Magnifying ‘Muslim rage’ not a good idea

President Barack Obama was not speaking to me on Tuesday when he condemned the violence perpetrated by some Muslims in response to the anti-Islamic video. Nor was he addressing Muslim nations. He certainly was not speaking to the makers of the movie.
No, he was speaking to American voters.
With about five weeks left before the presidential election, Obama defended his foreign policy record, presented America’s stand on human rights, and above all defended everyone’s First Amendment rights to be an absolute jerk. Yes, being a jerk may lead to deaths of innocents around the world, but that’s the price us backwater inhabitants of Third World countries must live with so Americans can enjoy free speech.
There are many things wrong with the president’s speech, but I must admit he got a lot of things right. I just don’t like how he said it, but I will get to that in a minute.
Obama told American voters, not the United Nations General Assembly, that the US must stand up to tyranny and condemn violence committed in the name of religion. There is no excuse, he said, for rioting in the streets and killing people over the content of a movie no matter how bad the film is made. He is right, of course. The idiots burning down cinemas and chicken restaurants seem to have forgotten to follow the Prophet Muhammad’s (peace be upon him) stand to turn the other cheek and take the high road. That is, if they are even aware of the Prophet’s sayings. Sometimes I wonder if these rioting ninnies have even read the Qu’ran. But Obama only adds to the perception that Muslims are blood-thirsty savages bent on revenge.
According to estimates, just 0.001 to 0.007 percent of the 1.5 billion Muslims rioted. This hardly constitutes Muslim rage as the media have defined it. Yet images on every cable channel, whether in the West or the Middle East, show Muslims pillaging neighborhoods and murdering the innocent in retaliation for a film that portrayed and insulted the Prophet (peace be upon him).
Obama’s speech endorses this fallacy without mentioning until the very end that “tens of thousands (of Muslims) marched against violence through the streets of Benghazi” following the murder of US Ambassador Chris Stevens.
From where I stand, though, perhaps the president’s most disingenuous remark came with comparing himself to the Prophet.
“Here in the United States, countless publications provoke offense,” he said. “Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs. As President of our country and commander-in-chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day — and I will always defend their right to do so.”
Obama raises the issue of his own religion in an attempt to refute once again the falsehood that he is not Christian but Muslim. Okay, that was for the voters. And he accepts the lies told about him. That was for the voters too. Fine, he has a sense of humor about himself. Yet he appears to be comparing himself to a prophet, which probably does not make much of an impression on American voters.
They’ve already had that experience with Newt Gingrich’s messiah complex. But I doubt it will do much to endear himself to the Muslim community. Obama may accept ill will from his constituents, but Muslims do not have to accept the same toward the Prophet (peace be upon him).
The president is also misinformed about blasphemy in the US. At least a half a dozen states still have blasphemy laws. The last conviction for blasphemy was in 1928, so such laws exist, but not enforced. There was a time when the US had boundaries to free speech rights.It’s irritating that the president of the United States can be so patronizing to Arabs and to the Muslim community. Perhaps I am being unfair, but his speech only reinforces false notion that Western values are vastly different from those in the Middle East and Asia.
This does no good to repair the damage the film has caused. It doesn’t mean we can’t share similar values and emphasize our similarities and minimize the differences. We can. But can’t the US restrain itself from rubbing our noses in their values as if we are bad puppies every time we react to those values without gratitude?