American Islam?

Here was Barack Obama in Turkey this week:

“We will convey,” said Barack Obama to the Turkish Parliament Monday, “our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world — including in my own country.”

Robert Spencer has his say on that here, and I’ve written about Western Muslims and the idea of “American Islam” in my book, “ProPiganda: Drawing the Line Against Jihad“:

American Islam?

A big part of the self-reputation of many Muslims living in the West, mainly those who were born and raised here, is that they’re good and decent human beings by virtue of Islam. But in reality, these “Muslims” reject Islamic values and embrace Western ones, whether they admit it to themselves or not. They have the luxury to credit Islam without having to suffer under Islam, under its life-suffocating Sharia Law. And their version of Islam is sometimes fancifully referred to as “American Islam,” as if there exists such an entity apart from Islam itself.

This is the kind of dangerous nonsense that allows Islam into our culture as if it were just another part of the great American melting pot. [At this moment, I can’t help but think of just one of the many threats in the Koran, one promising that pots of scalding water will be poured over the heads of Infidels who will suffer in hell for all eternity for not believing Mohammed’s lies. Ch. 44: verse 43.]

These Muslims in name only have been naturally edified by a culture that is completely foreign to the one they came from. But they did not consciously decide to reject Islamic values and embrace Western ones. The process was implicit – it happened naturally when they were exposed to Western, i.e., pro-life, values. They and we fail to realize that a good Muslim, by our standards, is a bad Muslim by Islamic standards. Western Muslims have to appreciate the stark difference between Western values and Islamic values and stop pretending that they’re one and the same. It’s simply not true. And one of the dangers that this poses for us in our defense against jihad is that objectively good human beings who identify themselves as Muslim give Islam a good face, a good name, one far better than it deserves. This gives us a false impression of what we’re facing, with just another excuse not to face it.