In his speech in Cairo, President Obama referred to Muslim countries as Muslim “communities”. And with this statement he sanctioned the extremists’ claim that the Islamic movement, through Saudi Arabia’s money, Al Qaida, and Iranian regime’s terrorism, has succeeded in influencing Western thinking to see fifty-seven individual countries, cultures and peoples as one Islamic nation, thinking alike, all under the same flag of Islam.
The President also praised Islam and its large contribution to civilization. He mentioned mathematics, architecture, and poetry. Unfortunately for these countries, the President of the United States took away the credit from the individual people and the nations who have made those contributions, and gave them to a religion that not only has had nothing to do with any of these achievements, but at times has even impeded and stifled them.
Islam has been all about total submission to Allah; not about human individualism, creativity and ingenuity. It has prevented critical thinking and reasoning, which has been the main reason for Muslim nations falling behind the rest of the world.
In the same poetry that President Obama praises, Iranian poets and philosophers have expressed much distrust and contempt for the Moslem Shi’ite clergies and their teachings.
Ferdosi, an Iranian historian of the 9th century, did not start his famous Book of Kings, in Persian language, with the Islamic mandated introduction: “in the name of the merciful Allah,” he started with; “In the name of the lord of knowledge and wisdom”.
Iran issued the first proclamation of Human Rights, praised by Plato, in 539 BCE, 30 years before the Athenian democracy. 1100 years later, Islam invaded Iran and took it all way. The science of medicine, mathematics, Algebra, algorithm, astronomy and the number 0 were all developed by Iranians and others who had been forced to accept Islam through occupation, massacre and slavery.
The art of calligraphy was developed because of Islamic suppression of the arts and artists. Islam forbade the drawing of living things especially the human likeness, and left no choice for artists but to draw words and letters. The countries that were forced into Islam have been deprived of the art of sculpture and paintings for centuries, denying many nations of a vital part of their history.
The art of Architecture has existed in that part of the world centuries before Islam. It would be unfair to give all the credit to Islam just because architects designed magnificent looking Mosques and domes.
All Muslim countries, not communities, in the Middle East and elsewhere had great civilizations centuries before Islam came from the Arabian Sahara.
In the Western world, individuals like Darwin are known as British; Copernicus and Leonardo Da Vinci as Italians; Frank Lloyd Wright, Arthur Kornberg and Jonas Salk as Americans; Pushkin and Sakharov as Russian; Einstein and Beethoven as Germans and so on. Their accomplishments have never been lumped together as contributing to Christianity or Judaism.
Is it cultural Imperialism that prevents American intellectuals from praising individual people and nations for their contributions to the human civilization because they are Moslems, or are we simply catering to a few Islamists who scare us?
Are American children not taught the contributions of the individual people and nations in the Middle East because we now need to appease the Muslim extremists?
In the haste to accommodate the Islamists, dictators and terrorists we must be careful not to insult the real people in the Islamic countries: otherwise they are invisible and voiceless.
