its head by Obama, in quoting that single phrase that was part of negotiations-cum-treaty designed to free American ships and seaman from the ever-present threat of attack by Muslim pirates in North Africa (known to history as the Barbary Pirates). John Adams' unfavorable view of Islam was shared by all those who, in the young Republic, had any dealings at all with Muslim envoys. Thomas Jefferson had a copy of the Qur'an in his library not because he was an admirer of that book, or the faith of Islam, but because he was both curious and cultivated. Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison used Jefferson's own copy of the Qur'an. Yet that copy, since it was translated into English by George Sale, has for most devout Muslims no validity whatsoever, for the Qur'an must be read and understood in Arabic. A Qur'an in a language other than Arabic cannot even be called the "Holy Qur'an," though apparently Obama, and his speechwriters, did not know this, in their fulsome description of Jefferson's copy of the Sale translation that was appropriated by Representative Ellison for his own crude and transparent political ploy. Obama wrongly refers to Sales' version as the "Holy Qur'an," and every Muslim at that dinner knew such a book could not possibly be called that. A small mistake, but then there are so many mistakes, and Obama and his speechwriters are so eager to please, and yet so ignorant withal, that these mistakes add up.

There is not a single American statesman or traveler or diplomat in the days of the early Republic who had a good word for Islam. Look high, look low, consult whatever you want in the National Archives or the Library of Congress, and you will not find any such testimony. And the very idea that someday Muslims, adherents of the fanatical faith of Islam, would be here and would dare to invoke the Freedom of Conscience that is guaranteed by our First Amendment, through both the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses, would have struck them as impossible. For everyone knew then, as so many now apparently do not know, that Islam itself inculcates not freedom of conscience, but blind, unquestioning submission of the individual Muslim to Authority, that is, the Authority of the Qur'an, as glossed by the Sunnah, and the Authority of the Shari'a, the Holy Law of Islam to which all Muslim law codes are supposed to aspire and, ideally, to be modeled on, the Holy Law which embodies, in codified form, the texts and tenets and attitudes of Islam. This, too, Barack Obama and his speechwriters, and such people as John Brennan, Deputy Special Assistant For Homeland Security and Terrorism to the President, apparently do not know.

But let's return to that assertion about Jefferson's "Iftar Dinner," or rather, to that dinner that Barack Obama would have us all believe was the first "Iftar Dinner" at the White House way back in 1805. What actually happened was this.

The American navy, fed up with the constant depredations by Muslim corsairs, who were not so much pirates as Muslims who were encouraged to prey on Christian shipping, and who at times even recorded the areas of the Mediterranean where they planned to go in search of Christian prey, seized a ship that belonged to those who were ruled by the Bey of Tunis. And the Bey of Tunis wanted that ship back. He sent to Washington, for six months, a temporary envoy, one Sidi Soliman Mellimelli, who was not, pace Obama, "the first Muslim ambassador to the United States," but, rather, a temporary envoy.

Here, from the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, is a bit of the background to the story:

The crisis with Tunis erupted when the USS Constitution captured Tunisian vessels attempting to run the American blockade of Tripoli. The bey of Tunis threatened war and sent Mellimelli to the United States to negotiate full restitution for the captured vessels and to barter for tribute.
The backdrop to this state visit was the ongoing conflict between the United States and the Barbary states, autonomous provinces of the Ottoman Empire that rimmed the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. Soon after the Revolutionary War and the consequent loss of the British navy's protection, American merchant vessels had become prey for Barbary corsairs. Jefferson was outraged by the demands of ransom for civilians captured from American vessels and the Barbary states' expectation of annual tribute to be paid as insurance against future seizures. He took an uncharacteristically hawkish position against the prevailing thought that it was cheaper to pay tribute than maintain a navy to protect shipping from piracy.

Jefferson balked at paying tribute but accepted the expectation that the host government would cover all expenses for such an emissary. He arranged for Mellimelli and his 11 attendants to be housed at a Washington hotel, and rationalized that the sale of the four horses and other fine gifts sent by the bey of Tunis would cover costs. Mellimelli's request for "concubines" as a part of his accommodations was left to Secretary of State James Madison. Jefferson assured one senator that obtaining peace with the Barbary powers was important enough to "pass unnoticed the irregular conduct of their ministers."

Despite whispers regarding his conduct, Mellimelli received invitations to numerous dinners and balls, and according to one Washington hostess was "the lion of the season." At the president's New Year's Day levee the Tunisian envoy provided "its most brilliant and splendid spectacle," and added to his melodramatic image at a later dinner party hosted by the secretary of state. Upon learning that the Madisons were unhappy at being childless, Mellimelli flung his "magical" cloak around Dolley Madison and murmured an incantation that promised she would bear a male child. His conjuring, however, did not work.

Differences in culture and customs stirred interest on both sides. Mellimelli's generous use of scented rose oil was noted by many of those who met him, and guards had to be posted outside his lodgings to turn away the curious. For his part, the Tunisian was surprised at the social freedom women enjoyed in America and was especially intrigued by several delegations of Native Americans from the western territories then visiting Washington. Mellimelli inquired which prophet the Indians followed: Moses, Jesus Christ or Mohammed. When he was told none of them, that they worshiped "the Great Sprit" alone, he was reported to have pronounced them "vile hereticks."

So that's it. Sidi Soliman Mellimelli installed himself for six months at a Washington hotel, for which the American government apparently picked up the tab. And as to that request for "concubines," apparently Jefferson asked the Secretary of State, James Madison, to attend to the matter. It's amusing to note how little the behavior of Muslim and Arab rulers has changed. It is only we who do not see them, or allow ourselves to see them, as primitive and exotic creatures to be amused by or often contemptuous of, but not as creatures to whom we need accord any undo respect, for their sole claim on our attention is that some of them, through an accident of geology, have acquired a lot of money. And there are people in Washington who are happy, in their desire to do well themselves, to convince the American government that it must bend over backwards in treating of Arabs and Muslims. There is no need to do so, and it is easy to show why not. In fact, the description of Mellimelli's requests may put many in mind of how so many Muslim and Arab rulers, including "plucky little king" Hussein of Jordan, when they used to come to Washington, would have round-the-clock escort girls service them in their hotel rooms. But what was most maddening was that the bills were paid by the ever-compliant C.I.A. I presume the oil money has made that, in some cases, no longer necessary.

Sidi Soliman Mellimelli was quite an exotic specimen:

The curious were not to be disappointed by the appearance of the first Muslim envoy to the United States - a large figure with a full dark beard dressed in robes of richly embroidered fabrics and a turban of fine white muslin.
Over the next six months, this exotic representative from a distant and unfamiliar culture would add spice to the Washington social season but also test the diplomatic abilities of President Jefferson.

During the six solar months Mellimelli was here, the lunar month of Ramadan occurred. And as it happens, during that Ramadan observed by Mellimelli, but naturally unobserved, hardly noticed, by the Americans, President Jefferson invited Sidi Soliman Mellimelli for dinner at the White House. He probably during that six-month period had done it more than once. Mellimelli replied that he could not come at the appointed hour of three thirty in the afternoon (our ancestors rose much earlier, and ate much earlier, and went to bed much earlier, in the pre-Edison days of their existence). That time fell, for him, but not for Thomas Jefferson or anyone else in the United States of America, during the fasting period of the month of Ramadan. He replied that he could not come at the hour set, that is, at half-past three, but only after sundown.

Jefferson, a courteous man, simply moved the dinner forward by a few hours. He didn't change the menu, he didn't change anything else. And moving the dinner forward by a few hours hardly turns that dinner into a soi-disant "Iftar Dinner." Barack Obama's trying to do so, trying that is, to rewrite American history, with some nunc-pro-tunc backdating, in order to flatter or please his Muslim guests, is false. And, being false, is also disgusting. It is disgusting for an American President to misrepresent American history to Americans, including all the schoolchildren who are now being subject to all kinds of Islamic propaganda, cunningly woven into the newly-mandated textbooks, that so favorably misrepresent Islam, as here.

Now there is a kind of coda to this dismal tale, and it is provided by the New York Times, which likes to put on airs and think of itself as "the newspaper of record," whatever that means. The Times carried a front-page story on August 14, 2010, written by one Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and no doubt gone over by many vigilant editors. This story contains a predictably glowing account of Barack Obama's remarks at the "Annual Iftar Dinner." Here is the paragraph that caught my eye:

In hosting the iftar, Mr. Obama was following a White House tradition that, while sporadic, dates to Thomas Jefferson, who held a sunset dinner for the first Muslim ambassador to the United States. President George W. Bush hosted iftars annually.

Question for Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and for her editors at The New York Times: You report that there is a "White Hosue tradition that, while sporadic, dates to Thomas Jefferson." I claim that you are wrong. I claim that there is no White House Tradition at all about Iftar Dinners. I claim that Thomas Jefferson, in moving forward by a few hours a dinner that changed in no other respect, for Sidi Soliman Mellimelli, was not providing the first of the "Annual Iftar Dinners" that, the New York Times tells us, has since Jefferson's non-existent "Iftar Dinner," have been observed "sporadically."

When, then, was the next in this long, but "sporadic" series of iftar dinners? I can find no record of any, for roughly the next two hundred years, until we come to the fall of the year 2001, that is, just after the deadliest attack on American civilians ever recorded, an attack carried out by a novemdectet of Muslims acting according to their understanding of the very same texts -- Qur'an,Hadith, Sira -- that all Muslims read, an understanding that many have demonstrated since that they share, not least in the spontaneous celebrations that were immediately held in Cairo, and Riyadh, and Jeddah, and in Ramallah, and Gaza, and Damascus, and Baghdad, and all over the place, where Muslims felt that they had won a victory over those accursed kuffar, those ingrates, those Infidels. And it was President George Bush who decided that, to win Muslim "trust" or to end Muslim "mistrust" -- I forget which -- so that we could, non-Muslim and Muslim, collaborate on defeating those "violent extremists" who had "hijacked a great religion," started this sporadic ball unsporadically rolling. And he did it, by golly, he did. He hosted an Iftar Dinner with all the fixins. It was held just the month after the attacks prompted by Islamic texts and tenets and attitudes on the World Trade Center, on the Pentagon, on a plane's doomed pilots and passengers over a field in Pennsylvania.

And thus it is, that ever since 2001, we have had iftar dinner after iftar dinner. But it was not Jefferson or any other of our cultivated and learned Presidents, who started this "tradition" that has been observed only "sporadically" -- i.e., never -- until George Bush came along, unless we are to count as an "iftar dinner" what was merely seen, by Jefferson, as a dinner given at a time convenient for his not-too-honored guest.

Yes, and how splendidly Bush, and now Obama, have proven to Muslims that there are no hard feelings. Do you think the three trillion dollars spent in Iraq and now in Afghanistan (not counting the hundreds of billions that, over time, have gone to Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, even the "Palestinian" territories), have done that? It has all been designed to improve the lot of Muslims on the unproven assumption that this will make them less attentive to the texts, the ideology, of their Total Belief-System, and hence more willing to grandly concede to us Infidels a territory of our own, a place in the sun of our own. Yes, George Bush, that profound student of history and of ideas, kept telling us, in those first few months after 9/11/2001, that as far as he was concerned, by gum, Islam was a religion of "peace and tolerance." And just to prove it, by golly, he'd put on an Iftar Dinner with all the fixins. And that's just what he did. And that's how the "tradition" that Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and her many vetting editors at the newspaper of comical record, The New York Times, began. It's all of nine years old, through the disastrous presidencies of Bush and now of Obama.

And stop rewriting history, in ways little and big, about the American "connection" to Islam - including that absurd attempt on the front page of The New York Times just yesterday, to run a story on Christians from the Middle East, fleeing Islam and Muslims for the United States (as they fled, too, to South America, or to Australia) and appropriating the history of Arabic-speaking Maronite and Orthodox immigrants in that story on "Little Syria" to make American readers think that "see, Arabs, Muslim Arabs, go a long way back in New York City, so let's not get so hot and bothered about a little mosque someone wants to build." Was there ever such deceit, day after day, than in the way The New York Times has become a willing collaborator with the O.I.C., and others who want nonstop Mister Feelgood stories about Islam in America?

I have a request for The New York Times. It's a most modest one. All I ask -- I never ask, or expect, very much -- is that the editors of The New York Times apologize for that paper's misapplication of the adjective "sporadic" in the front-page story by Sheryl Stolberg on the "Annual Iftar" dinner.

Put up, or shut up, dear newspaper of record. Tell us when that "tradition" of "Iftar Dinners" truly began. Cite those Presidents who held dinners that they considered to be "Iftar Dinners." Give us chapter, give us verse. And if, as I believe, that hollow and recent and transparently determined-to-win-Muslim-hearts-and-minds "tradition" began in 2001, then tell us. And since your story was on the front page, do what the lawyers do when they have to make legal announcements, and put your retraction, eat your humble pie, right on the front page.

A failure to do so will be further, and for some the final confirmation, of the sorry record of The New York Times in its coverage of Islam. Most readers with some sense of what Islam is all about, even those who lack detailed knowledge, are now ready to take any coverage of the matter in The New York Times with a grain - with a Pinch - of salt.

Clio, Muse of History, is a stern mistress. Subscribers to stories that live and die between editions may forget or forgive, but Mnemosyne does neither. If I were the "newspaper of record," I'd want to propitiate not the gods, but the most vigilant and meticulous of muses. If I were Pinch Sulzberger, I'd be mortally embarrassed, and determined to make amends. But then, I have standards.

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48 Comments

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sean | August 26, 2010 5:50 AM | Reply

Muslims have a rather pathetic quest for significance in the modern world, and Obama knows how to pander to it. See #10 at http://crombouke.blogspot.com/2010/01/twelve-tactics-of-taqiyya.html

perpster | August 26, 2010 5:57 AM | Reply

Totalitarian Islam reminds me of the original Star Trek "Landrew" "Of the Body" episode. Mindless obedience.

Jaladhi replied to comment from perpster | August 26, 2010 6:14 AM | Reply

More like brain dead obedience!!!

Joseph | August 26, 2010 6:25 AM | Reply

Muslim cabbie gets stabbed, Bloomberg sees a political opportunity...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has invited a taxi driver, who was allegedly attacked by a baby-faced college student this week, to meet at City Hall on Thursday.

Of course, this is the result of all the Islamophobic rhetoric on those demons on the right. So Frank Rich, Eugene Robinson, Joe Conason, etc. will tell us.

Read it all here.

Paul Hoffman | August 26, 2010 6:27 AM | Reply

Thanks for that excellent article, Hugh.

But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the "paper of record " to correct those little errors in history, that you've pointed out.

"Pinch " Sulzberger, is beyond being embarrassed. The NYT hasn't been a newspaper for quite some time.

It's just another democratic propaganda machine.

Jaladhi | August 26, 2010 6:31 AM | Reply

One has to ask NYT what does "sporadic" mean in their dictionary. It has to be more than once, off and on. Prior to Bush's stupid pronouncement of "Islam is a religion of peace or some such nonsense", and holding Ramadan dinner how many times White House held Iftar dinner for Muslims even if we assume Jefferson did have one for the Muslims.
None!!1

It seems NYT is rewriting history as well as changing meaning of words. Truly sad state of affairs at the moronic fort of New York Times!! Perhaps NYT is secretly owned by some mid east sheikh!!!

winoceros | August 26, 2010 6:35 AM | Reply

Even without Hugh's carefully undertaken task and sources, this narrative was easy enough to dispel in about ten minutes worth of research on the internet.

Not even using university search engines.

All I glean from that story is that Americans have grace and manners, and Muslim envoys from Tunisia enjoy getting serviced by infidel women and inconveniencing their hosts.

Far be it from the Tunisian envoy to gracefully decline the invitation, stating that his faith observance was more important, and he'd take his plate in his room, thank you.

That's what people with grace and manners do.

Not inconvenience a head of state so he can fan his feathers in front of his adoring crowd.

When I think of John Adams reception in France, this story bothers me all the more.

What an uncivilization.

Proud_Kafir7908 | August 26, 2010 6:41 AM | Reply

One thing that I can't help thinking of whenever yet another more outrageous, more fallacious, more cowardly display of dhimmitude by Buraq Hussein hits us like a ton of bricks, is a few essays by Hugh from before the presidency was given to that traitor...

"Arab racism and black muslims."

"Arab racism and dissing Obama."

"What Obama has to demonstrate."

The last of those three could have been written with any prospective US president or, for that matter, any Western head of government and/or state in mind. After all, if Western Civilization is to win the war waged on it by mahoundianism for the last 1400+ years, that should be the least any true leader should be familiar with. The first two, just for the fact that Buraq is black, should have been something to make it clear to him that in no way he could ever hope to win any respect, let alone the hearts, of any mahoundian on this planet.

Nevertheless, in the light of these last nightmarish 19 months, I don't think Hugh or most of us could ever have anticipated, before the Nov. 2008 election, how far in the opposite direction pointed to in those essays Buraq would go. I know that conservative websites sent all kinds of conspiracy theories and allegations (true and not) about Hussein flying around, but that's something that we have come to expect from any side of the spectrum in American politics for the last two decades or so.

Sometimes I have trouble believing that what the papers publish on yet another nonsensical effort by Buraq to reach out to those inbred bedouin savages is actually real; that an American administration has humiliated itself and the whole country by doing this or that. But then, I have to remind myself that Bush, Dominique de Villepin, Carl Bildt, Job Cohen, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Kevin Rudd, Micheline Calmy-Rey and a quite a few such others, though causing a much smaller amount of culturally-suicidal damage, have all been down that path. They just never managed to go as far as Hussein has.

winoceros | August 26, 2010 6:47 AM | Reply

I also meant to say, Hugh, thank you for taking the time to find this story. It is so useful to be able to dispel these myths with certainty, especially in an elementary through post-secondary school context.

I wonder if I should mention concubines to my children's teachers?

Hugh | August 26, 2010 6:50 AM | Reply

"a few essays..."

#1.

Fitzgerald: Arab racism and black Muslims

You can find online complaints about Arab racism from black Muslims (or Black Muslims, that is members of the Nation of Islam, who are not considered real Muslims by the Arabs) in this country. Despite the universalist claims made for Islam, it is, and has always been, a vehicle for Arab supremacism. The reasons are not hard to find. As Anwar Shaikh (an ex-Muslim who was born in Pakistan and died in Wales in 2006) noted in his book Islam, The Arab National Religion, the Arabs consider themselves to be superior to other Muslims because they "received" the message from Allah. It was given to them and was in their language. Non-Arab Muslims are supposed to read the Qur'an, or listen to its recital, only in Arabic. Any other version, in any other language, is not the same thing.

Compare this to the missionaries for Christianity, who in some cases became extraordinary linguists in order to study native languages and dialects and translate the Bible into them. And they did this for languages that in many cases had never had a written form -- thereby helping to preserve the language for use, and for study.

And when a Muslim prays, wherever in the world he may be, he is directed to pray -- it is a matter of fantastic importance -- toward Mecca, toward the Hejaz, toward Arabia, the center of his being.

And the Sunnah, one should not forget, is at least as important as the Qur'an. Some Arabs even say that it is possible to imagine a guide to life with the Sunnah alone, but not with the Qur'an alone. Both matter. And what is the Sunnah? It consists of "practice" -- the customs and manners of the early Arabs, that is, of Muhammad and His Companions, that serve to gloss the Qur'an. And the Sunnah is derived from two texts -- the Hadith, the written record of the sayings and acts of Muhammad, and the Sira, the biography of Muhammad, the first version of which appeared a century-and-a-half after the historical (if he was historical) Muhammad's death. What matters is not what parts of the Sira were imagined or which Hadith were made up, and by what means, but which parts Muslims take to be the genuine details of the life of Muhammad, and what Hadith they believe to be the most "authentic" in the compilations of the most "authoritative" -- by their lights -- muhaddithin.

As Anwar Shaikh notes, the Arabs of Arabia needed their own "religion" to compete with, but not to be completely unlike, the earlier-in-time monotheisms of the lands they first conquered. These lands were inhabited by Christians and Jews. The Jews were not confined to the Land of Israel, but were to be found living, and for a long time, in many parts of the Middle East. They were living in Iran and present-day Iraq, and of course in Arabia itself -- for how else could they keep being encountered by Muhammad, in Mecca, Medina (Yathrib), the Khaybar Oasis? The Arab "religion" that they created is clearly the result of taking bits and pieces of pagan Arab pre-Islamic lore (the djinn, for example), mixed with misunderstood and misremembered bits of Judaism and Christianity.

This amalgam was presented to the conquered peoples, the Christians and Jews, as not the New and Improved Version of their faiths (as modern Western marketers might have done with a detergent), but rather as something else -- the True Version of Their Faith, which they had misunderstood and distorted or perverted. This made it less strange a faith, and those elements of pre-existing beliefs to be found within it, however jumbled, made it easier for Islam to insinuate itself into the minds of non-Muslims who often converted purely as a practical matter. They did so in order to join the side of the conquerors, to be free of the many disabilities that as non-Muslims they would have to endure (the three choices were: to be killed, to convert, or to endure forever the status of dhimmi, with all that that meant). How many Christians in America today, if they had, in perpetuity, to pay $50,000 per head to remain Christians, would do so? For how many would there be a falling off, and how many each year?

Islam has been a destroyer of other cultures and other languages. In a world that worships "diversity," the thrust of Islam has been to efface diversity. Languages other than Arabic have received no sympathetic study or attention by Arabs or Muslim missionaries -- the effort has been to efface the many languages and cultures that could once be found in the lands conquered. There are, here and there, pockets of Aramaic-speakers in some Syrian villages, a handful of Mandaeans and Yazidis (450 of whom were killed by Muslim bombs in the worst act of Muslim terror in Iraq). There are the Copts in Egypt, or what is left of them, they who once were virtually the entire population of Egypt. There are Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq, or what is left of them, they who were once...ditto. And so on.

The history of Arab oppression of blacks, whether those blacks became nominal Muslims or not, is too long. The history of Arab enslavement of blacks started far earlier, was much more devastating in its effects, and continued much later, than the Atlantic slave trade. A scholar has estimated that because Arabs specialized in seizing young black males for use in harems (contrary to the Western imagination, harems were not just for the rulers), and would castrate their hunted prey in situ in the jungle, the mortality rate among those then taken by slave coffle to the waiting boats that would take them to the slave markets of Islam reached 90%. See "The Hideous Trade" or google that title and "Jihad Watch" for more.

Slavery is legitimate in Islam. Muhammad had slaves. Muhammad is the Perfect Man. Seventh-century Arabia allowed slavery. Seventh-century Arabia provides the Sunnah, the customs and manners that are to be followed. The Arab slave trade went up and down East Africa, with the chief entrepot for the local trade in African blacks being the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, held by the Arab rulers of Oman. The Arabs also went deep into Central Africa, and into West Africa too, while the European slave-traders never managed to penetrate the interior, preferring to remain on the coast of West Africa and having slaves delivered to them by local tribes.

Slavery was not abolished willingly by the Arabs. It was stamped out, rather, by Western powers. There is no Arab William Wilberforce. There never has been a declaration, by any Arab leader, or government, or theological institute, that slavery is always and everywhere morally wrong. And there cannot be such a declaration, because Muslims are hemmed in by the Example of Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, and the practice of the Sunnah. If the French ended Arab enslavement of blacks in much of North Africa, it was the British -- the Royal Navy -- that helped stamp out the slave trade that continued between Africa and Arabia. This tale is told most fully in J. B. Kelly's "Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1795-1880.” But the Arabs still managed, as the British presence on the seas diminished, to resurrect that slave trade, which continued into the 1960s.

In 1962, just before slavery was formally abolished -- because Saudi Arabia was not yet rich from oil revenues, it had to succumb to Western pressure -- 20% at least of the population consisted of black slaves. For more google “Arab slave trade in Africa,” or start here.

It is not surprising that in Dayton, a Muslim girl might have made up a story blaming black men. Nor is it surprising that the Arabs in this congregation want to move from a black neighborhood to a white one. Look at how unwelcome Arabs and Pakistanis have made black Muslims who wish to attend, in any numbers, the same mosques with them. Blacks are seen as fit fodder for conversion to Islam -- without really letting potential converts know much about Islam. The proselytizers hold back so much, until their targets are deeply committed and can't easily get out. They do this so as to swell Muslim ranks and perceived (and real) power, but are not so happy for the new converts to actually associate with Arabs and Pakistanis, who find such an association distasteful. Compare that with the welcoming practice of Christian churches, not least among those evangelicals who have become the butt of so much self-assured mockery.

Not only are most forms of art -- sculpture and most painting -- forbidden in Islam (look at any major museum at the "Islamic art" -- Arabic calligraphy on ceramic plates, and Qur'anic calligraphy on paper), but it is difficult to conduct science within a society suffused with Islam, that discourages every sign of free and skeptical inquiry about the most important thing -- Islam -- and hence about everything else as well).

And then there is music. There is no Muslim equivalent to the church music of Christianity. Music is forbidden (Black Muslims in America may at times ignore this ban -- one more sign of un-orthodoxy). Wherever strict Muslims are in power, they attempt to ban all kinds of music, the folk-music that naturally wells up, as it does in Afghanistan, because it responds to a universal need that the Shari'a laws do not allow to be met. The wedding-singers killed in Afghanistan, the gamelan players in Indonesia disparaged by local Muslims, the RAI singers (often Berbers) threatened or killed in Algeria -- all of these are signs and symbols of the Islamic hostility to music. This does not mean that there are not singers. No one denies that there is Arabic music -- that oud, those other exotic instruments, or even singers such as Umm Kalthum. But the role of music is much smaller, and it is despite Islam and its discouragement that music appears. The texts and the spirit of Islam, truly adhered to, would deny a role for music altogether. It distracts, you see: distracts from worship.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe begs to differ.

And in the earlier, pre-old-time-religion phase of her career, Rosetta Tharpe's performance begs to differ with, and demands to ignore, just as much as does her later work, the hostility to music that is inculcated by Islam. And her many admirers -- whose numbers may swell with the two examples of her art posted today -- will agree.

[Posted by Hugh on October 23, 2008]

notoshariah | August 26, 2010 6:50 AM | Reply

That was very fine sledgehammer Hugh. :)

But on one point, it has always been my impression that the intellectuals of the Enlightment and subsequently republicans in France and America, then very much looking to each other for inspiration, were actually kindly disposed to Islam e.g. this appeared to be Voltaire's position. And isn't this why Mohammed got depcited above the Supreme Court building as one of history's great law-givers! (Muslims want that offensive image withdrawn and I think this is one occasion when their demands should be met).

Hugh | August 26, 2010 6:51 AM | Reply

"a few essays"

#2.

Fitzgerald: Arab racism and dissing Obama

Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri uses the term "abeed al-beit," which literally translates as "house slaves." But al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of his speech that included the translation as "house negroes."
--- from this article

When word gets out that Al-Zawahiri and other Arabs have been dissing Obama, it's going to be taken hard, especially in certain parts of Detroit and Chicago. And when the entire story of Arab racism is made clearer, the effects could be devastating. It is this kind of talk by Al-Zawihiri, that "snap-to-it-boy" attitude, directed at the President of the United States (an attitude that would not have been exhibited toward a white president), that so clearly displays Islam as the vehicle for Arab supremacism that, despite its universalist pretensions, it has always been. That can only be good. Scales can fall from eyes, faster than they otherwise would.

And black Africans, too, can benefit from this. The Christians imperilled in West Africa and in East Africa by the steady Muslim Arab advances will be aroused, and heartened/ They have been victimized by the genocide in southern Sudan for the past 20 years, which is now accompanied by a lesser genocide in Darfur directed at killing, or expelling from their land, black African (i.e., non-Arab) Muslims. They have been victimized by the Muslim Arabs -- those Egyptian pilots -- who strafed helpless Ibo villagers during the Biafra War to keep Nigeria's Christians from breaking free of the Muslims waging Jihad (Col. Ojukwu's word) against them. And god knows they need a sign that the West will not forget them, after the Biafra War, after the slow-motion genocide in southern Sudan, after the encroachments of the Arabs and of Islam even in Uganda, where a handful of Muslims now threaten the Christian authorities.

Al-Zawahiri now offers the opportunity to remind everyone of the scope and duration of the Arab slave trade in Africa, and of the particularly deadly nature of it (see The Insidious Trade). For the main victims were young black boys, seized and castrated in the jungle, and then marched by slave coffle to the sea, to be transported to the slave markets of Islam. Only about 10% survived the trip.

It is not hard to imagine how much good a campaign with the "Lost Boys" of the southern Sudan, or with Nigerian Christians now living in this country telling the truth about Islam, and about the long history of murderous Arab mistreatment of black Africans, could do. Where but among the Arabs does black slavery still exist? Where but among the Muslims does the permanent justification for slavery exist as part of the faith? Hammer, hammer, hammer away.

Some of the stories about, and especially caricatures of, Condoleeza Rice should be republished in the American press as part of an inquiry into the savage racism that is taken for granted all over the Arab world. In fact, I have spoken with some students who came back shaken by some of the things they routinely heard about race, and blacks, when they went to study Arabic in programs in Cairo and other places in the Middle East. This -- along with the very late (and most unwilling) emancipation of (almost entirely) black slaves in Saudi Arabia, under Western pressure, and the continued enslavement of black Africans wherever the Arabs have managed to get away with it -- in the Sudan, and in Mali and Mauritania, and perhaps still in Saudi Arabia today, as well as the horrific treatment meted out to Sudanese refugees in Egypt, should be given attention. If those at the top in the Pentagon and the State Department cannot figure out why this matter should be given attention, then they need to be replaced. If they cannot understand why that would be useful both in the conduct of foreign policy (another weapon in the propaganda war, for slavery is permanently legitimized in Islam, given that the Perfect Man, Muhammad, was a slave-owner) and in domestic policy (helping to make Islam, the vehicle for Arab supremacism, less attractive to one of the main groups targeted for Da'wa, black prisoners), then they give way to others who are cleverer and more systematic in their attempts to check, abroad and here, the appeal of Islam, and thus the power of those engaged in Jihad.

[Posted by Hugh on November 22, 2008]

Hugh | August 26, 2010 6:53 AM | Reply

"a few essays"

#3.

Fitzgerald: What Obama has to demonstrate

One would have thought, one would have hoped, that those running the Obama campaign and the candidate himself would understand the need, now and especially after the election if he is successful, to reassure the many Americans, and others in Europe, who are unsure of him. They worry about whether he has some kind of sentimental family attachment to Islam -- one that would prevent him from recognizing Islamic realities for other reasons than George Bush's naive belief in the essential goodness of anything called, for want of a better word, a "religion." Islam is far more than a religious faith in the ordinary sense; it is a politics, it is a geopolitics. It presumes to Command or Prohibit in every area of life, and thus constitutes a Complete Regulation of Life. That is what is so dear to the hearts and minds of those who are confused and thrown into mental disarray by modern life, and these, the psychically marginal, can find Islam to be The Solution, or at least Their Solution.

Obama has to demonstrate not merely that he is "a Christian" but that he grasps, as his predecessor did not grasp, what the ideology of Islam inculcates. He must understand, and cleverly share that understanding with those whom he presumes to instruct and protect, that Jihad, properly defined, is the duty -- not tangential but central -- of Muslims to engage in the "struggle" or Jihad to remove all obstacles, of every kind (the American Constitution, and especially the First Amendment, constitute such an obstacle), to the spread, and then to the certain dominance, of Islam.

Obama is quite capable, if he so chooses, of finding out what is in the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. And he ought to be capable of not taking tuition from the espositos and armstrongs, or even from the noah-feldmans, but by reading and learning from those who have read the informative and highly articulate "defectors" from Islam such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, and Ibn Warraq. He has to do this. He has to do it if he does not want to leave so many -- including some who will vote for him despite all kinds of misgivings on this score -- permanently nervous, or soon outraged and disappointed that he turned out to be what they had worried about and had hoped would not be the case.

Even if elected, he has a great deal of reassuring to do as to his knowledge of, understanding of, the ideology of Islam. This knowledge should be one based not on dreamy or sentimental visions of his biological but absentee father or his four childhood years in Indonesia. For in both the case of Kenya and Indonesia, especially decades ago, the easy-going, often syncretistic, and relaxed practices he would have encountered are merely misleading. What counts is not the Islam that Obama may have encountered as a child in places or connected to places (Kenya, Indonesia) that are far from the Middle East, in countries where there are still many non-Muslims, and where non-Islamic or pre-Islamic traditions are still much in evidence, not having yet been eradicated (although the situation in Indonesia, too, has changed, as the Muslims purs et durs are ever more insistent and aggressive). Obama may be elected, but he does not thereby become exempt from the responsibility, the duty, to reassure all of us that he is not a stalking-horse, does not harbor secret sympathies, and will be as resolute in his defense of the West and of America, this country that he keeps telling us he "loves so much."

He, and Axelrod, and the rest of the juggernautish crew, should clearly understand that aside from the youthful tribe of sometimes hysterical enthusiasts, his support is not wild, but very measured, and mostly the result of the awfulness of the past administration and McCain's failure to articulate sufficiently his differences with Bush, and not because people have ceased to be wary, and worried, about Barack Obama.

A meeting with Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others of that ilk would be a good thing. Attention to the Arab supremacism within Islam, exemplified in the genocidal campaign against black African Muslims in Darfur (and the renewed campaign against black African Christians and animists in the southern Sudan), would also be good. And Obama should stop talking about Afghanistan being the "central front" in the "war on terror" and instead take a much more effective approach, identifying the instruments of Jihad. He should not, for god's sake not, repeat the Bush notion that we must transfer further Infidel wealth to Muslims in order to curb their aggression, which threatens to turn us, at a time when the tiniest OPEC Muslim Arab states have hundreds of billions in their "sovereign wealth funds," even as needy as our own government and people have become, into the permanent supporters of any Muslim state or people who happen not to have oil, but who have been led to believe what the Qur'an teaches -- that the Infidels owe them a living, or at least the Jizyah. They will have been led to believe this, alas, by the attitudes and behavior of Infidel governments themselves.

If Obama plays this wrong, four years of woe await him, as former enthusiasts, and others who always resisted falling into that category, see all their pre-election suspicions and worries confirmed. If he does what he should, what makes political and moral sense, and manages to do what Bush was incapable of, by openly and accurately identifying the ideology of Jihad (he can keep the word "Islam" out for now, and Kirsopp Lake's son can explain to everyone on the campaign what the word "synecdoche" means) then many in this country and in India, and in southern Nigeria, and in southern Sudan, and in much of sub-Saharan Africa, and of course among the peoples of Western Europe who feel themselves and their freedoms and customs and laws everywhere under aggressive Muslim attack and siege, will be much relieved, and a first term not of woe but of weal may conceivably be the result.

It requires knowledge. It requires study. It requires an intelligent and deliberate choice. By Obama, and by those who advise Obama.

We'll see.

[Posted by Hugh on October 16, 2008]

al-Kidya | August 26, 2010 7:16 AM | Reply

I love this comentary.

Do you think the New York Times would publish it?

Obama claims to be "the professor" of history but my question is; which version of American history did Obama actually learn; the American history text version or the Islamic "bull-shit history" of the United States version?

duh_swami | August 26, 2010 7:30 AM | Reply

Thanks Hugh...You are another who does not get enough credit for your contributions...

Un:dhimmi | August 26, 2010 7:47 AM | Reply

Have been blocking and reporting swathes of leftwing/Muslim 'Rebuttal-bots' pushing this fake hate crime story on Twitter today, in what appears to be a campaign to spread the lie on the social networks.

There appears to be an organised and concerted effort to spread the lies.

Un:dhimmi | August 26, 2010 7:53 AM | Reply

Apologies - above comment cross-posted in error - please disregard.

Mike | August 26, 2010 8:03 AM | Reply

Thank you for setting the record straight, Hugh. Your piece reminds me why I couldn't be bothered to listen to Obama's revisionist prattle in Cairo. He lost me at "As a student of history" - it has always been (and remains) painfully obvious that this intellectually lazy charlatan has never been anything of the sort.

Hugh replied to comment from Mike | August 26, 2010 8:18 AM | Reply

"He lost me at 'as a student of history'"...

He lost me at "Salaam Aleikum."

ebonystone | August 26, 2010 8:23 AM | Reply

As Obama so unforgettably put it in his Cairo Speech (possibly the most inaccurate, the most cavalier about historical truth, of any speech by any President in American history):
"... 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."

so many inaccuracies, indeed
First off, there is the weaselly line about "in Muslim communities", which neatly covers up the fact that most of the work in scholarship, mathematics, and science was done by non-Moslems living in Moslem-ruled lands.
Then, there's the magnetic compass. This was invented in China, and knowledge of it likely reached the West via transmission across Moslem-ruled lands.
Then pens and printing. Pens, maybe. But the printing press using moveable type was invented independently in Korea and Europe in the mid-15th c. An earlier form, not widely used, had been in use in China since the 11th c. The first printing press in Islamic lands was not until the 18th c.
Next, medicine. As in the other sciences, most serious work was based firmly on the foundation of ancient Greek work, and was carried out by non-Moslems living under Moslem rule. Specifically Moslem contributions include the drinking of camels' urine as a general tonic and cure-all; and the insight that one wing of a fly contains a disease and the other wing contains its antidote; so that if a fly falls into one's soup, one can avoid sickness by being sure to eat the whole fly. Strange that the otherwise so astute Greeks missed that one.
How about "majestic arches"? Sorry, but it was the Romans who were the masters of the arch, a good six centuries before Mohammed.
"Timeless poetry and cherished music"? O.K. give them points for the poetry. But in music, there's nothing to compare with that of Europe, or India, or the Orient.
Calligraphy? Again, the Moslems did some nice work; but no better than the Chinese or Europeans. Just look at the Irish "Book of Kells" from ca. 800, or at any of hundreds of European illuminated manuscripts dating from the 600's on.

winoceros | August 26, 2010 8:28 AM | Reply

Humans by nature are creative. Poetry fluorished and was embraced because it is the closest thing to music they are allowed. It allows oblique mention of politics, as does any ballad of any century, with generally little harassment.

Well, except for those poets murdered by Mohammed and his followers who think a poet might be blaspheming Mohammed.

Except for that poetry.

Mike replied to comment from Hugh | August 26, 2010 8:37 AM | Reply

"He lost me at "Salaam Aleikum."'

Ever the poseur.

He would do well to learn the virtue of restraint.

gravenimage | August 26, 2010 8:51 AM | Reply

Apparently Obama, and those who wrote this speech for him, and others who vetted it, find nothing wrong with attempting to convince Americans, as part of their policy of trying to win Muslim hearts and Muslim minds, that American history itself can be rewritten.
.....................

Michelle Obama said the following in a speech from 2008:

“We’re going to have to make sacrifices, we’re going to have to change our conversation, we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history and we’re going to have to move to a different place.”
...

"We're going to have to change...our history". I chalked this up, at the time, to somewhat slovenly oratory—that she was nattering on about changing the *trajectory* of our history. (Of course, whether that in itself is a good idea, in the way she and her husband mean it, is a matter for debate in and of itself.)

But now I believe I should have taken her at her word. While every president has chosen to emphasize or downplay this or that aspect of American history, this administration does indeed seem bent on "changing our history"-or, at least, the telling of it, which they seem to hope will amount to the same thing.

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.
...

Thomas Jefferson had a copy of the Qur'an in his library not because he was an admirer of that book, or the faith of Islam, but because he was both curious and cultivated.
.....................

More than mere curiosity, Jefferson was girding himself with knowledge to address the terrible threat of the Barbary pirates—our first major international crisis following independence.

...They [Muslims] have fought in our wars, they have served in our government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at our universities, they've excelled in our sports arenas, they've won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building...
.....................

"Built our tallest building"? Muslims *destroyed* our tallest buildings, and murdered almost 3000 Americans in the process.

If this meretricious speech was indeed written for Barack Obama by the vile Imam Rauf, would-be builder of the mosque "in the ruins of the World Trade Center"—his own words—then this line becomes not just bitterly ironic, but an actual taunt, a sort of particularly sick in-joke, very much at our expense.

Biff Henderson | August 26, 2010 9:02 AM | Reply

Coach Rauf's Official Sideline Gear-

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4097/4929158603_0792ed6b73.jpg

Eastview | August 26, 2010 9:10 AM | Reply

Very solid job of deconstructing fatuous utterances about Iftar by Obama and his legion of supporters, Hugh.

Obama claims to be a student of history, or rather his speech writers provide him with the lines to read from the teleprompter asserting such credit. This claim has always been a transparent ploy to impress on the Muslim world that there is, finally, a POTUS with sympathies toward Islam that none of his predecessors possessed. Now Obama (or rather his writers, since there is very little opportunity for thinking about these things in the noisy environment of a golf cart) continues with this program of tweaking the facts of history. Somehow I doubt that even Muslim historians, who live in a world with a vastly more fantastic view of reality and history, will find this to be anything more than an amusing attempt by that little Indonesian schoolboy to try to impress his teachers.

Apparently neither Obama nor his speech writers think that the opinions of American citizens should take precedence over the opinion of the Arab world.

Also apparent is that Obama and his speechwriters have never heard of Mnemosyne, Muse of History. I wonder - who was the nemesis of Mnemosyne?

Sashland | August 26, 2010 10:03 AM | Reply

Great evidence. Retraction? Good Luck.

Maybe you could at least submit the evidence in the form of a Guest Editorial of Letter to the Editor? and have the pleasure of being rejected by the ny times?

I take great pleasure in having been (temporarily) banned by the ny times for pointing out and error, and then calling the City Scene Editor out for having retroactively changed his blog entries.

At best, they may just edit out the word and not say anything - it seems to be a practice of their to remove portions of articles that become inconvenient, as per the removed quote by Rauf on why the location of the Fallout Zone mosk was so important, that was, until it wasn't so important (right), so the quote had to go...

Battle_of_Tours | August 26, 2010 10:12 AM | Reply

It is disgusting for an American President to misrepresent American history to Americans, including all the schoolchildren who are now being subject to all kinds of Islamic propaganda...

Is the 44th president of our United States so utterly ignorant of American history? What is Harvard Law School producing nowadays, air-heads for brains? Shame.

This is the reality of importing a primitive 7th century Warlord ideology disguised as 'religion' to our shores. Jefferson and Madison would have known better. They all would have, until number 40, then it's been downhill since. Times they are a changing. Time to change it back, turn the tide, and stop the viral ignorance (no one left behind) in our schools. America had better reinvent itself if we are to not become like the enemy savage barbarians.

winoceros replied to comment from gravenimage | August 26, 2010 10:13 AM | Reply

Do you not think Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris own Bibles, Torahs and Qur'ans?

What does ownership of a book denote, exactly?

winoceros replied to comment from winoceros | August 26, 2010 10:14 AM | Reply

Of course, I mean "they," not "you."

Sanjay_111 | August 26, 2010 10:32 AM | Reply

Neither NYT nor Obama have any sense of the greatness of their legacy. We are watching the decay of great institutions in front of very eyes.

It is similar in India too, though our institutions are very recent, and overall, the awareness about Islam and it's violent nature is increasing.

I think I said somewhere else, the free world is passing through a low phase. Let us hope that it is cyclical and upturn arrives soon.

Sanjay

Henry Villarreal | August 26, 2010 10:38 AM | Reply

Excellent article.Copy of it should be sent certified mail to the WH and to all of whom attended to this charade.

Dalaran replied to comment from perpster | August 26, 2010 11:23 AM | Reply

Actually, Islam/Muslims remind me alternatively of either the Daleks or the Cybermen. Unfortunately, I can't really decide which they most remind me of.

flowerknife_us | August 26, 2010 1:41 PM | Reply

Here's to slicing Baloney thinner than the Ink used to label it.

blinker | August 26, 2010 4:24 PM | Reply

I love that John Quincy Adams quote "The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud or force." In other words by taqiyya or jihad. Although with 9/11 first came the force, and now comes the fraud as the taqiyya duo Rauf & Daisy hand out bottles of snake oil from the back of their wagon parked adjacent to Ground Zero.

profitsbeard | August 26, 2010 5:32 PM | Reply

Masterfully riposted, Hugh.

So it is not Hussein as a middle name anymore but~

Barack Orwell Obama.

"Who controls the present controls the past. And who controls the past, controls the future. Happy Ramadunce."

The president is a punk.

Slimy times.

gravenimage replied to comment from winoceros | August 26, 2010 9:56 PM | Reply

What does ownership of a book denote, exactly?
...............

Thanks for the clarification, Winoceros. You're quite right. We have quite a large library—in fact, we're always running out of shelf space.

While many of our books are volumes we deeply love, many others are books we merely consider useful or important.

A very small number include books I actually consider deeply disturbing, and would not have in my home at all if I didn't consider it necessary to familiarize myself with them because their content represents such a threat.

Certainly, the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira fall squarely into that category. I imagine Thomas Jefferson would be appalled at the meretricious, unhistorical rhetoric surrounding his possession of a Koran.

imnokuffar | August 27, 2010 2:06 AM | Reply

On reading this crap speech I was first incredulous then absolutly disgusted. The President of the United States is a Muslim placeman.

To all you Americans out there, you have to get rid of this sycophantic, arselicking Muslim toot sweet !

Thankyou Hugh for deconstructing this "speech" so totally. I had doubts about abeem Osama before, this just confirms my suspicions.

malmonext | August 27, 2010 4:27 AM | Reply

9/2/09 Foxnews.com, reporting on Obama'a address to the nation's school children:
For grades 7-12, the Department of Education suggests teachers prepare by excerpting quotes from Obama's speeches on education for their students to contemplate -- and ask as questions such as "Why does President Obama want to speak with us today? How will he inspire us? How will he challenge us?"

Apparently Obama's going to address the school children again this year. Will the Department of Education have teachers prepare for his appearance by excerpting from his Cairo speech, by way of a call for tolerance and understanding of different cultures? Is that speech in school books for this school-year? How will kids ever unlearn such lies? It will take years for them to reach a state of awareness where they can say "My President lied to me," if they ever do.

It was only in the past year that I read FDR's "second bill of rights" presented in his State of the Union address of 1944. I was shocked at how blatantly socialist it was, but shocked even more that I had lived in ignorance of it for so many years.

jim smith | August 27, 2010 4:37 AM | Reply

Obama, once a Muslim, always a Muslim, and now a master practitioner of taqiyya.

Eastview replied to comment from Eastview | August 27, 2010 7:26 AM | Reply

"I wonder - who was the nemesis of Mnemosyne?"

It appears the answer is not a who, but a what.

From Wikipedia:

"Mnemosyne ... presided over a pool in Hades, counterpart to the river Lethe, according to a series of 4th century BC Greek funerary inscriptions in dactylic hexameter. Dead souls drank from Lethe so they would not remember their past lives when reincarnated."

Also from Wikipedia:

"In Greek mythology, Lethe (Λήθη; Classical Greek /ˈlɛːtʰɛː/, modern Greek: /ˈliθi/) was one of the five rivers of Hades. Also known as the Ameles potamos (river of unmindfulness), the Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness. Lethe was also the name of the Greek spirit of forgetfulness and oblivion, with whom the river was often identified."

It would appear the Perrier sipped by the MSM and Obama's speechwriters may be counterfeit, being drawn not from springs in France, but rather from the river Lethe.

Eastview replied to comment from Eastview | August 27, 2010 7:52 AM | Reply

Perhaps I was hasty with my previous post. It appears Lethe is also considered to be a goddess, so could very well be considered the antithesis of Mnemosyne.

Again, from Wikipedia:

Lethe was also the name of the personification of forgetfulness and oblivion, with whom the river was often associated. Hesiod's Theogony identifies her as the daughter of Eris ("strife") and sister of Ponos ("toil"), Limos ("starvation"), the Algea ("pains"), the Hysminai ("fightings"), the Makhai ("battles"), the Phonoi ("murders"), the Androktasiai ("man-slaughters"), the Neikea ("quarrels"), the Pseudologoi ("lies"), the Amphilogiai ("disputes"), Dysnomia ("lawlessness"), Atë ("ruin"), and Horkos ("oath").

Simon Bland | August 27, 2010 8:18 AM | Reply

I enjoyed this article, but must complain about the last paragraph. "Mnemosyne, Muse of History, is a stern mistress..."

Is she now? Kleio is the Muse of History. Mnemosyne was the Titan mother of the nine Muses, and not a Muse herself. Her province was memory.

You did your homework preparing this article, and for that I thank you. Why get lazy at the end?

flowerknife_us replied to comment from malmonext | August 27, 2010 8:21 AM | Reply

Roosevelt also wanted to tax away all personal income above 20,000 Dollars as well. A lot like Obamas plans adjusted for inflation.

Hugh replied to comment from Simon Bland | August 27, 2010 9:17 AM | Reply

"I enjoyed this article, but must complain about the last paragraph. "Mnemosyne, Muse of History, is a stern mistress..."

Is she now? Kleio is the Muse of History. Mnemosyne was the Titan mother of the nine Muses, and not a Muse herself. Her province was memory."

Clio it is, and Clio it will be -- I will hasten to correct my blushing error right now.

I've also had a talk with my own private Mnemosyne right now, and is she embarrassed. She had no excuse to offer in leading me so astray. "Speak, Memory" I said. But she remained silent.

And so, not silently, but noisily, I will now make that abashed correction. The hypallage is supposed to express mental desarroi, and thereby to winningly disarm future critics. I hope it does the trick.

Hugh replied to comment from Simon Bland | August 27, 2010 10:16 AM | Reply

And I should have thanked you for bringing the error to my attention. And it turns out that there is nothing like a little contretemps, when all is then forgiven, and the mutual passion returns, and what better way to make things up than....well, you know the rest. We are both determined, Mnemosyne and I, to make things work, and never to allow such cavalier carelessness to come between us again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6NWHziuBNw&feature=related

Wowsher | August 27, 2010 9:17 PM | Reply

Hugh, I became a tad confused about the timing of the dinner. Originally scheduled for 3:30pm the story says Jefferson brought it forward a few hours but presumably it was pushed back a few hours to be after sunset.

Other than that very enlightening. Barbary pirates are still working today. An acquaintance told me about being on a yacht with his wife and becoming ensnared in webbing in the middle of the night off the Canary Islands. He had to go over the side to cut the boat free knowing that if he didn't then the spiders would come looking for their prey.

Hugh replied to comment from Wowsher | August 28, 2010 7:52 AM | Reply

The confusion comes from the ambiguity of the word "forward." If something is pushed or brought "forward" does this mean earlier, as many seem to think, or as is sometimes meant, later? Here it is clear that Jefferson made the dinner later, so that Mellimelli could attend, or at least decided he would be able to attend. I don't know when, exactly, the fast period ends, and the Iftar dinner can take place. I think ordinarily it is much later than merely after sundown. Perhaps Jefferson moved it forward, or pushed it back (take your pick), and Mellimelli decided to accept even if the new time, too, was not strictly halal.

Jacques Ellul | September 2, 2010 9:40 AM | Reply

Camel feathers!

Algebra comes from an Arabic language word (al-jabr, which means 'restoration'), but the Babylonians, Greeks, Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, Irish, and others invented algebra and its elements from 2,000 to 300 years before the Islamists claim they invented it.

The history of algebra 'debaters' (we call them 'revisionists' or 'propagandists' or 'apologists' or 'Islamists' or 'liars') keep changing the definition of algebra so they can continue to claim that Muslims invented algebra.

We don't even know who discovered the Pythagorean Theorem! Muslims inventing algebra? Camel dung!

Jacques

Personally, I think a Muslim invented the internet.

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FrontPageMag.com

Books by Robert Spencer

The Muslim Brotherhood in America, by Robert Spencer

Islamophobia: Thoughtcrime of the Totalitarian Future

Muslim Persecution of Christians, by Robert Spencer

The Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks

“My comrade-in-arms, my pal, my buddy.”
— Oriana Fallaci

“Robert Spencer incarnates intellectual courage when, all over the world, governments, intellectuals, churches, universities and media crawl under a hegemonic Universal Caliphate’s New Order. His achievement in the battle for the survival of free speech and dignity of man will remain as a fundamental monument to the love of, and the self-sacrifice for, liberty.”
— Bat Ye’or

“Robert Spencer is indefatigable. He is keeping up the good fight long after many have already given up. I do not know what we would do without him. I appreciate all the intelligence and courage it takes to keep going despite the appeasement of the West.”
— Ibn Warraq

“America's most informed, fearless, and compelling voice on modern jihadism.”
— Andrew C. McCarthy, Senior Fellow at National Review Institute

“Robert Spencer is the leading voice of scholarship and reason in a world gone mad. If the West is to be saved, we will owe Robert Spencer an incalculable debt.”
— Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs

"The consummate Islam critic and expert." — Bruce Bawer

“Over the years, we have become friends, and I have received his assistance on several pieces of legislation I proposed.”
— Former Congressman Tom Tancredo

“Few people are capable of applying scholarship, analytical reasoning, and objectivity to their topic -- while simultaneously being readable and witty -- as can Robert Spencer.”
— Raymond Ibrahim

“A national treasure...The acclaimed scholar of Islam.”
— Frank Gaffney, Center for Security Policy

“I am indeed honored to call him my friend.”
— Brad Thor, novelist

“A top American analyst of Islam....A serious scholar...I learn from him.”
— Daniel Pipes

“A brilliant scholar and writer.”
— Douglas Murray

"One of my best teachers."
— Ashraf Ramelah, Voice of the Copts

“Thank God there’s at least one man with balls left in the West.”
— Kathy Shaidle, Five Feet of Fury

“I read people like [Mark Steyn] and Bob Spencer and the rest of them, and I say, ‘Boortz, you’re pretending you’re an author. These people really are. They really write some entertaining, some standup stuff.’”
— Neal Boortz

“Robert Spencer is the Stephen King of Jihad.”
— Chris Gaubatz, Muslim Mafia

“Armed with facts and fearlessness, Spencer stands up for Western civilization.”
— Michelle Malkin

“Widely read in conservative foreign policy circles.”
— New York Times

“Widely read in many quarters in Washington.”
— Washington Post

“A canny operative who likely has the inside track on the State Department’s Middle East affairs desk should the tea party win the White House.”
— New York Magazine

“A hero of the American right.”
— Karen Armstrong

"The leading anti-Islamic intellectual in the United States....The go-to Islam expert for the right wing."
— Salon Magazine

“Robert Spencer is an Edward Said turned upside down.”
— Stephen Suleyman Schwartz

“One of the nation's most notorious Islamophobes.”
— Hamas-linked CAIR

"Geller and Spencer are probably the most important propagandizing Islamophobes in the world. These people's voices speak very loudly — not just here in the United States but overseas."
— Heidi Beirach, Southern Poverty Law Center

“Satanic ignoramus.”
— Khaleel Mohammed

“The Likud anti-Christ.”
— Dar al-Hayat newspaper (Saudi Arabia)

“Zionist Crusader, missionary of hate, counter-Islam consultant.”
— Al-Qaeda’s Adam Gadahn, “Azzam the American”