Its Not Racism When Blacks Do It

I’m anything but a fan of Colin Powell, and have no idea what impact (if any) his Meet the Pressendorsement of Obama will have, but I was really glad to see him make the following point in explaining why he has rejected McCain’s candidacy:

I’m also troubled by, not what Sen. McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said such things as: “Well, you know that Mr.Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is: he is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian.

But the really right answer is: What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is: No, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she can be President? (Yes, its all wrong. Because a Muslim cannot be a good American/ed)  More at the bottom of the page!

Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion: he’s a Muslim, and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

There has been much condemnation over the ‘Obama-is-a-Muslim’ line of GOP attack, but almost all of it has been on the ground that the attack is factually false as applied to the Christian Obama, not on the ground that it is a reprehensible and dangerous line of attack even if it were factually true. Powell bears much of the responsibility, and always will, for the horrific U.S. attack on Iraq (one which, just by the way, resulted in the deaths of at least hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims), but he deserves credit for using the platform he had this morning to go out of his way to make this vital point when doing so was not necessary (and perhaps not even helpful) in advancing the cause of his endorsement of Obama.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, 19 October 2008

Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is: YES, its all wrong:

Can a Muslim be a good American?

Theologically – no. Because his allegiance is to Allah, the moon God of Arabia. 
Religiously – no.. Because no other religion is accepted by his Allah except Islam (Quran, 2:256)

Scripturally – no. Because his allegiance is to the five pillars of Islam and the Quran (Koran).
Geographically – no. Because his allegiance is to Mecca, to which he turns in prayer five times a day.
Socially – no. Because his allegiance to Islam forbids him to make friends with Christians or Jews.
Politically – no. Because he must submit to the mullah (spiritual leaders), who teach annihilation of Israel and Destruction of America, the great Satan.

Domestically – no. Because he is instructed to marry four women and beat and scourge his wife when she disobeys him (Quran 4:34).
Intellectually – no. Because he cannot accept the American Constitution since it is based on Biblical principles and he believes the Bible to be corrupt.
Philosophically – no. Because Islam, Muhammad, and the Quran do not allow freedom of r eligion and _expression. Democracy and Islam cannot co-exist. Every Muslim government is either dictatorial or autocratic.

Spiritually – no. Because when we declare “one nation underGod,” the Christian’s God is loving and kind, while Allah is NEVER referred to as heavenly father, nor is he ever called love in The Quran’s 99 excellent
names.

Therefore after much study and deliberation….perhaps we should
be very suspicious of ALL MUSLIMS in this country. They obviously cannot be
both “good” Muslims and good Americans.

Call it what you wish….it’s still the truth.

HUGH COMMENTS:

Fitzgerald: Colin Powell and Jihad: A dereliction of duty

In evaluating the threat of Islam and Jihad, for the colin-powells of this world what counts is the flimsiest of anecdotal evidence. He takes the sentimentalism of our depraved politics at face value: “and then there is Mary, who lives in Sioux City, Iowa and makes $13.42 an hour.” In this he recalls Bush at one of his State-of-the-Union farces, pointing to an Iraqi woman, who had been deliberately seated next to the parents of a Marine killed in Iraq. He asks her to stand up and acknowledge the applause of the crowd, applause presumably due her because she is “an Iraqi woman” who has not tried to kill Americans, and may even support what they are doing, or think they are doing, in Iraq — which makes her, of course, a hero.

In an interview yesterday, Powell reached new heights or depths (they are the same in this case) of anecdotal absurdity. He offered up this:

“I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said. Such things as ‘Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well the correct answer is ‘He is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian, he’s always been a Christian.’ But the really right answer is ‘What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?’ The answer is ‘No. That’s not America.’ Is there something wrong with some 7-year old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she can be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he’s a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.”I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo-essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in you can see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards, Purple Heart, Bronze Star, showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross, it didn’t have a Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Karim Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American, he was born in New Jersey, he was 14 at the time of 9/11 and he waited until he can go serve his counrty and he gave his life.”

 

So, on the basis of having seen a picture of a Muslim mother of a Muslim son who had been killed in Iraq, Colin Powell uses his (apparent) prestige to tell the interviewer and all of America, that there is nothing wrong with Islam, nothing wrong with the ideology of Islam, nothing to be concerned about in Sharia supremacism, nothing wrong with the idea of a Muslim president. His irresponsibility astounds.

He once held high office. And though he never demonstrated any particular gifts, he acquired — possibly because there had to be something good about him to focus on — the reputation for “integrity.” Apparently the gift to his wife of a Jaguar from Prince Bandar, his tennis partner, who was recently revealed in Great Britain to have been the recipient of up to $2 billion in kickbacks from a British aerospace company, and who was famous for distributing his largesse to powerful people in Washington, did nothing to modify this reputation for “integrity.” It would be useful to know, by the way, whether Colin Powell has been on the Arab lecture-circuit, the way so many others among our high and mighty have been, picking up, for a single lecture, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, even a million dollars (if you are Bill Clinton, or the first George Bush). But palling around with an obvious fixer and influence-peddler who worked on behalf of a sinister ruling family of a most sinister country, Saudi Arabia, befriending him, becoming his tennis-partner, says a lot about Colin Powell’s judgment — none of it good.

But in his offhand remarks In Defense Of Islam — remarks based on his having seen a photograph of a mother mourning her son — demonstrate what is so wrong with so many of our high and mighty, who presume to instruct and protect us. What does that photograph tell us? It tells us nothing at all about what Islam inculcates. Unless Colin Powell has studied the Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira, unless he has read the Qur’anic commentators, and such influential people at present as Qaradawi and Tantawi, he knows nothing about Islam, and has a duty not to make pronouncements as if he does. The dead soldier was, it appears, one of a very few Muslims who joined up. Indeed, there have been widespread reports of how the handful of Muslim (not Black Muslim) soldiers in the American and British armies have been subject to harassment and threats and even, in Great Britain, plots, by fellow Muslims who are outraged that they would behave in so un-Islamic a fashion, and dare to join an Infidel army to “fight against Muslims.”

Is Colin Powell aware of how few Muslims are in the army, the Reserves, the National Guard? Is he aware of how few are like the soldier whose grieving mother at his gravestone apparently struck him so much that he felt it gave him the right to pontificate to the public at large about Islam? He only has that right when he learns enough about Islam. And there are no signs, none, that he has been any more diligent or responsible in fulfilling that task than Bush, or a hundred others, at the top of the Washington heap, who have squandered so many men, so much money, so much material, so much attention, so much time, in their insensate inability, or willful refusal, to learn about the ideology — the politics, the geopolitics — of the Total Belief-System of Islam.

What Powell did was a clear dereliction of duty. He baselessly, on the slimmest and most misleading of anecdotal evidence, jumped to sweeping conclusions about Islam and Jihad. A glimpse of a grave and a griever tugged at his heartstrings, but did not tell him anything about what the texts and tenets of Islam are all about, and why that particular grieving mother was, if she had no regrets about her son joining the American army, as little representative of Muslims as her son was. That photograph had no larger significance. It said nothing about the texts, tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics of Islam. An intelligent observer would have understood this. A responsible observer, aware of his own ignorance of Islam, would never have dared to draw a conclusion, and impose that conclusion, on a presumably naive, and in some cases far too respectful, audience.

Of course Powell is behaving just like those who sentimentalize everything, reducing issues to this or that “real life” individual who may, or may not, be a useful representative or guide. But the error in this case was particularly egregious, and the irresponsibility flabbergasting, given the dangers the Infidels everywhere face. Does Powell know what is going on in southern Thailand? Does he think about the Biafra War, or southern Sudan? What does he know about the treatment of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh? What does he know about the spending of a hundred billion dollars by the Saudis alone to spread Islam all over the globe? What does he know about the present and certain future troubles, presented by no other group of immigrants, the result of the Muslim presence in Western Europe? He knows, I suspect, nothing of this. He’s a big shot. He delivers lectures. He speaks slowly, and portentously. He has an air, some think (I don’t) of “rectitude.” We are expected to admire him, and to forgive this kind of negligence — a failure to perform due diligence in investigating the matter of Islam — that does damage to the ignorant and the simple-minded, who may not recognize anecdotal evidence, or be able to see how misleading it is.

Why should we forgive Colin Powell? What’s so wonderful, what has ever been so wonderful, about him? And when will he give back that Jaguar to Prince Bandar?

Posted by Hugh at October 20, 2008 11:00 AM

More PowWow over Powell:

The “respected” (by whom? For what?) Colin Powell, who has been supremely aware since his earliest military days of the need to be attuned to politics and pleasing the powerful. He hasn’t looked back, he “seen his opportunities and he took ‘em.” Powell was happy to pocket the keys of the Jaguar that Prince Bandar, his tennis-and-racquetball partner and pal, gave him. Powell learned from Bandar so much about the Al-Saud, about Saudi Arabia, about Islam, so much that he can pontificate indignantly about unfair worries or suspicions about Muslims in high office, and can get away with using as his point of departure (and his sole point, come to think of it), a single photograph of a Muslim mother grieving at the grave of her Muslim son. That son was one of a handful who must have enlisted in the American army.

Colin Powell was not asked to explain what makes him so sure that the doctrine of Islam is not worrisome, what makes him take as “representative” this particular soldier, and not the Muslim Marine who went AWOL, leaving his post and returning to Lebanon, not the Muslim soldier who rolled a grenade into a tent, killing two officers, not the Muslim sailor who apparently was offering to give secrets about his ship to other Muslims for their own deadly use, not all the other examples of Muslim mendacity. Instead, this single example, of a photograph, caused Colin Powell to become a great and reassuring authority on Islam on national television, without a single bit of information about Islam other than what he gleaned from Prince Bandar (he of the jangling keys to the Jaguar, pocked by Mrs. Powell just a few days after Colin Powell left office, and could now “accept the gift” that a few days before would have been illegal).

Some, many, of these people must be prevented from again being in positions of authority. And all those who have not yet shown signs of coming to understand, of even making the attempt to understand Islam –- through direct and personal study, and not through vicarious study, that is having an aide or two has read a book or two, and then “summarize” in power-point form what “Islam is all about” — should be kept out of any position. For they represent, in their ignorance, and in their continuing influence, a supreme danger. Inertia plays a part, inertia and being overawed by those who, simply because they have served high up in this or that administration, are foolishly accorded a respect that their own display of mind does not suggest they have earned, or are capable of earning.

And not just in foreign policy, but in domestic policy. If you cannot recognize the Jihad, don’t want to find out what it is, what it means, and why Islam is not merely a “religion” in the commonly-accepted sense but also an Identity, a Loyalty, both to what is a Total Belief-System and to the other Believers, the other Members of the world-wide Umma, an identity and a loyalty that trump all other possible identities and loyalties (or at least, that is what Islam inculcates — a few may ignore what is inculcated, but then they may well be “Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only” Muslims), then you may not be able to connect the contents of this article about the killing of the Somali Christian for daring to be a Christian (and daring to suggest that the attendees at a wedding, including the bride and groom, had a right to understand the ceremony) with the attitudes of Somali Muslims, “Muslim refugees from Islam” (???), who have been allowed to settle deep within our borders, within what Muslims themselves are taught to regard as enemy lines, the lines of Dar al-Harb.