Monday, August 19, 2013

Barack Obama's Support for the Rise of Political Islam

Mike L.

{Cross-posted at News and Views from Jews Down Under and the Times of Israel and Geoffff's Joint and Free News of the World.}



It remains fairly astonishing that most diaspora Jews still do not understand that United States president Barack Obama assisted the rise of political Islam throughout the Middle East, particularly in Egypt.

One very simple fact needs to be understood by people who care about US foreign policy in the Middle East:

Barack Obama supported the rise of political Islam within that part of the world.

Period.

He did so despite the fact that devotees of political Islam (or radical Islam or Islamism) stone women to death for alleged promiscuity, hang Gay people from cranes because Allah apparently does not like Gay people, and calls for the genocide or dhimmitude of the Jews and the Christians because dhimmis, and other non-Muslims, refuse to accept Muhammad as the prophet of God.  How it is that the great majority of American Jews favor a president that supported a political movement that denigrates their own people is a question that future historians and sociologists will spend many, many hours researching and pondering.

When told that Barack Obama favored and assisted the rise of political Islam, however, many western-left Jews simply scoff.  The truth, of course, is that Obama did assist the rise of political Islam throughout the Middle East and admitted it, himself.

In his September 25, 2012 speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations he said this:
It has been less than two years since a vendor in Tunisia set himself on fire to protest the oppressive corruption in his country, and sparked what became known as the Arab Spring. And since then, the world has been captivated by the transformation that’s taken place, and the United States has supported the forces of change.
The United States has supported the forces of change.

These are Obama's own words.  It is he that claims that under his administration the United States supported the so-called "Arab Spring."  So, what was the "Arab Spring"?  It should be entirely clear to everyone by this point that it was not the great up-welling of Arab democracy but the rise of political Islam, which is the theocratic-authoritarian movement to impose al-Sharia on the peoples of the world, starting with the peoples of the Middle East.

That is what Obama supported and claimed to support.  This is not a matter of hyperbole or interpretation.  He said what he said and he did what he did and we need to recognize it.  He may have done so out of either ignorance or stupidity, but that he did so is no longer open to question.  If it was ignorance, then he did so out of a belief that the Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular and moderate. Perhaps Obama gave too much credence to his National Intelligence Director, James Clapper, who told Congress that "The term Muslim Brotherhood is an umbrella term for a variety of movements. In the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam."

How it is possible that the National Intelligence Director of the United States under Barack Obama could believe such nonsense boggles the mind.  The Muslim Brotherhood, as anyone who has done even a little research into their roots can tell you, is meant to advance Sharia, which is religious law.

It is, therefore, not secular. Furthermore, if you read prominent historical scholars who have written about the Muslim Brotherhood, such as Matthias Küntzel or Paul Berman or Jeffrey Herf, you will learn that the Brotherhood emerged in 1920s Cairo as a theocratic-fascistic movement opposed to modernity, opposed to secularism, in opposition to the west, and in racist opposition to the well-being of the Jewish people.

Although numerous countries throughout the region are falling to political Islam, I will limit my comments to Egypt because that country is among the most geo-politically significant countries in the Arab-Muslim world and because it is in Egypt that Obama has done the most damage in his work on behalf of that movement.

Obama's main efforts in assisting the rise of political Islam throughout the Middle East consisted of his efforts on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  The Muslim Brotherhood is a violently racist organization that was founded in the 1920s and that, like the Nazis in Germany at that time, or the Ku Klux Klan in the United States at that time, sought to impose its fascistic vision through violence.  The Muslim Brotherhood then, and the Muslim Brotherhood now, is in direct opposition to western values precisely because Sharia is directly in opposition to western values.

That Barack Obama would seek to bolster the fortunes of such a political movement is unconscionable and Jewish people and women and Gay people and all people, who do not wish to live under theocratic dominance, should object strenuously.  Part of the problem that we have, however, is that Obama's Jewish supporters tend to simply turn away their heads.  They refuse to acknowledge that which is directly before their noses.  And what that means is that we must use the evidence before us to encourage them to open their eyes.  

Obama directly claimed his support for the "Arab Spring," which is the rise of political Islam.

The Cairo Speech:

Prior to helping oust Hosni Mubarak, Barack Obama invited the Muslim Brotherhood, over Mubarak's objections, to his 2009 speech in Cairo.  From the 1920s through the demise of Mubarak, throughout the period of Arab nationalism, Egyptian regimes consistently suppressed the Brotherhood and sometimes executed their leadership.  For almost a century the political tension in Egypt has been between racist military dictatorships and racist theocratic insurgents.  With the rise of Arab nationalism in the middle of the twentieth century, with Nasser leading the way, Arab theocracy throughout the Middle East was on the wane until the Iranian revolution of 1979.

By inviting the Brotherhood to the Cairo speech, Obama validated the political movement for Sharia that, in its modern form, began with Hasan Al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, was greatly advanced by the Iranian revolution and that is further advanced with the heinous riots and rapes and murders that are collectively known as the "Arab Spring."

Many critics condemn Obama’s Cairo speech for implying a moral equivalence between the European effort at Jewish genocide and al-Nakba (the catastrophe). The alleged “catastrophe,” of course, is that the local Arabs made war upon the Jews of the Middle East, often fighting against women and Holocaust survivors, and lost, despite their great numerical advantage. Thus at the very outset of the Obama administration he assisted in the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt while denigrating the Holocaust by suggesting a moral equivalency between the horror of the genocide of the Jews and the displacement of Arabs who likewise sought the genocide of the Jews.

Ousting Mubarak:

Barack Obama demanded that Mubarak step down knowing full-well that the Muslim Brotherhood was waiting in the wings.  Given the fact that he invited the Brotherhood to his Cairo speech he certainly knew that they were a force to be reckoned with in that country.  Since he knew the Brotherhood was a significant organization surely his advisors must have informed him about the history of the organization, including its connection to Nazi Germany.

This gets to the crux of the matter.  Either Obama knew of the Brotherhood-Nazi connection or he did not.  If he did not, then he is guilty of dangerous and shameful ignorance.  But if he did, it is worse.  If Obama understood the Brotherhood's connection to Nazi Germany then he is guilty of something a tad more serious.

In any case, by calling for Mubarak's ouster Obama helped clear a path for the Brotherhood to come to power in Egypt.

It has to be understood that when Obama called for the ouster of Mubarak he assisted the Brotherhood's rise to power and thereby assisted the rise of political Islam throughout the region.

Ensuring the Ascendancy of a Racist Regime:

The Muslim Brotherhood, after ninety long years in the political wilderness, finally came to power shortly after the election of Barack Obama and partly due to Obama's efforts.  The Egyptian election, and the referendums that followed, were not democratic because Brotherhood thugs prevented Copts from voting.  One cannot claim democratic legitimacy if one suppresses the ability of one's political opponents to express their will at the ballot box.

Nonetheless, directly after the semi-faux-democratic election in Egypt, US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, flew to that country on the instructions of Barack Obama for the purpose of advancing relations between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood.

In a July 14, 2012, piece written for the New York Times by David Kirkpatrick, he writes:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Egypt on Saturday for meetings with its newly elected Islamist president and the chief of its still-dominant military council, declaring that the United States “supports the full transition to civilian rule with all that entails.”
With the rise of political Islam in Egypt, under the Muslim Brotherhood and now deposed president Muhammed Morsi, what civilian rule entailed was the suppression and victimization of the Copts, an increase in the oppression of women, the institutionalization of a particularly violent form of religious homophobia, and incitement of genocide toward the Jewish minority in the Middle East.

Kirkpatrick's piece emphasizes a certain even-handedness during Clinton's trip, but this does not change the fact that by visiting Morsi after the election she gave the US seal of approval to a political party, and a political movement, entirely at odds with western liberal values.

Furthermore, the United States sent the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt F-16 fighter jets and hundreds of Abrams tanks.  How anyone can claim that the Obama administration has not supported the rise of political Islam in the Middle East when we have it on record that he sent them heavy weaponry is simply irrational.

Why it Matters:

If the Jewish people are not the most persecuted people on the entire planet within the last few mellennia we are certainly among the most persecuted.  From the seventh century until the current moment Arab majoritarian conquerors in the Middle East have kept the tiny Jewish minority in a state of perpetual self-defense.  For thirteen centuries the Jews of the Middle East lived as dhimmis under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperial rule.

In Martin Gilbert's In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands, we learn that for the dhimmi:

There could be no building of new synagogues or churches. Dhimmis could not ride horses, but only donkeys; they could not employ a Muslim. Jews and Christians alike had to wear special hats, cloaks and shoes to mark them out from Muslims... A dhimmi could not - and cannot to this day - serve in a Muslim court as witness in a legal case involving a Muslim... men could enter public bathhouses only when they wore a special sign around their neck distinguishing them from Muslims... Sexual relations with a Muslim woman were forbidden, as was cursing the Prophet in public - an offense punishable by death. (pgs. 32 - 33)
The system of dhimmitude is central to Sharia law and it is a return to Sharia law that is the goal of political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood.  Sharia is, obviously non-democratic and thus Obama's support for the rise of political Islam under the cloak of "democracy" was a falsehood from the start, whether he realized it or not.

The question is not if Obama supported the rise of political Islam, but just why he did so?  Some contend that he did so because of a desire to support democracy, but political Islam is non-democratic even if it comes to power through the ballot box.  Others maintain that Obama is actually a crypto-Muslim and that he therefore supports the rise of political Islam because he is in sympathy with that fascistic movement.  My suspicion is that the former explanation carries considerably more weight.

What drives Barack Obama is not malice, nor a desire to see the rise of political Islam or to undermine the United States in the region, but a deep naivety and ideological blinkertude that is exceedingly dangerous to the Jews of the Middle East, if not everyone else in the Middle East.

One can support democracy without supporting any and all political outcomes.  The United States government has an obligation to its citizenry to support their vital national interests.  There was a time when American governments understood this.  Under this administration, however, it is no longer the case.  If you believe that Obama's intentions are essentially benevolent then you must believe that his administration's efforts in that part of the world are intended to foster the greater good for everyone, as well as to support American interests in the region.

In both cases he has failed almost entirely. Thankfully, the Egyptian people and the Egyptian military fought back against political Islam in their country.

Nonetheless, embracing the Muslim Brotherhood was merely one in a string of foreign policy cognitive errors, but it was definitely among the worst and certainly suggested to this writer that this president could not be trusted.

That much is certain.

7 comments:

  1. It is so difficult for Obama, he is like standing in the middle of leverage, does not know where to run to> Islam or Jews. Thank you! I did not know which side did the US take in Egypt. It started to be clear after reading this.

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    1. Hi Lynn,

      thank you for the compliment.

      For reasons that I fail to comprehend the diaspora Jewish community is, for the most part, blind-folded by this administration.

      They cannot bring themselves to see that the president that they voted for - and that I also voted for - supported the rise of political Islam.

      Why they cannot see what is before their very noses, and that which is easily demonstrable, is hard to comprehend.

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    2. Hi, Lynn. Thank you for your comment.

      But you wrote:

      "It is so difficult for Obama, he is like standing in the middle of leverage, does not know where to run to> Islam or Jews."

      But why would one have any difficulty in knowing, in such a case, whether to side with Islam or with Jews?

      I hope that the following video and the following articles may provide the answer that question.

      Uprooting Antisemitism Through Scholarship and Education, a talk by Dr. Catherine Chatterley
      (2012 Women's Endowment Fund Luncheon - Guest Speaker: Dr. Catherine Chatterley)
      http://vimeo.com/45200603

      Anti-Semitism 2.0, by Mudar Zahran

      "The concept of the ‘evil Jew’ has made a well-disguised comeback: Criticizing Israel and Zionists, is now deemed a legitimate option to cursing Jews and Judaism. Not only is it open, socially acceptable and legal, but it can actually bring prosperity and popularity. This new form of anti-Semitism 2.0 is well-covered-up, harder to trace and poses a much deeper danger to the modern way of life of the civilized world than the earlier crude form of it, as it slowly and gradually works on delegitimizing Jews to the point where it eventually becomes acceptable to target Jews, first verbally, then physically -- all done in a cosmopolitan style where the anti-Semites are well-groomed speakers and headline writers in jackets and ties; and not just Arab, but American and European, from ‘sanitized’ news coverage of the most bloodthirsty radicals, to charges against Israel in which facts are distorted, selectively omitted or simply untrue, as in former President Jimmy Carter's book on Israel.

      "Why would a Palestinian be writing this? The answer is simple: The Palestinians have been used as fuel for the new form of anti-Semitism; this has hurt the Palestinians and exposed them to unprecedented and purposely media-ignored abuse by Arab governments, including some of those who claim love for the Palestinians, yet in fact only bear hatred to Jews. This has resulted in Palestinian cries for justice, equality, freedom and even basic human rights being ignored while the world getting consumed with delegitimizing Israel from either ignorance or malice.

      "Worse, just as the old form of anti-Semitism has proven itself a threat as poisonous to its supporters, as it was to the Jews, the new form of anti-Semitism 2.0 could prove itself the same -- all the more likely as we see the world tolerating Iran's nuclear ambitions not necessarily out of love for the Mullah's regime, but instead because of mental fixation against Israel.

      "Such bias against Israel cannot be 'accidental' or merely 'unfortunate.' No other nation has received the amount of scrutinizing, criticism, coverage, demonization and delegitimization. In fact the question to be asked is not whether there is bias against Israel; but rather why there is bias against Israel ..."

      http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1979/anti-semitism-20

      Note:

      "Palestine": The British Mandate of Palestine; "Palestinian": 'Palestinian' Arab

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    3. Some more articles about this issue:

      Johann von Leers and Walt/Mearsheimer, by Clemens Heni

      "Most people think that the book 'Israel Lobby' by Stephen Walt and John J. Mearsheimer was published in 2007 -- at the same time in the US and in Germany, by the way. Well, the first edition of that book was rather published in 1940 -- by leading National Socialist anti-Semitic publicist Prof. Dr. Johann von Leers. Von Leers published 'Kräfte hinter Roosevelt' ('Forces behind Roosevelt') in Berlin in 1940. ..."

      http://clemensheni.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/johann-von-leers-and-waltmearsheimer/

      Yale kills YIISA, by Clemens Heni

      "...Yale’s action proves that criticism of antisemitism in the US and on campus is possible, as long as you are just dealing with Nazis and Neonazis, or right-wing Christians, promoting old-school antisemitism. The much bigger portion of academia and the public, liberal or progressive Christians, non-believers, Muslims, and others who are spreading new style antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and Israel hatred, remain untouched. This is the core argument of ABBY WISSE SCHACHTER , writing on June 6, 2011, in the New York Post:

      "„Yale University last week killed the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism — the only program of its kind in the country, an academically stellar one-stop anti-Semitism research shop. Worse, it almost certainly did so because YIISA refused to ignore the most virulent, genocidal and common form of Jew-hatred today: Muslim anti-Semitism.”

      "If one is analyzing the most dangerous form of contemporary antisemitism, you are censored, defamed, bullied, and finally thrown out from campus: highlighting Muslim and Arab antisemitism is taboo.

      "In that sense, American academe is like its counterpart in Europe.

      "Analyzing liberal and left hypocrisy, YIISA Associate Professor Neil Kressel, already showed in 1992 that progressives aim at antisemites as long as they are right-wing or Nazis. Antisemitism from the Third World or from minority groups, including the left, have never been a topic for mainstream scholars and journalists in the US. Contrary to fantasies about a powerful ‘Israel-Lobby’ in the US, antisemitism is very strong among the elites in America. The recent Yale decision is proof for this. ..."

      http://clemensheni.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/yale-kills-yiisa/

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    4. The modern "Protocols of Zion" - How the mass media now promotes the same lies that caused the death of more than 5 million Jews in WWII - Part 7, by Francisco Gil-White

      "Before WWII, the Nazis and their sympathizers made popular all over the world the allegation that ‘the Jews’ controlled everything in secret, including the mass media, and that they would use this clandestine power to hurt us all. The accusations were widely believed because they were built on a long tradition of Western accusations against the Jews going back to the first century, when they were accused of killing God: a cultural inertia (see Part 1). The Nazi accusations of the supposed clandestine total power of ‘the Jews,’ plus supposed evil intent of the same, produced a pan-Western anti-Jewish hysteria that fueled the genocide of more than 5 million Jews, which repeated the consequences of similar accusations in previous centuries in the West (see Part 1). We are back where we started. It is almost impossible to be both alive and in the West and not have heard the allegation that “the Jews control the media.” As before, the accusation is a lie. This piece will demonstrate that most of the big media is not controlled by ‘the Jews,’ and that when people claiming a Jewish identity do own a big media company, this company will be especially careful to take an anti-Jewish slant. ..."

      http://www.hirhome.com/israel/mprot7.htm

      Antisemitism is everywhere in the mass media - Sometimes it is relatively subtle. - How The Economist (British magazine) Attacks the Jews, by Francisco Gil-White
      http://www.hirhome.com/israel/subtle.htm

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    5. Correction (to a typo mistake that I made):

      I wrote:

      "...the answer that question. ..."

      which should be:

      "...the answer to that question. ..."

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    6. Lynn,

      This article provides information which I hope may explain why what is the current attitude of the Muslim world toward Israel and the Jewish people is what is the current attitude of the Muslim world toward Israel and the Jewish people:

      Islamism, Antisemitism, and the political left - A Democratiya Interview with Matthias Küntzel, By Matthias Küntzel

      "...The main achievement of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, was to combine the Jew-hatred of ancient Islam with modern antisemitism into a new and persuasive rhetoric. I discovered a speech he gave in 1937 with the title, ‘Jewry and Islam’. Here, he intermingled modern antisemitism with the stories of very early Islam, going back and forth from the 7th and the 20th centuries, and connecting both kinds of Jew-hatred. This was something new."

      ...

      "The Mufti was the most important founder of modern Islamic antisemitism and this achievement – with all its after-effects – is more important than his role during the Nazi time. Amin el-Husseini is often reduced to this time. But I think that what he did before and after this period of time was much more important. Before, he created the new antisemitic rhetoric, the rhetoric the Islamists would spread. Between 1946 and 1948, he played a key role in mobilising the Arab world against Israel. Sometimes individuals can change a lot, and the Mufti was by far the best-known representative of the Muslim world at that time, among other things because of his broadcasting of pro-Nazi and antisemitic sermons into the Middle East during the war over the Berlin short wave transmitter. He pursued his passion after May 8, 1945 and stirred up a specifically antisemitic hatred against the Jews in Palestine* and Israel. ..."

      http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/islamism-antisemitism-and-the-political-left

      Haj Amin al-Husseini, the founder of the 'Palestinian movement', was one of the architects of the genocide committed against the European Jewish people by the Nazis.

      A documentary:

      THE NAZIS AND THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT
      On Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/69991225
      On YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_abGQY-1qoM


      Note: * "Palestine": The British Mandate of Palestine. The British Mandate of Palestine was constituted by what is now Jordan, and by what is now Israel, and by what is now called "The West Bank" (Judea and Sameria), and by what is now called "The Gaza Strip". Between 1921 and 1924, British officials, in contravention to the Faisal–Weizmann Agreement of 1919, and in contravention to the (still currently legally binding official international law mandate) San Remo Conference of 1920, created the Arab state Transjordan in the British Mandate of Palestine and gave rulership of Transjordan to the Hashemites. In 1946, Britain granted independence to Transjordan, and Transjordan was renamed Jordan.

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