Conservative Christian friends of mine alerted me to a statement by Barack Obama that he would supposedly stand with Muslims if the political tide turned ugly. This statement alarmed my friends who felt that it displayed a partisan bias toward Muslims by Obama. As they put it why not stand with everyone else too ?
I asked if they would forward me the statement, which they duly did from the Conservative Crusader website. Here’s what CC has to say:
Note what B. Hussein Obama says in his own words. In “Audacity of Hope” he writes: “I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.” The quote comes from page 261 of the paperback edition of “The Audacity of Hope.”
Unfortunately for Conservative Crusader, the statement attributed to Obama is not accurate. It is a misquote made with the intention of slurring Obama as a secret Muslim.
This particular piece of error has been dealt with by the website Truth Or Fiction.
The statement said to be Obama’s own words is actually a paraphrase of a quote from Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope. It is from a section that talks about the concerns of immigrants who are American citizens.
In context, Obama is saying that he would defend American Muslims against racist persecution such as that experienced by American Japanese during WW2. And he is saying that he would do the same for any immigrant community.
Here is the accurate and more complete quote:
Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow this easy pattern. In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.
By the same standard of proof proffered by Conservative Crusader it can be (erroneously) shown that George W. Bush is also a secret Muslim.
I found GW Bush’s comments on Islam delivered (GASP!) from within a Mosque on Sept. 17, 2001 just days after the 9/11 attacks.
In it Bush says much the same thing as Obama:
That Muslims are entitled to be free from racist persecution and that he would defend Muslims from such ugliness. The article summarizes Bush’s sentiments like so “Bush: U.S. Muslims should feel safe”.
Bush said:
“I’ve been told that some [Muslims] fear to leave [their homes]; some don’t want to go shopping for their families; some don’t want to go about their ordinary daily routines because, by wearing cover, they’re afraid they’ll be intimidated. That should not and that will not stand in America.”
Bush, revealing his Islamic sympathies, also said that Muslims are the friends of America, that Muslims are our brothers and sisters, that Islam is a religion of peace, and that the 9/11 attacks are not Islamic. He also quoted from the Koran and supported the Islamic view that the Koran can only be properly understood in Arabic.
Well, look, its obvious nonsense isn’t it ? Turning the target on its head makes that plain.
The political strategy employed by Obama’s enemies to discredit him was to say that he was a terrorist.
They used three main ways to do this:
- Tie him to the radical leftist group The Weathermen, and say he was a radical Communist
- Highlight inflammatory remarks made by his Christian Pastor of twenty years, Jeremiah Wright (who married the Obamas) and say he was a Radical Black Panther-type Christian
- Highlight his Kenyan ancestry and childhood and his name Hussein to imply he was a radical Muslim
So, Obama, landing a seriously arcane quadrella is simultaneously a Communist, a Christian, a Black Panther and a Muslim.
In fact all of the accusations dwell as congenially as oil and water in the credulous article from Conservative Crusader, linked above
Plainly, Obama is no more a Muslim than George Bush.
Under The Milky Way 