The media didn't report it, but U.S. President Barack Obama "spoke a lot of nonsense, some of it dangerous," when he spoke at a mosque in Baltimore last week, according to nationally syndicated radio show host Dennis Prager.
Writing for WND, Prager cites numerous statements made by Obama that were misleading if not patently wrong.
Obama said: "So let's start with this fact: For more than a thousand years, people have been drawn to Islam's message of peace. And the very word itself, Islam, comes from salam – peace."
Prager says Obama's definition of Islam is wrong. "Even Muslim websites acknowledge that 'Islam' means 'submission' [to Allah], that it comes from the Arabic root 'aslama' meaning submission, and that 'Islam' is in the command form of that verb.
"That's why 'Muslim' means 'One who submits,' not 'One who is peaceful.'"
Obama said: "Jefferson and John Adams had their own copies of the Quran."
Prager says Obama mentioned this to allude that America's founding fathers welcomed Islam. However, the actually reason for this, according to Prager, was that Thomas Jefferson and Adams were trying to understand what a Muslim ambassador from Tripoli told them. "When asked why Tripoli pirates were attacking American ships and enslaving Americans, the Muslim ambassador explained that Muslims are commanded to do so by the Quran: 'It was written in their Quran that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman [Muslim] who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to Paradise,'" Prager writes.
Obama said: "I often hear it said that we need moral clarity in this fight. And the suggestion is somehow that if I would simply say, these are all Islamic terrorists, then we would actually have solved the problem by now, apparently."
Here, Prager says, the president is attacking a "straw man, a false target." This is because not one of his critics has ever said that if Obama were to identify Islamic terrorists by name instead of nameless "violent extremists," "we would actually have solved the problem by now."
Prager points out that "what drives most Americans crazy" is that the president of the United States "refuses to name the enemy." This has led to such a "rewriting of reality" that even in American schools, the 9-11 attackers are never identified as Muslims.
Obama said: "And, by the way, the notion that America is at war with Islam ignores the fact that the world's religions are a part of who we are."
Prager says this is another Obama concoction since no American has ever said that "America is at war with Islam."
Obama said: "In the discussion I had before I came out, some people said, why is there always a burden on us? When a young man in Charleston shoots African-Americans in a church, there's not an expectation that every white person in America suddenly is explaining that they're not racist."
Prager says with this statement, Obama is virtually telling Muslims "that they have no moral obligation to condemn violence committed in the name of Islam."
Obama said: "These are the voices of Muslim scholars, some of whom join us today, who know Islam has a tradition of respect for other faiths."
Prager says this is a blatant lie. "Islam has no such tradition. Islam has always demanded that Jews and Christians be treated as humiliated second-class citizens – when not forced to choose between conversion or death," he says.
