Has Obama Embraced Moderate Muslims?

As you know, President Obama rationalizes his failure to call radical Islam radical Islam because he fears alienating moderate Muslims. He says that he has wanted to forge alliances with moderate Muslims. It’s a lie like another. It covers up a cowardice that dares not speak its name.

In recent days many have attacked Obama’s approach to Islamic terrorism. Few have presented a cogent argument to demonstrate that Obama’s claims about moderate Muslims are… you guessed it... a lie.

Among those who have best debunked the claim is Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post. She begins by quoting Jeffrey Goldberg’s presentation of the president’s thought:

“Obama,” he [Goldberg] wrote, “believes that [a] clash is taking place [not between Western and Muslim civilization but] within a single civilization, and that Americans are sometimes collateral damage in this fight between Muslim modernizers and Muslim fundamentalists.”

Muslims do kill their fellow Muslims. Perhaps they are so terrified that the world will see them as weak and ineffectual that they feel compelled to act out on the world stage. The notion that Islam is not engaged in a war against Western civilization is risible on its face. Terrorists did not attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in order to wage war against Muslims. They did not shoot up the Bataclan or the Pulse night club because they wanted to kill Muslims. And Muslims have not been waging war against Israel for decades now because they hate their fellow Muslims.

Note also that our appalling president calls our own citizens, the ones who were killed by terrorists: “collateral damage.” Was that the reason why he refused to admit that Major Hasan’s attack on Fort Hood was a terrorist attack?

Terrorism has grown and expanded under Obama’s watch. No sentient individual, certainly not the 51 State Department diplomats who signed a letter opposing Obama’s policy, certainly not the New York Times’s Roger Cohen believes that Obama is not fully responsible for the mess he created.

As for Obama’s support for moderate Muslims, it turns out to be another big lie. Glick considers the case of one of the Middle East’s great reformers, a man who has called for the reform of Islam, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi:

Sisi is without a doubt, the most outspoken and powerful advocate of a moderate reformation of Islam, and of Islamic rejection of jihad, alive today.

Sisi has staked his power and his life on his war to defeat the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State and jihadist Islam in general.

And also:

Certainly since September 11, 2001, no Muslim leader has issues a clearer call for moderation in Islam than Sisi did in that speech. And he has continued to speak in the manner ever since.

No other Muslim leader of note has put everything on the line as Sisi has to defeat the forces of jihad both on the field and in the mosques.

And Sisi has acted on his beliefs:

Moreover, Sisi has put his anti-jihadist belief into action by expanding security cooperation between Egypt and Israel and by bringing the Gulf states into his undeclared alliance with the Jewish state.

He has also acted to end the demonization of Israel in the Egyptian media.

Has Obama openly supported Sisi? Of course not:

Obviously, supporting Sisi is a no-brainer for a leader who insists that his goal is to empower moderate Muslims. And yet, far from being Sisi’s greatest supporter, Obama opposes him.

Since Sisi led the Egyptian military in overthrowing the Obama-backed Muslim Brotherhood regime as it was poised to transform Egypt into a jihadist terrorist state, Obama has worked to undermine him.

Obama has denied Sisi weapons critical to his fight with ISIS in Sinai. He has repeatedly and consistently chastised Sisi for human rights abuses against radical Islamists who, if permitted to return to power, would trounce the very notion of human rights while endangering the US’s key interests in Middle East.

And then there is Iran? Obama has not supported the reform forces in Iran. He has supported the ayatollahs and the forces of Islamist terrorism.

Glick explains:

If Obama fears radical Islam, as Goldberg insists that he does, why did he turn his back on the Green Revolution in 2009? Why did he betray the millions of Iranians who rose up against their Islamist leaders in the hopes of installing a democratic order in Iran where women’s rights, and minority rights are respected? Why did he instead side with the radical, jihadist, terrorism-supporting, nuclear weapons-developing and -proliferating ayatollahs? And why has Obama striven to reach an accommodation with the Iranian regime despite its continued dedication to the destruction of the US?

Within America itself Obama has not been the friend of moderate Muslims. He has empowered Islamist elements, even to the point of hiring them as advisors on Islam:

Almost every major jihadist attack on US soil since Obama took office has been carried out by US citizens. But Obama has not countered the threat they pose by embracing American Muslims who reject jihad.

To the contrary, Obama has spent the past seven- and-a-half years empowering radical Muslims and Islamic groups like the pro-Hamas terrorism apologists from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).

This week The Daily Caller reported that MPAC President Salam al-Marayati, is serving as an adviser to the US Department of Homeland Security.

Marayati accused Israel of responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the US, and has called on Muslims not to cooperate with federal counter-terrorism probes. According to the report, Marayati has visited the White House 11 times since 2009.

The Daily Caller also reported that a Syrian immigrant to the US was hired to serve as a member of Obama’s task for on “violent extremism” last year.

Laila Alawa, who joined the task force the day she received US citizenship, referred to the September 11 attacks as an event that “changed the world for good.”

According to the Daily Caller, her task force called for the administration to avoid using the terms “jihad” and “Shari’a” in discussing terrorism – as if Obama needed the tip.

So far from helping Muslim moderates, Obama’s actual policy is to help radical Muslims. In stark opposition to his talking points to Goldberg, since he entered office, Obama has worked to empower radical Muslims in the US and throughout the Middle East at the expense of moderates. Indeed, it is hard to think of an anti-jihad Muslim leader in the US or in the Middle East whom Obama has supported.

Thus, Obama’s record exposes his claim to be a lie.