Investor's Business Daily
written by Paul Sperry
Thursday February 26, 2015
President Obama insists Islamic State terrorists have "twisted" the teachings of Islam, drawing "selectively from the Islamic texts." But the president is doing some twisting of his own.
In fact, he regularly misquotes Islamic scripture to make his case the terrorists don't represent Islam.
For example, while hosting last week's "Summit on Countering Violent Extremism," Obama recited a verse from the Muslim holy book like so: "The Quran says whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind."
He held the sacred passage up as proof Islam condemns killing and "calls for peace."
It wasn't the first time Obama has trotted out that phrase. He used it most notably during his 2009 speech to Muslims in Cairo, when he said: "The Holy Quran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and the Holy Quran also says whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind."
A beautiful passage — if only it were as he states it.
The Quranic verse the president quotes — 5:32 — actually condones killing those who "murder" Muslims, "wage war against Allah" or spread "mischief in the land."
Mischief is defined as "treason against Allah," and the very next verse — 5:33 — calls for guilty infidels to be beheaded. Obama glosses over all of this in his version.
Here's the full text of the relevant verse (5:32), according to even the watered-down translation of the Quran approved and distributed by American Muslim groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Note the key section that Obama omits from his speeches:
"(I)f anyone slew a person — unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land — it would be as if he slew the whole people. And if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them our Messengers with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land."
The hammer comes down in the next verse, 5:33: "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: That is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the hereafter."
In the Quran's footnotes, widely respected translator Abdullah Yusuf Ali, who died in 1953, interpreted "mischief" as "treason against Allah." Ali defined "execution" as "cutting off of the head."
The clause starting with "unless" can be, and is, cited by IS jihadists to justify their atrocities, along with countless other violent injunctions in the Quran. And the penalties plainly prescribed by the Quran are precisely the ones they are carrying out against Christians and Jews they believe are "warring against Allah," and against Muslim "apostates" they've sentenced as traitors against Allah.
To be clear, Christians are not spared this brutal Islamic "justice." They are not among Obama's "innocent" any more than the Jews. Just 15 verses earlier, in 5:17, the Quran states: "In blasphemy indeed are those that say that Allah is Christ the son of Mary."
Later in the same chapter, or surah, the Quran instructs believers to take "life for life, nose for nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and (inflict) wounds equal for equal" while fighting Jews and Christians. "O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for your friends."
So the context is clear. It's also clear that it's Obama who's drawing selectively from the Islamic texts. He is mistaken when he claims Muslims are commanded to respect all human life. And he is misleading the American people when he says such things with the full force and authority of his office.
It's odd that a student of Islam would misquote a core passage in the Muslim holy book. Obama has Muslim family roots and studied the Quran as a student in Indonesia. Is he dissembling? Or is he naively parroting the white lies he gathers from Islamic apologists and Muslim Brotherhood leaders posing as moderates?
One of his top Islamic advisers, ex-Islamic Society of North America President Imam Mohamed Magid, is known to gloss over the violent parts of that same sacred text in defending Islam.
"The Quran says whoever takes one life, it is as if he has taken the life of all of humanity," Magid recently told reporters. A member of Obama's Homeland Security Advisory Council, Magid had a prime seat at last week's summit.
Muslim reformers say misleading politicians and media about Islamic scripture is a common trick employed by Muslim leaders to create a facade of moderation and protect Islam from due scrutiny. They count on non-Muslim pundits never reading the Quranic text for themselves and independently verifying the interpretations they are fed.
Irshad Manji, for one, says Muslim scholars and clerics perform a "fancy dance of evasion" when they maintain that nothing in the Quran authorizes killing people.
"Post-September 11, I repeatedly heard this mantra from Muslims: The Quran makes it absolutely clear when jihad can and can't be pursued, and that terrorists unquestionably broke the rules," says Manji, author of "The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith."
"To quote one such voice, Allah 'says in unequivocal terms that to kill an innocent being is like killing entire humanity.'"
But that is "wishful whitewashing," she says. "You know the chapter and verse that's cited as 'unequivocal'? It actually bestows some wiggle room. Here's how it reads:
"Whoever killed a human being — except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land — shall be regarded as having killed all mankind.' Sadly, the clause starting with 'except' can be deployed by militant Muslims to fuel their jihads."
It's extremely telling that the apologists — including the president — can cite only one verse in the Quran to dispute the growing belief that Islam is inherently violent, and then they have to dishonestly abridge that verse to disguise its underlying violent meaning.
"It's a lie," Obama asserts, that the Islamist enemy is getting its ideas from Islam. He says that while lying by omission about the scriptural source of those ideas.
• Sperry, formerly IBD Washington bureau chief, is author of "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington."
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