Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
Egyptian Muslim President Gen. Abdul Fateh al-Sisi’s address to Egypt’s religious leaders at Al-Azhar University (the most important Islamic University in the world) on January 1, 2015, calling for Muslim religious officials to lead a “religious revolution” to stop Muslims throughout the world from killing and causing destruction, starkly contrasts with President Obama’s angry tirade yesterday (June 14, 2016) condemning those who criticize the president and his administration for refusing to use the term “radical Islam.”
Pres. al-Sisi courageously and properly urged Muslim religious leaders that they need to advance an enlightened religious revolution to end the violence based on entrenched Islamic thinking that has antagonized and endangered the entire world. President Sisi stated that wrong thinking (fikr) about Islam’s sacred texts, that has remained unchanged for 800 years has:
“Cause[d] the entire umma (Islamic nation) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible! That thinking (fikr) – I am not saying “religion” (din) but “thinking” – that corpus of texts and ideas that we have held sacred over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world! Is it possible that 1.6 billion people (Muslims) should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible! I am saying these words here at Al Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema (learned men) – Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I’m talking about now. All this that I am telling you, you cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.”
“I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You imams are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move…because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost – and it is being lost by our own hands.”
Yet, while Egypt’s President al-Sisi demanded that radical Islam must change and that Muslim Imams are responsible and must lead the way in reforming Islam, President Obama refuses to demand the same. For our wonderful country, President Obama promoted ‘hope and change”, why doesn’t he promote “hope and change” for the problematic issues within Islam? Surprisingly, President Obama won’t even meet with al-Sisi.
Instead of acknowledging the real root of the problem and insisting that it change (as President al-Sisi did), President Obama complained yesterday that the term “radical Islam” is “loose talk and sloppiness about who exactly we’re fighting” and stated “our mission is to destroy ISIL.” Throughout his administration, President Obama initially limited the enemy to al Qaeda and its affiliates, and finally added ISIL (after dismissing these radical Muslims as the “JV team”). For instance, the Obama administration’s 2015 National Security Strategy only speaks of ISIL, al Qaeda and their affiliates – and avoids mentioning the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamist groups.
President Obama’s refusal to even use terms such as “radical Islam,” “radical Islamist terrorism” and “Islamist” ignores the common thread that marks and propels an array of enemies of our nation, our allies and Western civilization. Avoiding the proper terms helps enable Pres. Obama to ignore or even side with, enrich and/or arm other radical Islamist enemies – including the Islamic Republic of Iran (the world’s major state sponsor of terrorism, that the Obama administration enriched by $150 billion via the Iran deal); the former Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt led by Mohammed Morsi (to which the Obama administration gave $1 billion in loan forgiveness and advanced tanks and fighter jets).
Avoiding the proper terms also takes the focus off anti-Israel, anti-American radical Islamist countries like Iran, and Islamist murderous groups such as Hamas (whose charter quotes the Koran’s call to murder of every Jew); Hezbollah (which Iran has armed with 200,000 missiles); Palestinian Islamic Jihad (another Iran-financed terrorist group); the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP); Fatah and the PLO. (Incredibly, Obama has even stated that Hamas and Hezbollah have “legitimate claims.”) Avoiding the proper terms makes it appear that these radical Islamists are somehow different from the others – when in fact radical Islamist terrorists are murdering Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, gays, and other Muslims – as well as Jews. The world needs to understand that radical Islamists are coming after all of us . . . not just Jews and Israel. The radical Muslims murdering people in San Bernardino, Orlando, Paris, Brussels, Spain, England, Africa, Phillipines, and areas of the Arab Mideast are the same radical Muslims murdering Jews in Israel.
Obama also stated yesterday “There has not been a moment in my seven and a half years as President where we have not been able to pursue a strategy because we didn’t use the label “radical Islam.” In fact, the absence of the “radical Islam” label reflects the Obama administration’s pursuit of a lopsided strategy – a strategy that limited the fight to making limited efforts against specific organizations, while rewarding other radical Islamist enemies such as Iran’s mullahs and the Muslim Brotherhood. If we adopted the label “radical Islamist terrorism,” it would be more difficult for the Obama administration to act as if regimes such as Iran and Hamas are somehow better or different or less deserving of opposition than the Islamic State and al Qaeda.
If our president would use the term “radical Islamic terrorism,” it would also put much-needed pressure on imams, mosques, Muslim Arab groups and other Muslim leaders here and abroad to speak out against radical Islamic terrorism, and to begin to work to reform Islam.
The White House is apparently so adverse to using the correct term that when French President François Hollande used the phrase “Islamist terrorism” at a meeting in Washington, White House officials posted an official press video that cut out the audio of the English translation of President Hollande’s words.
The three major stories in yesterday’s New York Times were each about radical Muslims murdering non-Muslims: the jihadi slaughter of 50 innocent people in Orlando; a radical Muslim stabbing to death an off-duty policeman and his wife in their home in front of their young child yesterday because the victims were “unbelievers” in Magnanville, France; and radical Islamist organization Abu Sayyaf beheading Canadian Robert Hall, nine months after abducting and holding Mr. Hall hostage in the Philippines.
And yet, President Obama condemned the critics of his failure to properly label this scourge with more passion that our president showed towards the killers of innocent Americans and other non-Muslims.
President Obama also continues to remain silent about Sharia laws that endanger gays and “infidels.” In addition to the Islamic State, homosexuality is punishable by death in ten majority Muslim nations (Yemen; the Islamic Republic of Iran; Iraq; Mauritania; (half Muslim) Nigeria; Qatar; Saudi Arabia; Somalia; Sudan; and United Arab Emirates). Why does President Obama not speak out about this?
It’s time for our President to speak out against radical Islamist terrorism.