The apotheosis of the Muslim victimhood myth. FBI hate crime statistics show that the hysteria over “Islamophobia” is unfounded, but that matters not at all to Barack Obama.
“Obama rebuts anti-Muslim rhetoric in first U.S. mosque visit,” by Kevin Liptak, PJ Media, February 3, 2016:
(CNN)Seeking to rebut what he views as perilous election-year bombast about Muslims, President Barack Obama is at a mosque in Baltimore on Wednesday, his first visit to such a site in the United States.
“Muslim Americans keep up [sic] safe,” Obama told the audience, crediting the contributions Muslims have made to communities. “They are our police. They are our fire fighters. They’re in (the Department of) Homeland Security.”
And remember: none of them were screened for jihadi sympathies. To have done so would have been “Islamophobic,” and transgressed against the prevailing dogma that Islam is a Religion of Peace that non-Muslims are wrong and bigoted to be concerned about.
At the Islamic Society of Baltimore, a 47-year-old mosque with thousands of attendees, Obama heralded the contributions of Muslims to American society while issuing a forceful counterpoint to the language favored by some Republican presidential candidates like Donald Trump, according to White House officials.
“We’ve seen an alarming willingness on the part of some Republicans to try to marginalize law-abiding, patriotic Muslim Americans,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Tuesday. “It’s just offensive to a lot of Americans who recognize that those kinds of cynical political tactics run directly contrary to the values that we hold dear in this country. And I think the President is looking forward to the opportunity to make that point.”…
Trump and Carson actually made no attempt to “marginalize law-abiding, patriotic Muslim Americans.” They were trying to offer solutions to what the Obama Administration won’t even admit is a problem. Carson pointed out, quite correctly, that there are elements of Sharia that contradict Constitutional principles. Trump said there should be a temporary halt to Muslim immigration until we figure out a way to distinguish jihadis from peaceful Muslims. No one who has criticized him for proposing this has offered a plan to do that.
But for Obama, who continues to be dogged by conspiracy theories that suggest he himself is a Muslim (Obama is a Christian), a stop at an Islamic center proved far more complicated the first seven years of his term. A CNN/ORC poll in September found that 29% of Americans said they believed Obama was a Muslim, including 43% of Republicans.
This suspicion persists after seven years of his presidency not because of bigotry, but because he so consistently and repeatedly advances the Muslim Brotherhood agenda, to the rage and chagrin of Egyptian protesters against the Morsi regime in 2013, has made a series of disastrous concessions to Iran, has bullied Israel, and has spoken positively about Islam on numerous occasions while criticizing Christianity.
In his final year in office, however, Obama has sought to use his public platform — however waning — to advocate against what he sees as dangerous threads in the political discourse.
“The President’s trip is extremely timely. It couldn’t have come at a better time,” said Farhana Khera, the executive director of Muslim Advocates, who cited an uptick in vandalism at mosques, and violence against Muslims entering and exiting places of worship, as indications the time was right for a presidential visit.
It was Farhana Khera who in 2010 wrote the letter to John Brennan demanding that counter-terror training materials be scrubbed of all mention of Islam and jihad. Brennan complied.
During a meeting with Muslim community leaders in December, Khera lobbied top Obama aides, including senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, to schedule a visit for Obama to a U.S. mosque, an event the White House moved quickly to produce.
“Coming to a mosque is a public reminder that Muslims have been part of America since our nation’s founding,” Khera said. “My hope is that he may view this as an occasion to send the message that mosques are not breeding grounds for terrorism. This is not where ISIS is recruiting. Law enforcement sources tell us ISIS is recruiting online, not in our mosques.”…
San Bernardino jihad murderer Syed Rizwan Farook was active in his mosques, as was Garland would-be jihad killer Ibrahim Simpson. Four separate studies since 1998 have shown that 80% of mosques in the U.S. are indeed “breeding grounds for terrorism”: Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani visited 114 mosques in this country before giving testimony before a State Department Open Forum in January 1999 that 80% of American mosques taught the “extremist ideology.” Then there was the Center for Religious Freedom’s 2005 study, and the Mapping Sharia Project’s 2008 study. Each independently showed that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule.
In the subsequent years, however, new fears of homegrown attacks have emerged following the rise of ISIS and its dexterity in recruiting would-be terrorists online. Republican candidates have vowed to apply extra scrutiny to Muslims entering the country, and to tamp down on suspected extremist activities at U.S. mosques.
Those plans have earned Obama’s ire. Along with his aides, Obama consistently groups much of the GOP field with the most outspoken proponent for religious screening, Trump. In December Trump proposed banning all Muslims from entering the country until better anti-terror measures were enacted….
He proposed to end Muslim immigration. He didn’t say anything about barring Muslim citizens from returning to the U.S.
Obama’s response has been scathing, including remarks late last week at a retreat for Democratic lawmakers.
“We’re not going to strengthen our leadership around the world by allowing politicians to insult Muslims or pit groups of Americans against each other. That’s not who we are. That’s not keeping America safe,” Obama said, describing Republican rhetoric as “phony tough talk and bluster and over-the-top claims.”