Islam and America: The President’s fictitious history

Carson Holloway writing at The Front Porch Republic: “After praising Islam as a source of wisdom and force for progress, the president added the following: ‘in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.’ This statement is not true in any meaningful sense . . . The unavoidable conclusion is that he has chosen deliberately to promote a false account of the relationship between Islam and America. What is the significance of this unhappy conclusion? . . . President Obama’s lie concerns the very origins, history, and character of the country that he claims to represent . . . As these reflections suggest, political efforts to shape beliefs about a nation’s past are usually undertaken in order to control its future. It is thus worth observing in conclusion that President Obama’s claims about the historical relationship between Islam and America seem intended to settle preemptively a question that ought to be debated in the open: is Islam compatible with the free institutions to which Americans are accustomed and to whose preservation Americans should be committed?”