My imaginary dialogue with the President, from PJ Media:
The world is on fire with Islamic jihad, and last Wednesday, after his Countering Violent Extremism summit, the President called me in to talk it over.
Here is the dialogue we had:*
OBAMA: Most recently, with the brutal murders in Chapel Hill of three young Muslim Americans, many Muslim Americans are worried and afraid.
SPENCER: You’ve apparently decided that the murder of three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on Tuesday was a hate crime. What is the evidence that it was an anti-Muslim hate crime? Well, the victims were Muslims, and the murderer was non-Muslim. And the father of two of the victims says he expressed opinions that he never told to his wife or put on his Facebook page, and that his wife says he did not hold — but which you and the Islamic supremacist establishment would have us believe he held so strongly that he ultimately killed for them. And his Facebook page does reflect that he was an atheist who hated all religions, especially Christianity. That’s it. That’s enough nowadays, plus the fact that you want this to be considered a hate crime, so as to further your case that Muslims are being victimized, which preoccupies you far more than non-Muslims who are being victimized by Muslims. I notice that you’ve said nothing about non-Muslims being worried and afraid over jihad terror attacks.
OBAMA: First, we have to confront squarely and honestly the twisted ideologies that these terrorist groups use to incite people to violence.
SPENCER: Confronting squarely and honestly the ideology of the Islamic State and al Qaeda is exactly what you seem determined not to do.
OBAMA: Al Qaeda and ISIL and groups like it are desperate for legitimacy. They try to portray themselves as religious leaders — holy warriors in defense of Islam. That’s why ISIL presumes to declare itself the “Islamic State.” And they propagate the notion that America — and the West, generally — is at war with Islam. That’s how they recruit. That’s how they try to radicalize young people. We must never accept the premise that they put forward, because it is a lie. Nor should we grant these terrorists the religious legitimacy that they seek. They are not religious leaders — they’re terrorists. And we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.
SPENCER: What you’re saying here reflects the argument that has been common and prevailing in Washington for years, that we must not call the Islamic jihadists “Islamic jihadists,” because that will give them the legitimacy they’re seeking among Muslims. The fallacy here is that you and others who hold to this view are assuming that Muslims care what non-Muslim leaders say about who is Islamic and who isn’t. But given the fact that the Qur’an calls believers “the best of people” (3:110) and the unbelievers “the most vile of created beings” (98:6), that is unlikely in the extreme.
You say, “Nor should we grant these terrorists the religious legitimacy that they seek,” but in reality this legitimacy is not within the power of any non-Muslim to grant — or to withhold. The Muslims who join al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are not listening to Western non-Muslim leaders; they’re listening to their imams and reading the Qur’an. In all these years of non-Muslim leaders insisting that we must withhold “legitimacy” from these jihad groups, there has not been even one single report of a Muslim who was going to join a terror group until he heard Bush or David Cameron or Tony Blair or you say that those groups were not Islamic. And the insidious aspect of it is that this claim that calling the jihadists what they are gives them a spurious legitimacy is used to foreclose upon honest examination of their motives and goals.
And in saying, “we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam,” you’re effectively saying,: We are not going to confront the jihadis’ ideology. We are not going to examine the jihadis’ motives and goals, and we’re not going to call on Muslim communities to reject them. Instead, we’re going to partner with other Muslims who share those motives and goals but aren’t blowing anything up.
OBAMA: Of course, the terrorists do not speak for over a billion Muslims who reject their hateful ideology. They no more represent Islam than any madman who kills innocents in the name of God represents Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism. No religion is responsible for terrorism. People are responsible for violence and terrorism.
SPENCER: I notice that you don’t give the names of any “madman who kills innocents in the name of God” who are Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu. With 25,000 jihad terror attacks committed in the name of Islam since 9/11, the naming of a single person or incident here or there would only point up the glaring disparity. And as for your claim that “no religion is responsible for terrorism,” this is just begging the question: Does the Islamic religion encourage violence and supremacism? Is it even possible for any religion to do this? Why not? Why do you forbid examination of this question?
OBAMA: And to their credit, there are respected Muslim clerics and scholars not just here in the United States but around the world who push back on this twisted interpretation of their faith. They want to make very clear what Islam stands for. And we’re joined by some of these leaders today. These religious leaders and scholars preach that Islam calls for peace and for justice, and tolerance toward others; that terrorism is prohibited; that the Koran says whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind. Those are the voices that represent over a billion people around the world.
SPENCER: The attendees included Wajahat Ali, an Al Jazeera host with Muslim Brotherhood ties who was co-author of one of the “Islamophobia” smear pieces designed to discredit foes of jihad terror, and Nicole Mossalam, who “has been dishonest about her controversial mosque blocking congregants from giving police information during their investigation of the Boston Marathon bombing.” You claim that there are “Muslim clerics and scholars not just here in the United States but around the world who push back on this twisted interpretation of their faith,” yet there is not a single mosque or Islamic school anywhere in the United States or anywhere else that has a program to teach Muslims to reject the understanding of Islam presented by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
OBAMA: But if we are going to effectively isolate terrorists, if we’re going to address the challenge of their efforts to recruit our young people, if we’re going to lift up the voices of tolerance and pluralism within the Muslim community, then we’ve got to acknowledge that their job is made harder by a broader narrative that does exist in many Muslim communities around the world that suggests the West is at odds with Islam in some fashion.
SPENCER: Any resistance to jihad terror brings this charge. The only way you will be able to eradicate it will be to surrender completely.
OBAMA: The reality — which, again, many Muslim leaders have spoken to — is that there’s a strain of thought that doesn’t embrace ISIL’s tactics, doesn’t embrace violence, but does buy into the notion that the Muslim world has suffered historical grievances — sometimes that’s accurate — does buy into the belief that so many of the ills in the Middle East flow from a history of colonialism or conspiracy; does buy into the idea that Islam is incompatible with modernity or tolerance, or that it’s been polluted by Western values.
SPENCER: So you’re saying that some Muslims have legitimate grievances against the West. This is a signal that more concessions, probably in the form of more taxpayer billions, will soon be in the offing. When jihad terror rages more virulently than ever after those billions have been squandered, will you think of another excuse?
OBAMA: So just as leaders like myself reject the notion that terrorists like ISIL genuinely represent Islam, Muslim leaders need to do more to discredit the notion that our nations are determined to suppress Islam, that there’s an inherent clash in civilizations. Everybody has to speak up very clearly that no matter what the grievance, violence against innocents doesn’t defend Islam or Muslims, it damages Islam and Muslims.
SPENCER: Islamic jihadists don’t generally consider non-Muslims capable of being “innocent” — they are guilty by virtue of having rejected Islam….
At this moment I was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on my return to my room, found, to my no small surprise and mortification, that though I still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of my meeting with Obama, yet, with the exception of the lines above, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas, without the after-restoration of the latter!
* Just in case it isn’t obvious to everyone, this is an imaginary dialogue. Obama’s remarks, however, are real: they’re taken from his closing speech at his Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, as reproduced at White House.gov on February 18.
Read the rest here.