Is Obama a Muslim?

          The kerfluffle resulting from Mayor Giuliani’s statement that Obama does not love America has once again put the President’s faith front and center.  Is he a Muslim? 

          The results of a Washington Post poll released on February 25^th are illuminating.  When asked what religion best describes what Obama’s deep down beliefs are, 10% of Democrats, 54 % of Republicans, and 26% of Independents said Muslim.  Fewer than half of Democrats and only 9% of Republicans said Christian.   
          We must note that this poll did not ask respondents if they thought Obama was a practicing Muslim, but it does indicate that a huge majority of Americans believe at the very least that he is a Muslim sympathizer.  There is much evidence to support that position, not only in Obama’s background, but even more in what he has said and done since elected President.
          We are all too familiar with Obama’s refusal to call the ISIS terrorists Islamic.  He refuses to believe that they derive their ideology from the Koran, which directs its faithful to kill the infidel.  He also denies that hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world support the goal of establishing a world-wide Caliphate governed by Sharia law; he prefers to call Islam a religion of peace, when it clearly is not.
          What disturbs me the most is the Administration’s increasingly aggressive posture toward Israel.  First, it is hardly an accident that Susan Rice’s affront to Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu and John Kerry’s mendacious Congressional testimony this week were so brazenly anti-Semitic; they could not have made their comments without the President’s approval, tacit or otherwise.       
          Second, knowing that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose the biggest threat to Israel, Obama has now all but insured that Iran will go nuclear in the not too distant future; his promise to prevent that at all costs has been abandoned.
          Third, the President has inexplicably turned his back on Egypt, the one Muslim country that has done the most to combat terrorism in the Middle East.  It was Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el Sisi, who called on the leading Imams to reform Islam; it was el Sisi who drove the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists out of power in Egypt; it was Egypt that bombed the ISIL barbarians who beheaded 21 Christians in Libya when the Administration wouldn’t even acknowledge that they were Christians; it is Egypt that continues to fight ISIL in the Sinai and opposes Hamas terrorists in Palestine.  Yet, it was President Obama who recently invited representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood to the White House, and it was President Obama who had the gall to host the Emir of Qatar on February 24^th, when Qatar has been a prime supplier of arms and money to Middle Eastern terrorists, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.  It’s no wonder el Sisi is furious with the President.
          Shouldn’t we all be?

The Enemy Called Idleness

          Anybody with a television has probably seen Mike Rowe host a series called “Dirty Jobs.”  In a recent blog he relates how his first job was in a movie theater “cleaning out the bathrooms, emptying the trash, and scraping dubious substances from the floor of the theater.”  From there he was promoted to concession vendor, then to cashier, and eventually to film projector, the job he had wanted in the first place.  The point he makes is that the career he has now as the star of his own television series began with a dirty, minimum wage job.

          Rowe argues that there is no such thing as a bad job.  “Some jobs pay better, some jobs smell better, and some jobs have no business being treated as a career.  But work is never the enemy, regardless of the wage.  Because somewhere between the job and the paycheck, there’s still a thing called opportunity, and that’s what people need to pursue.”
          Which brings us to the question of minimum wage.  I don’t profess to know what the minimum wage in this country should be.  I’m rather glad for those workers at Wal-Mart who will see their wages increase to $10 an hour.  But I think that raising the minimum wage to, say, $20 would harm the least skilled, those people who need to step on the first rung of the career ladder.  As Mike Rowe said, “If the minimum wage in 1979 had been suddenly raised from $2.90 to $10 an hour, thousands of people would have applied for the same job.  What chance would I have had, being seventeen years old with pimples and a big Adams apple?”
          One consequence of paying artificially high wages in the move to automation.  Mike Rowe wouldn’t have a job as a film projector these days: most of those jobs are handled by the push of a button.  Yet, there are thousands of jobs out there with nobody to fill them, because they require a skill that kids coming out of high school don’t have.  The shame is that too many kids who are not college material do not have the opportunity to acquire skills like carpentry, sheetrocking , welding, and auto mechanics, to name just a few. 
          To be sure, college graduates who can’t find jobs is a problem.  But what about those kids in our own community who are standing idly on the corner because they can’t find that first rung on the ladder of opportunity?
          Common Core is the much-debated government program to combat ignorance.  Maybe what we need is a Common Core program to fight idleness.   

Why?

          In a recent post I accused the President of the United States of being a traitor.  Responses so far have been positive, but I expect to hear from some detractors who would likely argue that to be treasonous, acts that give aid and comfort to the enemy must be willful, and that Obama has not intentionally committed treason, in spite of the consequences of his failed policies. I maintain that he has. What else could explain the damage his decisions have inflicted on our national security and our standing in the world? Sheer incompetence is not enough.

          In his first term, President Obama made three major decisions affecting us and our allies in Europe. He scrapped the decision to place defensive missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic; he unilaterally reduced our nuclear arsenal, so that Russia now boasts of having a superior nuclear capability; and he reduced our land, sea and air military capabilities. Russia has taken advantage of this deliberate drawdown by invading Crimea and Eastern Ukraine with impunity. Obama’s response has been to rely on ineffective sanctions, while denying defensive armaments to Ukraine. Why?
          In the Middle East we have seen the President lead from behind in Libya, now controlled by Islamist fanatics; side in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood, an active supporter of terrorism; back off his Red Line in Syria; deny Iraq a residual force to protect against a resurgence of al Qaeda; damage our relationship with Israel; allow Iran to continue unimpeded in its quest for nuclear weapons; fail to develop an effective strategy to defeat ISIL in Iraq and Syria; refuse to acknowledge Islamic radicalism and its controlling ideology. Again, the question is: Why?
          Obama has given us enough clues. The first was candidate Obama’s promise to fundamentally change the nature of this country. The second was his apology tour to the Middle East. The third is his disdain for the military. The fourth is his sympathetic view of Islam. They go hand in hand in projecting the President’s view of the world and America’s place in it. They explain Obama’s embarrassment for American exceptionalism and his refusal to do anything that could be interpreted as the imposition of American values on the rest of the world. 
          How then to establish a new world order no longer dependent on American leadership? The answer in Europe is a defanged NATO. Obama will not defend Europe against Russian adventurism, because he is at heart a coward who does not like to fight. Instead, he is confident that in the end diplomacy will bring Russia into the fold of peaceful nations.
          In the Middle East the answer is a hegemonic Islam ruled by a nuclear-armed Iran. I think Obama, our Islamophile-in-Chief, believes that once a religiously reconciled and unified Islam is in complete control of the Middle East, it will somehow abandon its barbaric jihad, its thirst for conquest slaked once and for all.  Of course, Israel may have

to be sacrificed in the process, but that would be an acceptable price to pay for a lasting peace.

          Having played a primary role in achieving such a peace, Barack Obama’s place in history will be secure. He will have earned his Nobel Peace Prize.
          This is my considered opinion. And my nightmare.

         

Obama's Christian Slander

          I have never made a secret of disliking President Obama. I oppose his divisive and redistributionist ideology, his extra-constitutional executive actions, and his failed foreign policy. In fact, I have accused him of treason for giving aid and comfort to the enemy, an enemy he resolutely refuses to acknowledge as Radical Islam. His cowardice and his serial mendacity have been bad enough, but I have never been so offended as I was when listening to parts of his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5^th. 

          We are assaulted almost daily with reports of beheadings, crucifixions, burying children alive, stoning of women, and other atrocities committed in the name of Islam.  Upping the ante once again, ISIL burned a Jordanian prisoner to death in a steel cage. Yet, in his speech the President had the unmitigated gall and indecency to equate today’s Islamic barbarism with terrible deeds committed in the name of Christ. I quote:
          “And lest we get on our high horse and think this [Islamic barbarism] is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”
          Christians don’t deny that some terrible things were done in the name of Christianity 600 and 1,000 years ago.  But balance that against the mitigating good brought about by the Church over the centuries and the advancement of civilization made possible by Christian scholars, scientists, artists, and religious leaders.  Has Islam ever had a Renaissance? A Reformation? Has it ever produced a Michelangelo, a Newton, or a Francis of Assisi?
          The President didn’t stop there. He went on:
          “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.” 
          What a monstrous slander! If Obama can insist that ISIL isn’t Islamic, how hypocritical it is of him to claim that slave owners and oppressors of blacks in this country were inspired by Christianity.     
          Can you see where this is all going? Slam Christians and slam America. What’s left but Islam?  Now ask yourself where Obama’s sympathies lie. And, if you’re an American Christian, tell me you’re not offended. And outraged at our leader’s perfidy.

Republican Racists

          In his January 21^st letter to the Perquimans Weekly editor, Jerry Gill puts his finger on what really ails this country: Republicans are all racists. They oppose every one of President Obama’s policies because he is black. What brilliant insight!

          Of course, it’s not just Republicans: judging from the last elections, it’s the majority of Americans. If only the man in the White House were white, we would be cheering his every move. We would tolerate scandals in the IRS, the VA, the GSA, and the Justice Department; we would agree with the President’s unconstitutional executive orders; we would willingly give up our doctors and pay more for ObamaCare; we would call for more regulations, higher taxes, more national debt, and more government control of our lives; and we would tell our kids to gobble up the food on the First Lady’s school lunch menus.  We would...if our President were white.
          Beyond our borders we would be reassured that weakness and empty threats are the best foreign policy. We would not be disappointed by our failure to confront the Russians in Ukraine; we would heartily support the shrinking of our military; we would agree that we don’t need a strategy to combat Islamic terrorist ideology, because ISIS, al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Boko Haram are not Islamic; and we would oppose sanctions on Iran, because we would be confident that the mullahs will not build a nuclear bomb as long as we keep talking nice to them. We would have no reason to fear for our security if the president were white.
          I’m so grateful to Jerry Gill for looking into my heart and making me see for the first time that what inspires my opposition to Barack Obama is my racist desire to crush him because of the color of his skin.  I am consumed with guilt and will seek absolution. But first, I must now go and find some ashes to pour on my head.

Calling Emile Zola

          On January 13, 1898, the Paris daily newspaper l’Aurore published on its front page a letter from writer Emile Zola to the president of France.  At the top of the page, in bold type, were the words “J’Accuse…”  Zola was expressing his outrage in the most forceful terms at France’s anti-Semitism in the Alfred Dreyfus affair.  I wish we had an Emile Zola in this country today to express outrage at President Obama’s treason.

          Treason is defined in part as giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and Obama, in my opinion, is guilty of it.
          The enemy is radical Islam.  It has declared itself to be an enemy of the West and most specifically of the United States, as it has repeatedly made clear its intent to kill us all and to impose its extreme ideology on the world.  It has waged war on us for two decades, beginning with the 1993 assault on the World Trade Center that killed six people and injured 1,000.  The list of atrocities perpetrated since then by Islamic radicals is well documented and too long to fit in this space.  Yet, President Obama refuses to acknowledge the true nature of the enemy.  He can’t even bring himself to pronounce the words “Islamic” in identifying the extremists who are waging war against us.  This alone gives comfort to the enemy.  But there’s more, much more.
          Obama once famously declared that “Osama bin Laden is dead, and al-Qaeda is on the run.”  The events in Benghazi, Egypt, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Yemen have proven him wrong.  Even worse, ISIL filled the void left by Obama’s refusal to leave a residual force in Iraq and is now controlling most of Iraq and Syria. 
          The President’s Red Line retreat in Syria and his No-Boots-on- the-Ground policy in Iraq give further comfort to the enemy in the knowledge that this weak opponent poses no real threat.  Indeed, we have pulled out of Afghanistan, ignored Boko Haram, and limited our actions to pinpricks against ISIL in Iraq and Syria.  Radical Islam is winning, and a cowardly President Obama has chosen not to put up a serious fight.
          Guantanamo Bay is further evidence of the president’s hubris.  He promised to close it and he will, even if it means giving aid to the enemy, as he did in trading one deserter for five top al Qaeda prisoners, and then forbidding the Pentagon from releasing its report on the Bergdahl investigation.  To add to that insult, the president chose to release five more Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo following the Paris murders, knowing full well that 30% of prisoners released from Guantanamo have returned to the fight against us.  And he did this after declining to join over 40 world leaders in their showing of solidarity against Islamic terrorism.
          The first duty of the President of the United States is to protect Americans from its enemies at home and abroad.  In giving aid and comfort to the enemy Barack Obama is failing miserably in discharging this duty.  His dereliction is more than hubris.  It is more than cowardice.  It is treason.
          If only Emile Zola were alive today.

Barbarians Inside Our Gates

          The horrific events in France have been called acts of violence, radical extremism, and, except in the White House, Islamic terrorism.  Some pundits have gone so far as to say that the killings signal the advent of World War III.  I think they signal far more than that.

          Our human species evolved very slowly after its first appearance around 40,000 years ago.  The first civilization didn’t actually appear in Mesopotamia and Egypt until around 3,500 B.C.  These were characterized by organized states, structured society, economic specialization, artistic expression, the earliest forms of writing and arithmetic, and in 1,700 B.C., the first codes of law.  Then this great advance came to a halt with the Fertile Crescent’s first invasion of barbarians: Dorians, Phrygians, and Indo-Europeans from the north, and Semites from the south.  This plunged civilization into a period of darkness that lasted a thousand years until the rise of Greek civilization.
          A similar collapse of the civilized world occurred in the first millennium A.D. when the Roman Empire fell to invasion by Huns, Goths, and other barbarians from the north, and Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula.  The Western world did not fully recover from the ensuing Dark Ages until the Renaissance.  Now civilization is under assault by a new wave of barbarians bent on conquering the West and imposing its Islamist ideology upon the Infidel.
          Critics of extremism are quick to point out that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful.  But as our politically correct multi-culturalists wring their hands at the oppressive policies of the West, they ignore reality: Islamist extremists want to kill us all, and, except for Egypt’s General el-Sisi, few among those “peaceful” Muslims are saying or doing anything about it.  Like the children who danced in the streets when the Twin Towers came down, they would rejoice at the destruction of the West and the imposition of Sharia Law on the world.
          After Muslims conquered all of the Middle East and North Africa in the 7^th century, they swept into Spain and then France.  Had they not been stopped in Poitiers in 732 by Charles Martel, they might have converted all of Europe to Islam.
          The new Muslim invasion of Europe and the West has begun.  The barbarians are once again at our gates.  Indeed, they are already inside them.  How will they be stopped this time?  Who will be our Charles Martel?