In Reply to Obama's Cairo Speech by Jerrold L. Sobel

President Obama made a very touching and contrite speech at Cairo University. As is his custom when issuing a mea culpa, he sort out moral equivalence on every issue and castigated the United States for all its misdeeds past and present. With usual elogance and mesmerizing rhetoric, the President referenced "civilization's debt to Islam" and and some of their many accomplishments, but then a dish dropped and I was awakened out of some sort of a trance. Consciously, I started listening to the speech and the first thing I heard was: "Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance," followed by "America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles -- principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings." What could possibly be further from the truth?
Historically, Islam has been tolerant only to adherents of Islam. From the Middle Ages onward, Jews and Christians in Muslim conquored lands were allowed to practice their religions only under very special circumstances. Under the humiliating system of dhimmitude, people from both these religions were forced to pay a poll tax known as the jizyah to the local Sultan. Often it was ceremonial for local officials to strike the person paying the tax as a reminder of their second class status. Doesn't sound too tolerant to me. Likewise, and to the applause of the audience, the President went on to say: "the United States government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it. That's true, but the real question is what does his new best friend King Abdullah do to women which refuse to wear this garb? At this point, I became fully awake and realized our President was being disingenious because he's much too smart to believe what he was saying. Take the issue of "illegal settlements" in Judea and Samaria and his view that they are the main impediment to piece.
Prior to 1967 Israel had no settlements in these territories. During this period of time the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan illegally annexed this area and ruled it with an iron fist; why was there was no outcry for a Palestinian State by the international community then? The Palestinians rejected U.N. mandated Partition in 1947 and attacked the Jews even before Israel was created. They were joined by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq a year later during Israel's war of independence, and only re-acquired Judea and Samaria following King Hussein's aggression in the Six Day War. So to the uninformed and the misinformed; the settlement issue is bogus propaganda.
Along with other inconsistencies and falsehoods, the President made refrences to twelve hundred Mosques in the United States but failed to question why no other religion is allowed to be practiced in Saudi Arabia, and only under very precarious circumstances in other Muslim countries. His recitations of the Qur'an were commendable, but unfortunately he failed to make mention of the incendiary blood libel this scripture also contains that is a mantra for Islamic terrorism throughout the world.