Barack Obama said the following at a recent White House dinner:
Of all the freedoms we cherish as Americans, of all the rights that we hold sacred, foremost among them is freedom of religion, the right to worship as we choose. It’s enshrined in the First Amendment of our Constitution — the law of the land, always and forever. It beats in our heart — in the soul of the people who know that our liberty and our equality is endowed by our Creator. And it runs through the history of this house, a place where Americans of many faiths can come together and celebrate their holiest of days — and that includes Ramadan.
As I’ve noted before, Thomas Jefferson once held a sunset dinner here with an envoy from Tunisia — perhaps the first Iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago. And some of you, as you arrived tonight, may have seen our special display, courtesy of our friends at the Library of Congress — the Koran that belonged to Thomas Jefferson. And that’s a reminder, along with the generations of patriotic Muslims in America, that Islam — like so many faiths — is part of our national story.
He’s right about one thing. Islam is part of the national story of America. It’s called 9/11. And before that, there was the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-81, likewise fueled by the militant faith of Islam. Who knows what the ‘religion of peace’ still has in store for America and the rest of the civilized Western world?
It’s ironic that Obama praises Islam in the context of upholding ‘the right to worship as we choose.’ The right to worship as one chooses (or even not worship at all) is precisely what Islam does not permit. Islam advocates the imposition of religious law as overriding the law of the secular state. It’s called ‘Sharia’ law, founded on the very Koran our President so cherishes. It would replace our system of justice with a brutal religious theocracy, like that imposed in the terrorist-sponsoring state of Iran.
Obama is also distorting history by implying that Thomas Jefferson somehow endorsed or approved of Islam.
Christopher Hitchens explained the real truth back in 2007, in an article at Slate.com. He wrote:
[I]n 1786, the new United States found that it was having to deal very directly with the tenets of the Muslim religion. The Barbary states of North Africa (or, if you prefer, the North African provinces of the Ottoman Empire, plus Morocco) were using the ports of today’s Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia to wage a war of piracy and enslavement against all shipping that passed through the Strait of Gibraltar. Thousands of vessels were taken, and more than a million Europeans and Americans sold into slavery. The fledgling United States of America was in an especially difficult position, having forfeited the protection of the British Royal Navy ‘
‘ That this might not be so easy was discovered by Jefferson and John Adams when they went to call on Tripoli’s envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman. They asked him by what right he extorted money and took slaves in this way. As Jefferson later reported to Secretary of State John Jay, and to the Congress: ‘The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.’
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Jefferson and the young United States were just as plagued by the ‘religion of peace’ as America was several centuries later. Nothing has changed. It’s true that not all individual Muslims are terrorists, but there’s no escaping the fact that the religion is founded on the idea that those who do not practice it are (according to Islam itself) infidels who deserve to die.
Imagine if a Christian, Jew or atheist stated publicly, ‘I am virtuous if I kill a Muslim, for no other reason than he or she is a Muslim.’ The speaker would be justifiably condemned. But when an entire religion bases its faith and actions on the supposed virtue of killing all non-Muslims, the President of the United States treats that religion with dignity and respect. To top it off, he has the nerve to claim Thomas Jefferson would agree with him! These are truly insane times.
Obama is outright lying. He must know full well the context for Jefferson’s receiving an apostle of Islam at the White House all those years ago. While it’s true that Jefferson was as strong an advocate of church-state separation as the world has ever known, it’s false to imply that he somehow endorsed Islam. It’s hard to imagine Jefferson was pleased with the treatment of the young United States by Muslim pirates, and he would undoubtedly be horrified by the treatment of the free West by the rising terrorist regimes of the Middle East.
Politicians and Presidents of both parties have been known to rewrite history at times. What’s stunning is the fact that Obama does it in favor of an ideology which was the basis for one of the worst attacks on America in its history.
Islam, and the states who embody it such as Iran, represent the exact opposite of the church-state separation Jefferson championed. Obama claims to agree with this ‘right to worship as we choose.’ If he really does, then why does he minimize or even excuse the actions of those who seek to destroy that freedom, and the civilization built on it, at its very root?
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