By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel
CHULA VISTA, California — The term “quisling” refers to anyone who collaborates with an enemy occupying force. The word originates from the Norwegian war-time leader Vidkun Quisling, who headed a domestic Nazi collaborationist regime during WWII. That era also produced appeasers, such as as former British Prime Minister Arthur Neville Chamberlain, who is most famous for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the German-populated Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany. However, when Adolf Hitler continued his aggression by invading Poland, Britain declared war on Germany on September e, 1939, and Chamberlain led Britain through the first eight months of World War II.
In the 21st century, we are witnessing the rise of a new global threat that threatens to engulf the world—Jihadic Islam, whose express goal is to convert the entire world to their vision of Islam. However, as bad as Quisling and Chamberlain were, they never acted as apologists for the Nazi regime. But Barack Hussein Obama not only combines the qualities of Quisling and Chamberlain, he has emerged as an apologist for the global Jihad movement. The Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen stated in his article, “To the terrorists, Obama is ‘Crusader in chief’.” Thiessen argued that, since ISIS and al Qaeda criticize the American military as crusaders, Obama’s criticism of the medieval crusades gives the terrorists a “propaganda gold mine.”
Does this make any sense to you?
Sure enough, the ISIS literature often invokes imagery from the Crusade’s history, and most recently announced that they intend to unfurl their flag over the Vatican and behead the Pope.
While I think Obama is correct in saying that our conflict is not a war against Islam, I think the President ought to be mobilizing more Arab countries who are willing to take them on rather than using his office to stymie any efforts to prevent the ISIS caliphate from expanding.
That kind of approach demand forceful leadership of our President. He has yet to demonstrate this kind of statesmanship—but fortunately, others are showing us the way.
At the first of the New Year, Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi summoned all the imams and Muslim scholars of his country and called for a “revolution” in Islam to reform the interpretations of the faith entrenched for hundreds of years, which he said have made the Muslim world a source of “destruction” and pitted it against the rest of the world. In his speech, el-Sissi’s threw the gauntlet in positioning himself as modernizer of Islam. His professed goal is to purge the religion of extremist ideas of intolerance and violence that fuel groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State – and lie behind the attack in Paris on a French satirical newspaper that killed 12 people.
Watching el-Sissi in action is like watching 16th century European history play itself out in the present. el-Sissi’s has emerged as a modern day “Muslim Martin Luther.” In his Jan. 1 speech at al-Azhar addressing Muslim clerics – held to mark the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday – el-Sissi called on them to promote a reading of Islamic texts in a “truly enlightened” manner to reconsider concepts “that have been made sacred over hundreds of years.” He also said that the Jihadist thinking is “making enemies of the whole world. So 1.6 billion people (in the Muslim world) will kill the entire world of 7 billion people? That’s impossible … We need a religious revolution.”[1]
This is how President Obama ought to be organizing the Arab countries who have an obvious interest in defeating ISIS—Invite moderate Muslim leaders of the Middle East to the White House and try to unite them in taking the necessary steps to defeat ISIS.
Our President has invited members of the Muslim Brotherhood on numerous occasions to meet with him at the White House.[2] He has invited gangster rap singers and basketball players, and even GloZell Green, famous for taking a bath in milk, while eating Fruit Loops—yet Obama will not meet with el-Sissi or Bibi Netanyahu to discuss the real serious issues of our day.
Shouldn’t the moral support of the United States be extended to men like el-Sissi , King Abdullah of Jordan and Netanyahu as their nations face the evil menace of ISIS, not to mention Iran?
I am certain that any other American President would certainly give el-Sissi a public forum, but not President Obama, who has proven to be an ardent supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and who used his Presidential office to insist that Mubarak step down as the country’s Prime Minister—a move that Hamas and the mullahs in Iran applauded.
However, el-Sissi arose and has protected the secular government of his country. He did not allow the virus of Islamic extremism to gain an important foothold in his part of the Middle East.
Our leaders need to have a reality check.
After ISIS beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptics, Egypt and the Libyan air forces responded by bombing several ISIS bases in Libya—much like Jordan did to ISIS after it burned a Jordanian pilot alive.
How did our President respond?
- (CNSNews.com) – The United States does not support Egyptian and Emirati airstrikes against Islamist militias in Libya because the U.S. believes the crisis in Libya must be resolved politically and without outside interference, a Department of Defense spokesman said Tuesday. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) carrying out airstrikes in Libya was different from U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant forces in Iraq, Pentagon spokesman Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby told a briefing, because the U.S. was acting in Iraq, in a “very targeted” manner, at the request of its government. “This wasn’t some unilateral decision by the United States to strike targets inside Iraq.” “We discourage other nations from taking a part in Libya’s issues through violence,” Kirby said. “We want the issues solved in Libya to be done peacefully and through good governance and politics and not violence.”[3]
Greta Van Susteren interviewed Oliver North who informed her that the Egyptian government asked the US for information on ISIS targets in Libya yesterday after ISIS beheaded 21 Christians. But, the Obama Administration refused the request. Likewise, the Obama administration refused to give Jordan information on ISIS targets in Syria after their pilot was burned alive in a cage.
How long will it take for us to realize that Obama is on the wrong side of this conflict?
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Rabbi Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista. Your signed comment may be posted in the space below or sent to michael.samuel@sdjewishworld.com