David Goldman on Obama's Muslim speech

Spengler aka David Goldman displays brilliant but at times utterly biased insights...he is what you might term a "born-again" Jew. The "born again" of ANY stripe or religion are often the most adamant and indignant die hards. His words should be read for what they say as also for what he does not say. for example:

1: Egypt is a US lackey bought off with grants to maintain peace with US's surrogate in the region.

2: Muslim word is not an "aspiration" but an "idea"

3: The core issue ios not Palestinians acceptance of Israel. The is another ploy. The real issue is Israeli acceptance of the displaced Palestinians.

4: Obama will address Arab Israeli issues in Cairo. Spengler argues it has nothing to do with 700 million Indian, Pakistani, Indonesia, Bangladeshi, Malay Muslims. Wrong.

The ghettoisation, bantustanisation and marginalisation of Palestinians by the neoconzix supported Israel is NOT about religion. The world majority condemns Israeli occupation and blatant injustices continuously perpetrated by the State of Israel. And what is more, the world blames Israeli intransigence for causing and inflaming terrorism by the subjugated Palestinians. To blame it on Islam is a diversionary ploy.

~~~t


There is no "Christian world" to address because Christianity has become a private religion of personal conscience. Few Christian denominations aspire to the status of state religion; the Catholic Church abandoned earthly power at the Second Vatican Council in 1965. No Christian denomination aspires to world power. A "Christian world", in short, is not even a fantasy, let alone a fact, and to pronounce the words would be an absurdity. What does it mean, though, to address the "Muslim world"? As a matter of practice, the Muslim world is just as fractured as the Christian world, even more so in the absence of any religious authority like the Catholic Church, which claims doctrinal authority over a billion people. Muslim religious authority is exercised ad hoc. The quasi-animist Islam of Sumatra and the Wahhabi Islam of Saudi Arabia have about as much in common as Midwest Methodists and Nigerian Pentecostals. But there is a great gulf fixed between the terms, "Christian world", and "Muslim world". No denomination of Islam will abandon its pretensions at official status, and all aspire to world power.

Obama, the White House press office told reporters last week, will address among other issues the Arab-Israeli issue. What does it imply to raise this issue in a speech to the "Muslim world"? Nearly 700 million of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims live in Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, countries which share no linguistic or cultural affinities with the Arabs, and have only religion in common.