Robert Spencer: My Heart-to-Heart with Obama
Website: jihadwatch.org Twitter: @jihadwatchRS
My imaginary dialogue with the President, from PJ Media:
The world is on fire with Islamic jihad, and last Wednesday, after his Countering Violent Extremism summit, the President called me in to talk it over. Here is the dialogue we had:
SPENCER: What you’re saying here reflects the argument that has been common and prevailing in Washington for years, that we must not call the Islamic jihadists “Islamic jihadists,” because that will give them the legitimacy they’re seeking among Muslims. The fallacy here is that you and others who hold to this view are assuming that Muslims care what non-Muslim leaders say about who is Islamic and who isn’t. But given the fact that the Qur’an calls believers “the best of people” (3:110) and the unbelievers “the most vile of created beings” (98:6), that is unlikely in the extreme.
You say, “Nor should we grant these terrorists the religious legitimacy that they seek,” but in reality this legitimacy is not within the power of any non-Muslim to grant — or to withhold. The Muslims who join al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are not listening to Western non-Muslim leaders; they’re listening to their imams and reading the Qur’an. In all these years of non-Muslim leaders insisting that we must withhold “legitimacy” from these jihad groups, there has not been even one single report of a Muslim who was going to join a terror group until he heard Bush or David Cameron or Tony Blair or you say that those groups were not Islamic. And the insidious aspect of it is that this claim that calling the jihadists what they are gives them a spurious legitimacy is used to foreclose upon honest examination of their motives and goals.
And in saying, “we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam,” you’re effectively saying,: We are not going to confront the jihadis’ ideology. We are not going to examine the jihadis’ motives and goals, and we’re not going to call on Muslim communities to reject them. Instead, we’re going to partner with other Muslims who share those motives and goals but aren’t blowing anything up.
OBAMA: Of course, the terrorists do not speak for over a billion Muslims who reject their hateful ideology. They no more represent Islam than any madman who kills innocents in the name of God represents Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism. No religion is responsible for terrorism. People are responsible for violence and terrorism.
OBAMA: Most recently, with the brutal murders in Chapel Hill of three young Muslim Americans, many Muslim Americans are worried and afraid.
SPENCER: You’ve apparently decided that the murder of three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on Tuesday was a hate crime. What is the evidence that it was an anti-Muslim hate crime? Well, the victims were Muslims, and the murderer was non-Muslim. And the father of two of the victims says he expressed opinions that he never told to his wife or put on his Facebook page, and that his wife says he did not hold — but which you and the Islamic supremacist establishment would have us believe he held so strongly that he ultimately killed for them. And his Facebook page does reflect that he was an atheist who hated all religions, especially Christianity. That’s it. That’s enough nowadays, plus the fact that you want this to be considered a hate crime, so as to further your case that Muslims are being victimized, which preoccupies you far more than non-Muslims who are being victimized by Muslims. I notice that you’ve said nothing about non-Muslims being worried and afraid over jihad terror attacks.
OBAMA: First, we have to confront squarely and honestly the twisted ideologies that these terrorist groups use to incite people to violence.
SPENCER: Confronting squarely and honestly the ideology of the Islamic State and al Qaeda is exactly what you seem determined not to do.
OBAMA: Al Qaeda and ISIL and groups like it are desperate for legitimacy. They try to portray themselves as religious leaders — holy warriors in defense of Islam. That’s why ISIL presumes to declare itself the “Islamic State.” And they propagate the notion that America — and the West, generally — is at war with Islam. That’s how they recruit. That’s how they try to radicalize young people. We must never accept the premise that they put forward, because it is a lie. Nor should we grant these terrorists the religious legitimacy that they seek. They are not religious leaders — they’re terrorists. And we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.