Tag: islam and the us

Elections Matter!

chasdarwinLeave a comment

Alternet:

Change: “…he also spoke of a knowledge deficit about Islam in the U.S. and the West, and said that “we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.”
Obama intends to DISTANCE himself from the policies of his predecessor, the wildly UNPOPULAR George W. Bush, and present a new image to the Muslim and Arab worlds. 

SEE: http://www.alternet.org/world/140444/bush_left_america’s_standing_in_the_mideast_at_rock_bottom_–_can_obama_turn_it_around_in_cairo/

From McClatchy:

CAIRO — President Barack Obama, courting Muslims internationally, said Thursday that the United States does not accept the legitimacy of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory and that “just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s.”

In a speech he conceived well before his election last November, aimed at repositioning U.S. standing in the Middle East in the wake of the Iraq war, and drafted with the help of prominent Muslim-Americans, Obama told an audience at Cairo University that “I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.”

The relationship, he said, should be founded on mutual interests and respect and “the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition.”

see: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/

To Improve relations with Islamic Peoples and Nations, let’s go back to 1797

chasdarwinLeave a comment

Our new Secretary of State, Ms. Hillary Clinton, has announced that a goal of the United States is to improve our image with countries which champion Islam.  One way to achieve this noble ambition would be to brush off the Treaty of Tripoli, created during the Washington administration and signed by President John Adams in 1797.  It involved a form of terrorism – piracy on the high seas – and contained an idea very familiar to the founders of our then young nation:

“Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

from http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/treaty_tripoli.html