Re Obama's apologetic Cairo speech: Open Letter to President
Obama - By: Brigitte Gabriel
Brigitte Gabriel, born in Lebanon, is the New York Times
Bestselling Author - "They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat
Radical Islam and How We Can Do It". Also, Founder and President
of ACT for America
An Open Letter to President Obama - by Brigitte Gabriel
Dear Mr. President,
You face difficult challenges in matters such as achieving peace
in the Middle East and protecting America from the threat of
radical Islam and terrorism. These are challenges that have
vexed past presidents, going as far back as our second
president, John Adams. I have no doubt you appreciate both the
gravity of these challenges and the enormous obstacles that
exist to solving them.
I also have no doubt that you and your staff understood that, no
matter what you said in your speech last Thursday in Cairo,
there would be those who would take issue with you. That is
always the case when attempting to solve problems that are as
deep and emotionally-laden as these challenges are..
I am assuming it is your sincere hope that the approach you have
chosen to take, as evidenced by what I’m sure was a carefully
crafted speech, will ultimately prove successful. However, it
pains me to say this sir, but, while you said in your speech
that you are a “student of history,” it is abundantly clear
that, in these matters, you do not know history and thus, as
Santayana noted, you are doomed to repeat it. In doing so your
efforts, however well-intentioned they may be, will not produce
what you profess to hope they will produce.
A wise man once said that if you start with the wrong
assumptions, no matter how logical your reasoning is, you will
end up with the wrong conclusion. With all due respect Mr.
President, you are starting with certain assumptions that are
unsupported by history and an objective study of the ideology of
political Islam..
You began in your speech by asserting that “tensions” exist
between the United States and Muslims around the world, which,
of course, is correct. Unfortunately, you then proceeded,
incorrectly, to lay virtually all the blame for these tensions
at the feet of America and the West. You blamed western
colonialism, the Cold War, and even modernity and globalism.
A student of American history, who is not trying to reconstruct
it to fit a modern politically correct narrative, would state
that tensions between America and Muslims began with the
unprovoked, four-decades long assault by the Muslim Barbary
pirates against American shipping in the late 18th and early
19th centuries. I find it telling that you mentioned the Treaty
of Tripoli in your speech but ignored the circumstances that led
to it. That treaty was but one of numerous attempts by the
United States to achieve peace with the jihadists of the Barbary
Coast who were attacking our shipping and killing and enslaving
our citizens and our soldiers – and who by their own admission
were doing so to fulfill the call to jihad.
These jihadists were not acting to protest American foreign
policy, which was decidedly isolationist, and there was no state
of Israel to scapegoat. They were doing what countless Islamic
jihadists have done throughout history – acting upon the
hundreds of passages in the Qur’an and the Hadith that call upon
faithful Muslims to kill, conquer or subjugate the infidel.
A student of world history would know that, for all the
acknowledged evils of Western colonialism, these evils pale in
comparison to the nearly 14 centuries of Islamic colonialism
that began in Arabia under the leadership of Mohammed. The
student of history would know that Islamic forces eradicated all
Jewish and Christian presence from Arabia after Mohammed’s
death, and then succeeded in conquering all of North Africa,
most of the Middle East, much of Asia Minor, and significant
portions of Europe and India – eventually creating an empire
larger than Rome’s was at its peak.
The number of dead and enslaved during these many centuries of
Islamic imperial conquest and colonialism have been estimated to
total more than 300 million. What’s more, the wealth of many of
the conquered nations and cultures was plundered by the Islamic
conquerors, and millions of millions of non-Muslims who did
survive were forced to pay onerous taxes, such as the “jizya,” a
humiliation tax to the Islamic caliphs. Indeed, in some areas
Christians and Jews were made to wear a receipt for the jizya
around their neck as a mark of their dishonor.
These facts have not been invented by Christian or Jewish
historical revisionists, but were chronicled by Muslim
eyewitnesses throughout the past 14 centuries and are available
to be researched by any person seeking an objective
understanding of how Islam spread throughout the world.
You say in your speech that we must squarely face the tensions
that exist between America and the Muslim world. That is a
laudable notion with which I agree, but by casting Islam as the
historical victim and the West (and by implication, America) as
the aggressor, you do not face these tensions squarely, but
alleviate the Muslim world from coming to grips with the
jihadist ideology embedded in its holy books and acted upon for
1,400 years..
Even worse, you empower and embolden militant Islamists who
regard your gestures as signs of weakness and capitulation.
The issue is not that all Muslims are terrorists or radicals or
extremists. We all know that the majority of Muslims are not. We
also know that many peace-loving Muslims are victims of Islamist
violence.
The issue is this: what drives hundreds of millions of Muslims
worldwide to call for the death of Jews?
What drives millions of Muslims to riot, destroy property, and
take innocent lives in reaction to the Danish cartoons?
What drives tens of thousands of Muslims to demand the execution
of a British teacher whose only “crime” was allowing her
students to name their teddy bears “Mohammed”?
What drives countless Muslims worldwide to actively participate
in, or fund, or provide nurture to, terrorist organizations?
What drives Muslims in mosques in America to proclaim and
distribute materials that call for hatred of and the destruction
of infidels?
What drives entire Islamic countries to prohibit the building of
a Christian church or synagogue?
To assume, as you apparently do, that what drives these actions
is not an ideology embedded in the holy books of Islam, but
rather other “root causes,” most of which you lay at the feet of
America and the West, is at best naïve and at worst dangerous.
Lastly, I must address your statement that “Islam has a proud
tradition of tolerance.” Unfortunately, the examples you gave
are the exception rather than the rule.
Historically speaking, I seriously doubt the Egyptian Copts, the
Lebanese Maronites, the Christians in Bethlehem, the Assyrians,
the Hindus, the Jews, and many others who have been persecuted
by Islamic violence and supremacism, would agree with your
assertion.
For instance, Christians and Jews became “Dhimmis,” a second
class group under Islam. Dhimmis were forced to wear distinctive
clothing; it was Baghdad’s Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, in the ninth
century, who designated a yellow badge for Jews under Islam,
which Hitler copied and duplicated in Nazi Germany nearly a
thousand years later.
I witnessed first-hand the “tolerance” of Islam when Islamists
ravaged my country of birth, Lebanon, in the 1970’s, leaving
widespread death and destruction in their wake. I saw how they
re-paid the tolerance that Lebanese Christians extended toward
them. My experience is not an isolated one. When you make an
unfounded assertion about the “proud tradition” of tolerance in
Islam, you do a great disservice to the hundreds of millions of
non-Muslims who have been killed, maimed, enslaved, conquered,
subjugated or displaced – in the cause of Islamic jihad.
Mr. President, those of us like me who are ringing the alarm in
America about the threat of radical Islam would like nothing
better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world. Most
Americans would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist
with the Muslim world. The obstacle to achieving this does not
lie with us in America and the West. It lies with the hundreds
of millions of Muslims worldwide, including many of their
spiritual leaders, who take seriously the repeated calls to
jihad in the Qur’an and the Hadith. Who regard “infidels” as
inferior and worthy of conquering, subjugating and forcibly
converting. Who support “cultural jihad” as a means to subvert
non-Muslim societies from within. Who take seriously the
admonitions throughout the Qur’an and the Hadith to convert the
world to Islam – by force if necessary – and bring it under the
rule of Allah.
Unless you are willing to courageously and honestly accept this,
your aspirations for worldwide comity and peace in the Middle
East are doomed to fail.
Sincerely,
Brigitte Gabriel
ACT for America
P.O. Box 12765
Pensacola, FL 32591
www.actforamerica.org |
