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PrintDecember 17, 2007
Obama Would Hold Muslim-American Summit
In an interview on former Senator Bill Bradley's Sirius radio show, Barack Obama let it be known that if elected president, he would organize a meeting between Islamic leaders and Americans:
"I would convene a conference within my first year just gathering together Muslim leaders from all around the world, to describe for them what our values and our interests are, to insist that they need to help us to defeat the terrorist threats that are there, but to also recognize that they are bound up with us and that we have an interest in making sure that their societies can prosper and that we're moving forward with them as partners with dignity and respect."
Which Muslim leaders? Religious leaders who spout anti-West venom? The "leaders" of Muslim nations who are dictators and kleptocrats? The leaders who have ruined their own people's futures by keeping their nations mired in the deep, dark past? Obama would find it difficult to find Muslim leaders who have any following who have not already been discredited by their own records? If Obama reached out to reformers, they would not have any impact.
Have we not shown dignity and respect? America had Muslim Imams deliver addresses to the nation in the wake of 9/11 at the National Cathedral ( led by a religious leader, Muzammil Siddiqi later found to have had a history of severely anti-American diatribes, have celebrated Ramadan and the Muslim holiday of EID at the White House. There have been celebrations and even an EID postage stamp.
Former Iranian leader Imam Khatami has been hosted at the National Cathedral. Iranian leaders have addressed college audiences at Columbia University and other colleges.
Hollywood has bowed down to Muslim sensitivities by cleansing its scripts of any references that might offend Muslims (the same Hollywood that now impugns America for disrespecting and abusing Muslims). We have endangered our own soldiers by ordering them to refrain from attacking mosques despite these being used by insurgents and terrorists to store weapons and house terrorists.
Has the Muslim world responded with commemorations of American society and culture? Has there been any recognition of the billions in aid sent to he Muslim world, of the freeing of millions of Muslims by America (that has costs us dearly in blood and treasure) in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq?
The list could go on and on. Sadly this reveals a lack of knowledge and apprecaition of the efforts America has made to reach out to the Muslims of the world and also a shocking lack of awareness that the Muslim world has not reciprocated. In fact, the Muslim leaders whose support Obama would solicit have been in the forefront of those who have stoked anti-Americanism throughout the world.
