Free The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy by Erick Stakelbeck Page B

ultimately make us safer. 41
     
    I’m sure the al-Qaeda–linked terrorists who stormed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and slaughtered four Americans were given pause by the fact that Barack Obama has a sister who is half-Indonesian. Ditto for Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, the Boston bombers, and the Taliban jihadists who are killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
    ■ 2007 was also the year that New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a fawning profile of the future president called “Obama: Man of the World.” In one passage from the piece, the smitten Kristof managed—unknowingly—to capture everything that is wrong with Obama’s approach to the Muslim world:
    He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school, but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics—and more likely to be aware of their nationalism—if he once studied the Koran with them.
    Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” 42
     
    It’s all there: Obama’s reverence for Islamic culture, his determination to prove his Islamophile bona fides (“Hey, I love the Arabic call to prayer! And guess what? My sister is half-Indonesian!”), and his—and Kristof’s— assumption that Koran classes taken as a small boy in Indonesia some forty years ago left Obama uniquely equipped to improve relations with the Muslim world.
    Don’t you see, Muslims? Your friend Barry gets it . He gets you ! Why, just look at his close relationship with Rashad Hussain. 43 In 2010, on naming Hussain as “special envoy” to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Obama gushed that Hussain was “a hafiz of the Qur’an.” 44 Which means Hussain can recite the entire Koran from memory. Obama neglected to mention Hussain’s troubling links to groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. 45
    ■ In January 2009, Obama chose to give the Arabic-language network Al-Arabiya the first formal interview of his presidency as part of his stated effort to improve America’s image in the Muslim world. It was the beginning of the Obama Global Apology Tour. During the interview, he again stressed his family ties to Islam and criticized America: “all too often the United States starts by dictating—in the past on some of these issues—and we don’t always know all the factors that are involved,” said the Apologist-in-Chief. “[T]he language [Americans] use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.” 46 The result of Obama’s pandering? Polls show that the United States is more unpopular than ever in the Muslim world . 47
    ■ In April 2009 at the G-20 Summit in London, President Obama bowed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia as other Western leaders looked on in shock. Heck, even Abdullah looked surprised. This was an act of full on, he-must-have-lost-a-contact lens prostration by an American president to an Islamist despot whose government has spent billions spreading radical Islamism around the world. As I wrote of “The Bow” in my 2011 book, The Terrorist Next Door :
    Obama’s shameless act of groveling, performed in one of his first forays onto the international stage, signaled that debasing America and exalting Islam would be key elements in achieving his oft-stated goal of improving America’s image in the Muslim world.
    . . . From Riyadh to London to Jakarta and beyond, Islamists saw Obama’s bow to Abdullah and smiled broadly. To them, The Bow—and the steady stream of pandering, pro-Islamic policies that have followed from the Obama White House—represented a green light to further expand their tentacles into the United States....
    No Islamist entity has seized upon the