It's official: Obama declares U.S. a Muslim country

Barack "I'm Too Cool for My Country" Obama can't even wait till he gets to Cairo to deliver the United States into the Muslim world.

Le Monde says that in an interview on the French TV network Canal +, he said, "les Etats-Unis sont l'un des plus grands pays musulmans" ("the United States are one of the greatest Muslim countries").

The full quote:

"Les Etats-Unis et le monde occidental doivent apprendre à mieux connaître l'islam; d'ailleurs, si l'on compte le nombre d'Américains musulmans, on voit que les Etats-Unis sont l'un des plus grands pays musulmans de la planète", a-t-il dit.

My translation: "The United States and the Western world must learn to better understand Islam; moreover, if one counts the number of Muslim Americans, one sees that the United States are one of the greatest Muslim countries on the planet," he said. Native French speakers: is it conventional in France to say, "the United States are"? Or does Obama not think we are very united?

This goes beyond good manners and standard diplo-babble into the realm of debasement. Or even de sub-basement. The fact that, lamentably, our rulers have allowed vast numbers of Muslims to import their footbaths and ideas of sharia law into the U.S. does not mean we are a Muslim country. If His Holiness the Dalai Obama understands what it means for a country to be Muslim, with all the restrictions that entails for its citizens on freedom of speech and practice, then he is a traitor; if he does not understand it, he is a fool.

This will be one of the items given in evidence at my trial for thought crimes in the Dalai Obama's second term. Assuming that there is the formality of a trial.



6/4 Since Obama spoke in English, I wondered if perhaps Le Monde's translation was wide of the mark. Here is the White House press office's transcript of the comment (tip of the hat: Belmont Club):

Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam. And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. And so there's got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.

To be sure, that is not exactly saying that the United States is a Muslim country. Le Monde needs to hire a few qualified English translators.

But what did Obama mean? It makes no sense. First, as a factual matter, and as many commenters at Belmont Club point out, there aren't (yet) that many Muslims in the United States, perhaps three million, or 1 percent of the population. Dozens of countries in the world have larger Muslim components, in numbers and percentages. I myself exaggerated in writing that "lamentably, our rulers have allowed vast numbers of Muslims to import their footbaths and ideas of sharia law into the U.S."

What about "And so there's got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples"? It's a non sequitur. Because of the supposed large numbers of Muslims in the U.S., we'd be a large Muslim country, so we have to have a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples? What two peoples, if we are a quasi-Muslim country? And if we had no Muslims, would there then be no need for better dialogue and understanding?

As abstractions, dialogue and understanding are good, but they are also cant words capable of signifying anything or nothing. It's possible Obama meant that the better dialogue and understanding have to come from us, and if we only do that, we need have no fear of Muslim colonization of the West. Alternatively, he might have had no specific meaning in mind at all; he tends to reach into a stockpile of sonorous, feel-good phrases that he delivers in that rich voice with an air of gravitas. Similarly: "framework" (four times in the transcript), "roundtable discussion," "build as opposed to destroy," "remake the world" ...