Imam Obama - Delusional or Deceptive
Donald Trump who, God forbid, may be the next president of the USA famously insinuated that President Obama was a non-American born Muslim.
In 2012, Trump floated the idea that Obama's birth documents, if he had any, may label him a Muslim:
"He doesn't have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there's something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim … I don't know. Maybe he doesn't want that."
These and similar ideas seem to be about as stupid and crazy as ideas can be.
But President Obama seems to be incredibly ignorant when he speaks about Islam. In a speech at the Islamic Society of Baltimore he said:
"But across the Islamic world, influential voices should consistently speak out with an affirmative vision of their faith. And it's happening. These are the voices of Muslim clerics who teach that Islam prohibits terrorism, for the Qur'an says whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind."
This is what the Quran really says:
On that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them Our apostles with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land. Quran (5:32)
The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter; Quran (5:33)
Without nitpicking too much the Quran says Allah ordained this for the ancient Jews, it's not necessarily a general rule for mankind and Allah finished the revelation with another slur on those Jews. Allah reveals two exceptions: murder and fasad ie "spreading mischief" also translated as "spreading corruption." Fasad is any form of expression or activity by non-Muslims or apostates of Islam critical of, or damaging to, Islam. The next verse specifies the punishment for this "corruption" or "mischief," a punishment initially meant for the Arabian non-Muslims. I'm not sure if I consider crucifixion is worse than "cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides" though I'm not sure exactly what that is and I'm not going to google it, I'd rather not know. Given a choice I'd choose exile. After that of course comes the eternity in hell having an infinite number of skins burnt off and replaced and burnt off.
President Obama's major talent is making inspirational speeches and here he manages to make one of the most terrifying threats in the Quran sound like the most wonderful thing that Muhammad ever said, akin to Jesus' "first stone" saying. (John 8:3-7)
President Obama claims 99% of Muslims reject radical Islam:
The Polling Company CSP Poll (2015): 19% of Muslim-Americans say that violence is justified in order to make Sharia the law in the United States (66% disagree).
The Polling Company CSP Poll (2015): 25% of Muslim-Americans say that violence against Americans in the United States is justified as part of the "global Jihad (64% disagree).
Pew Research (2011): 5% of American Muslims have a favorable view of al-Qaeda (14% can't make up their minds).
Those figures can easily be confirmed with some appropriate googling. The figures are astronomical for non-American Muslims. These examples are indicative of Obama's public statements about Islam and terrorism. The President of the USA has a huge staff of advisors and researchers. So how can he be so wrong?
On the 25th September 2012 Obama made a speech to the UN General Assembly which included the puzzling sentence "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."
Puzzling if not read in the context of the speech in which he criticised attacks on Copts, attacks on Sufis and Shias (by Sunnis though that wasn't stated), suicide bombing, Holocaust deniers, Bashar al-Assad, the Iranian government,
those who wish to destroy Israel and so I presume he needed to throw a sop to the Saudis and other Sunnis. And that's it? That's the worst he could come up with? Slander of Muhammad?
There's no need to slander Muhammad? The truth is quite adequate to reveal his character.
It's surprising that Obama didn't research what former Presidents of the USA had discovered about Islam. Thomas Jefferson discussed Islam with the Libyan Ambassador to Great Britain in 1786
The ambassador answered us that it [their right to attack US ships] 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 Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.
In a March 23, 1790, letter to the editor of the Federal Gazette, Benjamin Franklin wrote:
Nor can the Plundering of Infidels be in that sacred Book [the Quran] forbidden, since it is well known from it, that God has given the World, and all that it contains, to his faithful Mussulmen, who are to enjoy it of Right as fast as they conquer it.
Now this was written in a letter purporting to discuss the freedom of Christian Slaves in Tripoli but really satirising the Virginian response to a Quaker resolution to free the salves but nevertheless it expresses Franklins' views on Islam especially as he was one of the trio
Muhammad may have heard of this Jewish wisdom compiled centuries before his birth:
For this reason was man created alone, to teach thee that whosever destroys a single soul, scripture imputes (guilt) to him as though he had Destroyed a Complete World; and whosever preserves a single soul, scripture ascribes (merit) to him as though he had Preserved a Complete World [since all mankind originated from one man]. – Babylonian Talmud, Mishnah Sanhedrin 37a