Climate – Still Not Getting It!
By Barry Napier, CFP:
I watch the news and comments about climate claims and The Copenhagen Summit with increasing frustration. Despite the recent email revelations and growing numbers of scientists who are defecting to the good side, people are still not getting it!
The climate scandal is not about arrogant scientists who want to influence fellow scientists with stupidity and crass bad science (which is never successful because their colleagues aren’t stupid). It is about politicians who are using what they say to change the world without our consent.
[...]
Barbie converts to Islam
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Western culture has lost another battle in the clash of civilizations as Barbie dons the burqa. Burkha Barbie, by Italian designer Eliana Lorena, will be among the dolls auctioned by Sotheby’s in a benefit for the nongovernment charity Save the Children. The message to little girls worldwide: Abandon all hope.
[...]
We are surprised that Save the Children is so excited about Burkha Barbie. By rights, it should condemn the doll. By its own accounts, Save the Children seeks to create “a world in which every child is ensured the right to survival, protection, development and participation.” We wonder if Burkha Barbie will have acid thrown in her face if she removes the burqa, which is the current fad among hard-core Islamists in Afghanistan targeting schoolgirls who abjure the offensive garment. If the doll were anatomically correct, we might expect to see Genital Mutilation Barbie.
As this new wave of political correctness seizes the imagination and occupies the toy industry, we could well see Suicide Vest Ken being stopped at a checkpoint by “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” G.I. Joe.
I guess the billion or so Christians will have to wait a little longer for Bible Barbie and Charismatic Catholic Ken.
The Web Discloses Inconvenient Climate Truths
By L. GORDON CROVITZ, WSJ:
The emails showed how the global-warming group stifled dissent. They controlled the peer-review process, keeping opposing views unpublished, then cited “peer review” as evidence of their “consensus.” One of the dissident scientists, Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado, wrote on his blog that the emails show the “collusion to suppress other scientifically supported views of the climate system, and the human role within it, is a systemic problem with the climate assessment process.”
These disclosures have led to some soul-searching. “Opaqueness and secrecy are the enemies of science,” wrote George Monbriot, a leading British environmentalist. “There is a word for the apparent repeated attempts to prevent disclosure revealed in these emails: unscientific.” Demetris Koutsoyiannis, a hydraulic engineer who has written on climate change, wrote that scientists who suppressed others “must have felt that this secrecy was their best weapon: to censor differing opinions, to develop ‘trick’ procedures, to ‘balance’ the needs of the IPCC, and even to ‘redefine’ peer review.”
This unseemly business reveals another flaw. Why are scholars who review papers allowed to remain anonymous? Reforming scientists and lawmakers might put the question more concretely: How many of the anonymous reviewers who spiked skeptical scientific papers over the years are the people who wrote these emails detailing how they abused peer review to block contrary evidence?
[...]
PRECISELY HOW DARWINISTS OPERATE.
More on Climategate
Clive Crook, The Atlantic:
In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back.
The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And, as Christopher Booker argues, this scandal is not at the margins of the politicised IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] process. It is not tangential to the policy prescriptions emanating from what David Henderson called the environmental policy milieu [subscription required]. It goes to the core of that process.
[...]
Scientism and Totalitarianism
ENV:
There’s a totalitarian subtext to scientism. Scientism entails a militant certainty of truth, and an utter intolerance for dissent that is remarkably akin to totalitarian political movements. Scientism is increasingly a spawn of the political left, which has been the primary source of totalitarianism in the past century.
The reaction of Darwinists or of global warming scientists to even the most mild skepticism is remarkably vicious. They hunt down skeptics and suppress differing opinions using practically any means at their disposal. If a school district attaches a sticker to a textbook that says “Darwin’s theory is a theory, not a fact, and evidence for and against it should be considered.” it will find itself in federal court, facing financial ruin, with jail a possibility for individuals who don’t comply. Who would have imagined, a few decades ago, that scientists would use courts to settle scientific disputes?
As the ClimateGate emails amply demonstrate, scientists who believe in global warming systematically exclude and professionally destroy scientists who express skepticism. The emails show a remarkable demand for doctrinal purity in climate science.
[...]
A controversy has broken out between two sides over The Manhattan Declaration
Jan Markel, OTM:
A controversy has broken out between two sides over a serious issue. It concerns The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience, which has been in the works for months and released just prior to Thanksgiving. Allow me to present the case the signers are making for this Declaration and then share concerns that others have who will not sign it. If I may, allow me to report and you decide. I am sorry this takes more paragraphs than normal.
[...]
Well, I respect Jan and I read the reservations some have with the declaration but I still signed it. I agree with some of the concerns – they are quite valid. But this is not a legal document but more a message to Caesar.
Ohio Imposes Sharia on an ex-Muslim Girl
by Jamie Glazov, FrontPage:
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Pamela Geller, founder, editor and publisher of the popular and award-winning weblog AtlasShrugs.com. She has won acclaim for her interviews with internationally renowned figures, including John Bolton, Geert Wilders, Bat Ye’or, Natan Sharansky, and many others, and has broken numerous important stories — notably the questionable sources of some of the financing of the Obama campaign. Her op-eds have been published in The Washington Times, The American Thinker, Israel National News, Frontpage Magazine, World Net Daily, and New Media Journal, among other publications.FP: Pamela Geller, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.
Tell us about how the The Rifqa Rally went and where the case stands now.
Geller: The Rifqa Rally on November 16 in Columbus, Ohio, was an enormous success. Freedom lovers traveled from far and wide to stand up for Rifqa’s religious freedom and human rights — from Wisconsin, Toronto, California, Dearbornistan (so they said), Michigan, New York, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Missouri, Louisiana and it was good.
Police said about 250 people were there. The Sudanese ex-slave Simon Deng spoke out powerfully about Sharia law, showing how what he suffered under Islamic law (as he was taken into slavery in the Sudan) was the same force that threatens Rifqa’s life and religious freedom in Ohio today. Nonie Darwish, the courageous ex-Muslim and expert on Sharia, spoke about how Islamic law does call for the death of the apostate, and how Ohio authorities should be protecting Rifqa, not throwing her to the Islamic wolves. James Lafferty of the Anti-Sharia Coalition gave the crowd some tips on what we can do to fight for Rifqa and for freedom. Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, who helped me organize the Rally, also spoke, along with Rifqa’s friend Jamal Jivanjee, a Christian pastor in Columbus and himself also an ex-Muslim.
The crowd came away energized and excited, determined not to let Sharia prevail in the U.S., and to stand up against the Islamic machine that is compelling Ohio authorities to implement (unwittingly) Sharia laws about isolating the female apostate.
FP: What is happening to Rifqa right now?
[...]
Climate-cult con is hard to ‘bear’
By ANDREA PEYSER, NY Post:
When did global warming turn into a forced reli gion?
My daughter came home from school re cently with a spring in her step and a song on her lips. With no foreshadowing — or time to call an exorcist — out came this chilling refrain:
” . . . You can hear the warning — GLOBAL WARMING . . . “
By the time her father and I removed our jaws from the floor, we had learned that:
A) All the kids had been coerced into singing this catchy ditty, which we called “The Warming Song,” at a concert for parents.
B) Further song lyrics scolded selfish adults (that would be us) for polluting our planet and causing a warming scourge that would, in no short order, kill all the polar bears and threaten the birds and bees.
C) There was no deprogramming session on the menu. And no arguing allowed.
The international “Climategate” scandal is now moving into its third week. And reaction from folks on the scientific and political left — or is that redundant? — who treat global warming as a cult in which naysayers must be crushed has been depressing:
Total denial.
[...]
True News: The Case Against Climate Change
h/t: The Jawa Report
Obama Finally Finds A Budget He Can Cut
Posted by Mary Katharine Ham, WS:
The White House Chanukah Party will be lower on cheer this year. The Obama administration has decided to cut the guest list in half for the annual soiree, setting up a political minefield for staffers faced with a deep roster of Jewish staffers and donors, which must be winnowed:
[...]
In a self-sacrificing act of solidarity, my colleague Michael Goldfarb has graciously offered to give up his invite. That’s one down.
Honduras elects conservative rancher as new president
by Ed Morrissey, HOT AIR:
By all accounts, the national election in Honduras was a rousing success. Despite a call to boycott by the small band of remaining supporters of Manuel Zelaya, turnout exceeded 60%. It produced a clear winner, conservative rancher Porfirio Lobo Sosa, sweeping out the liberal government of both Zelaya and interim caretaker president Roberto Micheletti. Honduras expects the international community to honor its results, but as the Wall Street Journal reports, that may depend on Barack Obama:
[...]
Ah, too bad lefty fascists, your Chacez wannabe lost. Better impose ‘democracy’ some other way …
Global Warming Consensus: Garbage In, Garbage Out
By Michael Barone:
The CRU has been a major source of data on global temperatures, relied on by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But the e-mails suggest that CRU scientists have been suppressing and misstating data and working to prevent the publication of conflicting views in peer-reviewed science periodicals. Some of the more pungent e-mails:
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
“Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith re AR4?”
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty we can’t.”
“I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU temperature station data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!”
You get the idea. The most charitable plausible explanation I have seen comes from The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle. “The CRU’s main computer model may be, to put it bluntly, complete rubbish.”
[...]
Insensibility
The View From 1776:
[...]
Scientistic socialist politicians around the world (Democrat/Socialist Party leaders in the United States) are demanding that we impoverish the world’s people with cripplingly costly green regulations. Their fanaticism is based on nothing more than the “trust me” assertions of academics whose livelihood and professional status depend upon maintaining the fiction of man-made, greenhouse-gas global warming. The entire scam appears to be nothing more than a work of cheap fiction.
Children’s book deemed ‘racist’ over native drawings
Adrian MacNair, NP:
According to the Tyee, the provincial governments of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have declined to distribute a children’s book because they say it’s “racist” and “promotes stereotypes of First Nations people.” The book, which is written by former ChickaDEE magazine editor Lizann Flatt and illustrated by Scot Ritchie, is called “Let’s Go! The Story of Getting from There to Here”.
[...]
The actual story is based on transportation, beginning with people who walked or canoed, and leading into the modern era where people drive and fly. The stereotype, they argue, is that First Nations people were technologically behind the Europeans.
Well, weren’t they? Is there anybody on Earth who denies the European civilization did not meet the aboriginal peoples here in a state of different technological evolution? The Europeans met the people of this continent in a state of neolithic kinship-based culture, something which the Europeans passed through thousands of years ago. There isn’t anything wrong with being in different stages of development; it just happens to be the historical truth.
[...]
There is no education in Canada, only propaganda. If you don’t believe me then ask your high schooler to identify the prepositions in any random sentence or have your child name a few world capitals or ask how many supreme court justices must be appointed to the supreme court. Then ask them about environmentalism, diversity and multiculturalism …
Confronting anti-Semitism in our high schools
Barbara Kay, National Post:
What follows is an edited excerpt from testimony delivered at a hearing of the Canadian Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism this month.
My attention has been drawn to the disturbing phenomenon of overt Jew hatred in high schools, especially those with high populations of students from countries where Jew hatred is officially sanctioned in the law of their countries of origin.
As a case in point I offer one particularly disturbing story, because I believe it points to wider issues of concern for the educational system and for our society. It involves a Jewish teacher in an Ontario French high school whose name I cannot reveal because she fears physical retaliation.
[...]
The Ghost of Lysenko
By Bruce Walker, AT:
The imaginary science of man-made global warning can now be entered into the infamous history of politicized science, the results of which have threads in our lives today. Consider the residue of such frauds as Rachel Carson, Alfred Kinsey, and Margaret Mead. Carson’s invented findings and unscientific methods led to the banning of DDT, which in turn cost the lives of tens of millions of children in undeveloped nations. Kinsey’s tortuously doctored “sex research,” as Dr. Judith Riesman has so amply demonstrated, was not only invented to sate his perverted lusts, but created scientific myths about normal and abnormal behavior which haunt us to this day. Mead also simply invented research to fit her idea of what the science of anthropology ought to be in order to justify her own immature and immoral behavior. Carson, Kinsey, and Mead had an agenda before they did any research, and this agenda governed everything else.
[...]
The Mathematics of Global Warming
By Peter Landesman, AT:
The forecasts of global warming are based on mathematical solutions for equations of weather models. But all of these solutions are inaccurate. Therefore, no valid scientific conclusions can be made concerning global warming. The false claim for the effectiveness of mathematics is an unreported scandal at least as important as the recent climate data fraud. Why is the math important? And why don’t the climatologists use it correctly?
[...]
CRU scientists shredded vital data
Rick Moran, AT:
Mann and Jones have now promised to release all the data they have. Of course they will. With the missing baseline temps from weather stations around the world, it will be impossible to prove that they really did “cook the books.”
And given the fact that the Copenhagen conference is going ahead as scheduled, with everyone from Obama to the lowliest NGO pretending everything is just fine with climate science, Mann and Jones will probably get away with their unscientific behavior.
[...]
Clearly, it is up to the alternative media to continue to hype this story, get the truth out before Obama and other world leaders sell our sovereignty and economies down the river in the name of saving the planet. Only by informing the public and keeping them informed will there be a chance to stop the drive for control by the statists.
As I have said before, the ‘fix’ is in and it’s in everywhere, not just in climate science. Watch as they push stimulous, push climate, push SSM, push UN, push EU, push ME ‘peace’, push ‘peace’, push feminism, push abortion, push childrens’ rights, push currencies down, push socialism etc., and they won’t stop … no matter what.
The New Inquisition: Ideology’s Corruption of Science
Wesley J. Smith, FIRST THINGS:
Global warming isn’t the only field in which we have witnessed this kind of brazen ideological corruption of science in recent years. I have seen the same approach taken repeatedly against heterodox views in the human cloning/ESCR controversy, to the point that people have been driven off of faculties or denied tenure. My colleagues at the Discovery Institute face a similar buzz saw in their pursuit of intelligent design hypothesis, and then are taunted by the censors for not being published in peer reviewed journals. Indeed, when Richard Sternberg published an ID article, he was attacked and slandered so mercilessly by the Darwinists, that it sent a clear and threatening message to all other journal editors that they publish ID-oriented papers at peril to their own careers.
But in the end, the ideologues and censors can’t make dissenters go away.
[...]
Righteous smackdown of UN Human Rights Council’s anti-Israel, pro-jihad bias
JIHAD WATCH:
Watch HERE. The page is in Hebrew but the video is in English. (Thanks to Joshua.)
It’s beyond the pale how the chairman vomits filth out of his mouth in response to the YN Watch representative’s remarks. But it is chillingly revealing too.
Leaked ‘climategate’ documents show huge flaws in the backbone of climate change science
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN:
The file — 274 pages long — describes the efforts of a climatologist/programmer at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia to update a huge statistical database (11,000 files) of important climate data between 2006 and 2009.
The computer coding, along with the programmer’s apparently unsuccessful efforts to complete the project, involve data that are the foundation of the study of climate change — recordings from hundreds of weather stations around the world of temperature and precipitation measurements from 1901 to 2006, sun/cloud computer simulations, and the like.
These presumably precise data are the backbone of climate science.
Reading “HARRY_READ_ME.txt” it’s clear the CRU’s files were a mess. The programmer laments huge gaps in data, bug-filled programs and worries about all the guesswork he’s doing. His comments suggest the problems go back years.
[...]
ClimateGate by video
Tigerhawk:
The emails alone prove nothing.
The problem, of course, is that these emails are not in a vacuum, but are to be read in the context of two wholly unrelated revelations: (1) The deletion, intentional or otherwise, of the CRU’s original raw global temperature data, so it is apparently no longer possible to assess whether the “adjustments” to that data were valid or even intellectually honest; and (2) the exposure of code inside the climate models themselves that seems to indicate a direct tweaking of the programming to generate a particular result (i.e., a palpable warming trend). This is really, really, really, really bad stuff, because the entire case for regulatory intervention turns on the predictive power of these models. If the data that is their basis and the the programming itself has been manipulated in any way, shape or form to drive a result intended to influence policy, then all the scientific papers that derive from these models or rely on them in any way ought to be withdrawn.
Finally, the other value in the video is its publicity of the CRU’s mission, which quite consciously fuses science with the making of policy.
[...]
Humans are never vegetables
Calgary Herald:
I f Rom Houben’s case proves anything, it is the arrogance of those who think they can pronounce upon the state of a patient’s consciousness, and determine his subsequent fate–when humility should force them to admit they cannot possibly know what that patient may be experiencing.
Houben is the Belgian man who spent 23 years misdiagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state when he was actually conscious and suffering from locked-in syndrome as the result of an auto accident. Locked-in syndrome means the individual is paralyzed, but retains full consciousness.
The misdiagnosis was discovered thanks to state-of-the-art brain scanning technology which neurologist Steven Laureys at Liege University Hospital used to discover that Houben still had activity in his cerebral cortex.
One has to wonder how many other patients through the years have been wrongly diagnosed as being in a coma or cruelly labelled “vegetables”– a term which should be banished from the language as a reference point for discussing human beings.
Terri Schiavo’s case comes to mind.
[...]
Does it ever.
Time to Pass The Buck and Start Pointing Fingers: Obama Living Up to His Absentee Legislator Past
by Thomas Del Beccaro, Big Government:
During the Presidential “Media Fest” Campaign of 2007/08, many tried to impress upon the American people that Obama was an empty suit. Quite simply, he had no significant legislative achievement to call his own. Heck, as an Illinois State Senator, Obama voted “present” nearly 130 times, according to the New York Times: “effectively sidestepping” issues. The point of those who pressed Obama’s lack of executive experience and sidestepping tactics was that we could not afford a President who would do the same.
[...]
The warmist PR con job
Clarice Feldman, AT:
It’s almost a left wing harmonic convergence on global warming fraud. Chris Horner writing for Big Government reveals that the principle warmist blogsite, Real Climate, is a Fenton operation. Fenton Communications is the left wing PR operation that promoted the Alar scare and other bogus health scares, and are the poeple who created the infamous “General Betray Us” ad attacking Gneeral Petraeus. Horner writes:
[...]
Global Warming Fraud and the Future of Science
By J.R. Dunn, AT:
The East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) revelations come as no real surprise to anyone who has closely followed the global-warming saga. The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) thesis, to give it its semi-official name, is no stranger to fraud. It is no real exaggeration to state that it was fertilized with fraud, marinated in fraud, stewed in fraud, and at last served up to the world as prime, grade-A fraud with nice side orders of fakery and disingenuousness. Damning as they may be, the CRU e-mails are merely the climactic element in an exhaustively long line.
A short tour of previous AGW highlights includes:
[...]
Yoani Sanchez, Cuba’s popular blogger, has been beaten up for describing life
Telegraph [UK]:
With her platted hair and bookish demeanour, Yoani Sanchez does not look like a threat to the Cuban State. But her blog, an acerbic critique of the hypocrisies of life on the communist-led island might have made her just that.
“Generation Y” receives about one million visits a month. It has won two of the most prestigious awards for digital journalism, and its success meant that last year Ms Sanchez was voted one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.
Now, it seems, the island’s ruling Castro brothers have decided that enough is enough, and have unleashed their thugs to try to shut Ms Sanchez up.
“I was on my way to a peaceful protest against violence with a few friends when it happened,” explained the 34-year-old mother, in a rare telephone interview with The Sunday Telegraph from her cramped apartment in Havana’s Nuevo Vedado district. “A black car pulled up. The three men inside called out my name and told me to get in.”
When she refused, she said, the men bundled her into the car and started punching her. “They were saying, ‘It’s all over, Yoani.’ I really thought they were going to kill me.”
She tried to escape but was unable to do so as the handles in the rear of the Chinese-made car had been removed.
[...]
You won’t hear a peep from the usual leftists, elitists and ACLU types.
Climategate: a Word of Advice to the Scientists
Posted by Michael Egnor, ENV:
Australian journalist Andrew Bolt has a succinct bit of advice to scientists about the ClimateGate scandal:
Climategate: a word of advice to the scientistsThe tide is turning. and fast. There will soon be an accounting – and the mood and the money for it. The reputation of science – and of many scientists – will be damaged severely.
Until now those scientists who knew the science behind global warming theory was weak or flawed largely kept their doubts to themselves, out of fear or other forms of self-interest. I’ve had the emails from some confessing to just that.
But self-interest should dictate they now make a stand. They need to show, for their own sake and for the sake of science, that they were on the right side of this debate, even if belatedly. Already I see some speaking–one even writing a book–who did not speak two years ago. There must be more now, to halt this madness before even more harm is done.
A decade from now, when scientists and the public look back at this extraordinary scandal, this great fit of collective madness, the question will be asked: on which side were you?
Now is the time to make sure you can answer with pride. Speak up. Reveal. Undo the damage.
Bolt is right about this: there will be an accounting for this fraud. People are very very angry, and while the skeptics whose darkest doubts have been vindicated don’t pull the levers of organized science (the frauds do that), there are some financial and political resources available to the skeptics who have been demanding integrity in science, and they understand now that this is war.
A cabal of leading scientists, politicians, and media concubines have conspired to lie about global warming. The reasons are obvious: power and money.
[...]
Homeschooling and socialism
By Samuel Blumenfeld, WorldNetDaily:
Is homeschooling compatible with socialism and vice-versa? Apparently not, for homeschooling means parental control of education, and that is anathema to socialists.
The most important institution in a socialist society is a government-owned and -controlled education system in which children can be indoctrinated to willingly accept state control of their lives. Public-school teachers are not freedom fighters. They are government employees who must obey the mandates of the state.
In a socialist system, the state owns the children. Parents are merely breeders, and since homeschoolers tend to like large families, the population-control socialists will no doubt try to abolish homeschooling.
[...]
Worshipping at church of climate ‘science’
By SALIM MANSUR:
Climate change as a result of the natural cycle of warming and cooling of the Earth has occurred throughout history.
The proposition that, beginning with the industrial age, this natural cycle might have been adversely affected, causing the Earth’s temperature to rise unnaturally and threaten some sort of planetary disaster, is worthy of scientific investigation.
But the proposition became a consensus premise of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with its first report in 1990.
The IPCC, established by the UN through the efforts of its two organizations — the World Meteorological Organization and UN Environment Program — reports that increased emissions into the atmosphere as a result of human activity are causing a greenhouse effect by raising the Earth’s surface temperature.
For nearly two decades, the IPCC-backed “scientific” establishment made this proposition the official dogma of the environmental movement.
[...]
Why isn’t ‘climategate’ the biggest story in the world today?
By MICHAEL COREN:
It should be known as “climategate” and should be a front-page story in every newspaper worth the name and the lead item on television and radio news throughout the world.
Instead it has generally been ignored and often deliberately covered up.
The story is, quite simply, extraordinary.
In brief, it concerns the admittedly illegal but startlingly important hacking of the e-mail system of one of the world’s leading climate research units at Britain’s University of East Anglia.
The system in question contains more than 1,000 reports, personal exchanges and important letters and is regarded as being central and vital to those who believe global warming is a reality and is man-made.
What the leaked material appears to reveal, however, is there has been a series of conspiracies to exaggerate data concerned with man-made global warming, a concerted plot to deny evidence that might prove the opposite and a campaign to smother information that might deny fashionable environmental theories. What must be emphasized is those named are not a group of irrelevant activists but some of the most prominent academics shaping international policy.
[...]
Obama: “The rituals of Hajj and Eid-ul-Adha both serve as reminders of the shared Abrahamic roots of three of the world’s major religions”
Jihad Watch:
In thinking of Abraham, most Americans think of the Biblical figure. In Genesis 22:15-18, Abraham is rewarded for his faith and told he will become a blessing to the nations: “by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.”
But the Muslim audiences that Obama addresses here do not read Genesis. They read the Koran, in which Allah says that Abraham is an “excellent example” for the believers when he tells his pagan family and people that “there has arisen, between us and you, enmity and hatred for ever, unless ye believe in Allah and Him alone” (60:4). The same verse relates that Abraham is not an excellent example when he tells his father, “I will pray for forgiveness for you.”
Thus the Koran, in its picture of Abraham, the man Obama invokes as a symbol of the common elements of the three faiths, holds up hatred as exemplary, while belittling the virtue of forgiveness. Obama therefore reinforces a worldview that takes for granted the legitimacy of everlasting enmity between Muslims and non-Muslims — and does so while attempting to build bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims.
This demonstrates once again how crucial it is for American policymakers to have a detailed understanding of Islam’s theological and cultural frame of reference, and of the actual teachings of the Koran. For lack of this understanding, careless statements continue to be made, and policy errors keep multiplying.
[...]
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