Obama should speak truth to Islam because others can't
Ayaan Hirsi Ali | June 15, 2009
Article from:  The Australian

IT was not an April Fools' joke. When President Barack Obama met the Queen of the Commonwealth at Buckingham Palace, he gave her an iPod. Last week, I was half expecting the president to show up in the Middle East laden with Kindles.

He could have started with a special reading selection when he met Saudi King Abdullah. The day after, when the President spoke to the Muslim world at Al-Azhar University, I pictured him handing out another Kindle to Muhammed Sayyid Tantawy, the university's grand sheik. Obama might have had a third Kindle for the ambassador of Iran to Egypt (for this man represents the ayatollah, who is the highest authority for Shia Muslims), who attended the presidential address.

Unlike the Commonwealth, the umma, or Muslim community, has no symbolic leader, let alone a formal one. The king of Saudi Arabia; the grand sheik of Al-Azhar University (the largest, and in the eyes of many Muslim scholars, most prestigious Islamic centre of learning); and the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran all make equal claims to represent the heart and soul of the umma.

They have their differences. The king is the protector of the holy shrine of Islam and a political leader. The grand sheik has no formal political power, but it is not an exaggeration to say his institution is one of the most influential in the Muslim world. And Iran not only claims spiritual power but pursues political and military dominance. The issue of who speaks for Islam is perhaps the worst nightmare for the US; this is not fully appreciated by the crafters of American foreign policy.

This makes a discussion of the relationship between Islam and the West much more problematic than the president's speechwriters realise.

Like former US presidents, Obama denounced Islamic extremism without once associating Islam with extremism. He firmly stated that America is not at war with Islam and will never be; and he invited the Muslim world to join hands with the US to fight extremism tooth and nail.

However, Islamic extremism can be read in two ways. The first is in its foreign policy implications for the US: that is, in its expansionist or jihadi meaning. Al-Qa'ida-like attacks on American soil against Americans or American interests will be met with force, the President promised. That's an easy position to take because for the US it's a position of self-defence. It is not America that is at war with Islam. It is Islam that is at war with America.

The second sense of the word "extremism," used many times by the President, is as a euphemism for the application of Islamic law, or sharia, in Muslim countries. This the President evidently hopes to counter by wooing the Muslim street.

The courtship articulated in his speech was peppered with false praise ("... it was innovation in Muslim communities that developed ... our mastery of pens and printing."), feigned common principles and made ridiculous promises to fight negative stereotyping of Islam wherever he encounters it.

This is all part of political rhetoric, but it really doesn't lead to concrete change. This, in my view, is the wrong strategy. Instead of pretending that Muslims invented printing, the President should be confronting them with the key products of the Western printing press. And it's here that Kindles could be of use.

I imagined him offering the king, the sheik and the ayatollah each a Kindle with Abraham Lincoln's case against slavery and for equality. Obama reminded the Muslim world that "black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the centre of America's founding."

Nowhere in the world is bigotry so rampant as in Muslim countries. No difference is greater between American and Islamic principles than the founding ideals of both. It is on the basis of the founding ideals of Islam that al-Qa'ida and other Muslim puritans insist on the implementation of sharia law, jihad and the eternal subjection of women. It is on the basis of the founding ideals of America that blacks and women fought for -- and gained -- equal rights and gays and new immigrants continue to do so.

I would include Thomas Jefferson's improvements on the New Testament. The king, the sheik and the ayatollah have the authority to rule that parts of the Koran no longer apply in the modern world. For instance, the edicts of sharia law that reject scientific inquiry and order all Muslims to spread Islam.

And of course, no reading selection would be complete without a copy of the US Constitution, highlighting (because you can do that in a Kindle) the Eighth Amendment banning cruel and unusual punishment.

pt 1

Obamas speech was fine.

Since then syria (I think) has arrested a few terrorists.

Sprintcyclist wrote on Jun 15^th, 2009 at 8:34am:


Obamas speech was a joke.

I've just finished reading 'Dreams from My Father' and 'The Audacity of Hope'.

The Cairo speech was completely in keeping with the man's capacity to lead and inspire.

One thing's for certain. Both he and his wife (and even more so Michelle, by his own frank admission) have an intellect for the appetite to lead that is tantamount to an embarrassment of riches. And both posses an intense desire to put lofty ideals to work on the ground. Unsentimental and with a healthy impatience, they are both indefatigable in pursuing the actualisation of their aspirations for the US and the world.

You can expect Obama to be tireless in his efforts to realise the goals he set in Cairo.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Jun 15^th, 2009 at 9:47am:



No doubt.

Obama, an intellectual giant of his age.
/sarc off

Obama Flunks History at Cairo U

Almost every advance he attributed to the Muslims in his big speech should be credited to someone else.

June 7, 2009 - by Frank J. Tipler

In his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo , President Barack Obama claimed: “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar University — 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 that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing.”

Obama is not much of a “student of history” if he believes this. Almost every advance he attributes to the Muslims was due to someone else.

The non-Muslim Chinese invented the magnetic compass and printing (Gutenberg invented not printing, but movable type). The non-Muslim Hindu Indians invented algebra and the decimal numbering system. The non-Muslim European Christians invented the university.

I can’t address advances in medicine, but I have studied the history of astronomy and physics. The Muslims contributed nothing.

All modern physics descends from Galileo (1564 -1642); all modern astronomy from Copernicus (1473-1543).  If you study Galileo’s works carefully, as I have, you see that he started with the achievements of the Greek mathematical physicist Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC - c. 212 BC).  If you study Copernicus’ works carefully, as I have, you will see that Copernicus’ great book On the Revolutions is essentially a heliocentric re-working of the geocentric astronomy textbook by the Greek Ptolemy (c. 90 AD - 168 AD). Copernicus mostly used even Ptolemy’s data for the positions of the planets.

Note the dates for Archimedes/Galileo and Ptolemy/Copernicus. It is as if the Muslim world never existed. As far as their fundamental contributions to physics and astronomy, it did not.

If one reads history of science textbooks prior to about 1980, one will find very little mention of Muslim “contributions” to physics and astronomy. This is reasonable, because there weren’t any.  In the past generation, however, political correctness has dictated that Muslims be given credit for discoveries they did not make.

Certainly, the Muslims were a conduit for the discoveries of others. The word “algebra” is indeed derived from an Arabic word. The books of Archimedes and Ptolemy used by Galileo and Copernicus were indeed translations into Latin from the Arabic. But let us never forget that Archimedes and Ptolemy wrote their books in Greek, not Arabic. They were Greeks, not Muslims.

Most of the names for the brightest stars are of Arabic origin, because the names of these stars given in Ptolemy’s textbook were never translated from the Arabic. But do you think that the Arabs were the first humans to observe Rigel and Betelguese, the first and second brightest stars in Orion?

The reason Muslims never developed fundamental physics is because the leading Muslim theologians declared the idea of fixed physical laws to be heretical. The Qur’an (verse 6:64) states: “The Jews have said, ‘God’s hand is fettered.’ Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what they have said. Nay, but His hands are outspread; He expends how He will.” The standard Muslim interpretation of this passage has been that there cannot be unchanging physical laws because Allah may change the laws at any moment. In 1982, the Institute for Policy Studies in Islamabad , Pakistan , criticized a chemistry textbook by saying:  “There is latent poison present in the subheading Energy Causes Changes because it gives the impression that energy is the true cause rather than Allah.  Similarly it is unIslamic to teach that mixing hydrogen and oxygen automatically produces water.  The Islamic way is this: when atoms of hydrogen approach atoms of oxygen, then by the Will of Allah water is produced.” The implication is clear:  next week, Allah may change his mind about water being a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. With this sort of worldview, how could one possibly be a scientist?

The cosmology of the Qur’an is obviously geocentric, and as a consequence, Al-Azhar University , which Obama singles out for praise in his speech, still teaches Ptolemaic astronomy.

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http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-flunks-history-at-cairo-u/