As we know, President Obama brought with him to the presidency a conviction that we Americans somehow bore some responsibility for the antipathy towards us in the Islamic world and that outreach would help.
But, of course, this is false. As Johns Hopkins University Middle East Scholar Fouad Ajami pointed out in a Wall Street Journal column, President Obama’s outreach program has accomplished only diminished respect for us in the Islamic world. Antipathy continues to run high and unchanged and it’s not because there something wrong with us. It’s because, as Ajami points out, it’s a convenient “scapegoat” for nations and rulers that refuse to address their own real problems.
Of the 17 nations that Freedom House rates the “worst of the worst” regarding their state of freedom, 6 are Islamic nations.
Feisel Abdul Rauf should spend his $100 million, wherever he is getting it from, to advance the cause of freedom in Islamic countries. That is where the problem is. It’s certainly not here.
The fact the he insists on provocatively erecting a Mosque at Ground Zero raises legitimate suspicion that he is more a symptom of rather than a solution to this problem.
Star Parker
Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.