Jerry Newcombe
False issues cloud real threat of radical Islam
By Jerry Newcombe
When it comes to Islam, sometimes it seems as if the media lets non-essentials crowd out the truth. Consider the brouhaha raised by the media in the wake of some controversial remarks.
Last week a man posed a question to Republican president candidate Donald Trump at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire. He said, "We have a problem in this country. It's called Muslims. You know our current president is one. You know he's not even an American."
Trump interrupted, asking for a specific question. The man continued, "Anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That's my question: When can we get rid of them?" Trump answered in vague generalities.
The national media immediately zeroed in on the factual errors in the anonymous questioner's query – such as his confident assertion that President Obama is a Muslim and not a natural-born American, both of which were apparently disproven long ago, as well as Trump's failure to correct him.
However, what's interesting is that, while the mainstream media jumps at the opportunity to attack Trump and an ill-informed questioner, it steadfastly refuses to ask some difficult questions that underlie the concerns millions of Americans have about President Obama's failure to confront the very real problem of radical Islam – or to even name it.
What about the actual problem of radical Muslims training to kill Americans? The media is very concerned about someone being misidentified as a Muslim and spends hours of coverage on it, but shows little interest in actually identifying Islamic terrorism, which is far more dangerous than an ignorant question-and-answer session on the campaign stump.
Though President Obama has been baptized in the United Church of Christ by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright as a Christian, he does govern in such a way that seems more pro-Muslim than pro-Christian.
For instance, Obama seems to favor Islam over Christianity at every turn, without any questioning from a compliant media. For example, Obama claims Islamic State is not Islamic because no real Muslims would do what they do. At the National Prayer Breakfast, he tried to tweak Christian noses by dredging up the Crusades – which, for the record, officially ended 1291.
My colleague and friend John Rabe, author of None Dare Call It Islam: Why the President and the Media Ignore the Truth About Our Radical Enemy, asks about such charges, "How come they never bring up examples from recent centuries?"
Robert Spencer is a walking encyclopedia on all things Islamic. He has written New York Times bestselling books on the subject. He runs the website jihadwatch.org.
I asked Robert about the allegation that President Obama is a closet Muslim.
Spencer emailed me: "Obama says he is a Christian. Rumors that he is actually a Muslim persist not because of 'bigotry' or 'racism,' but because of his domestic and foreign policies: if he were secretly a Muslim, it is unlikely that he would govern in any significantly different way."
Although the town hall questioner made some over the top statements, there is still an important question at issue: How real is the threat of radical Islam? Very real. And political correctness, embraced by many in our culture, simply masks that reality.
Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning book on Osama bin Laden, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, traces many facets of the rise of radical Islam in the 20th century.
He quotes the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna, as saying: "It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations, and to extend its power to the entire planet."
Osama bin Laden recruited Muslim soldiers for international jihad. Lawrence Wright writes,
"Their text was a 180-page manual, Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants, which included chapters on counterfeiting, weapons training, security, and espionage. 'The confrontation that we are calling for with the apostate regimes does not know Socratic debates...Platonic ideals...nor Aristotelian diplomacy,' the manual begins. 'But it does know the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine gun.'"
Ideas have consequence. Some of these ideas are dangerous. Yet to our liberal media, it is almost as if "Islamaphobia" is just as much of a threat as radical Islam, only in a different way. That's preposterous. There is a problem of radical Muslims in this world. The earlier we are honest about that, the quicker we can solve this problem.
© Jerry Newcombe
September 26, 2015
When it comes to Islam, sometimes it seems as if the media lets non-essentials crowd out the truth. Consider the brouhaha raised by the media in the wake of some controversial remarks.
Last week a man posed a question to Republican president candidate Donald Trump at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire. He said, "We have a problem in this country. It's called Muslims. You know our current president is one. You know he's not even an American."
Trump interrupted, asking for a specific question. The man continued, "Anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That's my question: When can we get rid of them?" Trump answered in vague generalities.
The national media immediately zeroed in on the factual errors in the anonymous questioner's query – such as his confident assertion that President Obama is a Muslim and not a natural-born American, both of which were apparently disproven long ago, as well as Trump's failure to correct him.
However, what's interesting is that, while the mainstream media jumps at the opportunity to attack Trump and an ill-informed questioner, it steadfastly refuses to ask some difficult questions that underlie the concerns millions of Americans have about President Obama's failure to confront the very real problem of radical Islam – or to even name it.
What about the actual problem of radical Muslims training to kill Americans? The media is very concerned about someone being misidentified as a Muslim and spends hours of coverage on it, but shows little interest in actually identifying Islamic terrorism, which is far more dangerous than an ignorant question-and-answer session on the campaign stump.
Though President Obama has been baptized in the United Church of Christ by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright as a Christian, he does govern in such a way that seems more pro-Muslim than pro-Christian.
For instance, Obama seems to favor Islam over Christianity at every turn, without any questioning from a compliant media. For example, Obama claims Islamic State is not Islamic because no real Muslims would do what they do. At the National Prayer Breakfast, he tried to tweak Christian noses by dredging up the Crusades – which, for the record, officially ended 1291.
My colleague and friend John Rabe, author of None Dare Call It Islam: Why the President and the Media Ignore the Truth About Our Radical Enemy, asks about such charges, "How come they never bring up examples from recent centuries?"
Robert Spencer is a walking encyclopedia on all things Islamic. He has written New York Times bestselling books on the subject. He runs the website jihadwatch.org.
I asked Robert about the allegation that President Obama is a closet Muslim.
Spencer emailed me: "Obama says he is a Christian. Rumors that he is actually a Muslim persist not because of 'bigotry' or 'racism,' but because of his domestic and foreign policies: if he were secretly a Muslim, it is unlikely that he would govern in any significantly different way."
Although the town hall questioner made some over the top statements, there is still an important question at issue: How real is the threat of radical Islam? Very real. And political correctness, embraced by many in our culture, simply masks that reality.
Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning book on Osama bin Laden, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, traces many facets of the rise of radical Islam in the 20th century.
He quotes the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna, as saying: "It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations, and to extend its power to the entire planet."
Osama bin Laden recruited Muslim soldiers for international jihad. Lawrence Wright writes,
"Their text was a 180-page manual, Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants, which included chapters on counterfeiting, weapons training, security, and espionage. 'The confrontation that we are calling for with the apostate regimes does not know Socratic debates...Platonic ideals...nor Aristotelian diplomacy,' the manual begins. 'But it does know the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine gun.'"
Ideas have consequence. Some of these ideas are dangerous. Yet to our liberal media, it is almost as if "Islamaphobia" is just as much of a threat as radical Islam, only in a different way. That's preposterous. There is a problem of radical Muslims in this world. The earlier we are honest about that, the quicker we can solve this problem.
© Jerry Newcombe
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