Written by Carol Swain, PhD

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) says its primary mission is to fight hatred, teach tolerance, and seek justice. These are noble goals for most Americans, but this is not a noble organization. It is the exact opposite. Given the SPLC’s power and influence over the media and members of Congress, this once highly-regarded civil rights organization deserves fresh scrutiny. Here are seven reasons why the SPLC fails to serve the public interest:

The SPLC ignores basic standards of scientific research in selecting and classifying hate groups and extremists. 

The SPLC’s definition of “hate” is vague. It defines a hate group as one with “beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” SPLC President Richard Cohen testified in December 2017 that its assessment of hate is based on opinion, not objective criteria. (See minutes 43-48 of his testimony.)

George Yancy, a University of North Texas sociologist, documented the SPLC’s subjective nature in a 2014 study, “Watching the Watchers.” Yancy said the group’s methodology seemed more geared to mobilizing liberals than cataloguing hate groups.

The SPLC uses guilt by association to engage in ad hominem attacks against individuals.

Hannah Scherlacher, a Campus Reform worker, found her name listed in the SPLC’s “Anti-LGBT Roundup of Events and Activities” after the conservative Family Research Council interviewed her. Surprisingly, Scherlacher’s interview had nothing to do with LGBT issues. In 2009, soon after I criticized the SPLC for having mission creep, it labeled me “an apologist for white supremacy.”

I committed the crime of endorsing a film produced by a man the SPLC considers a racist.

The SPLC ignores threats posed by leftist, anti-American groups such as ANTIFA, ISIS, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Despite the growing threat of jihadist violence, the SPLC has been reluctant to add Islamic groups with terrorist ties to its list of extremists. It also ignored how, in 2004, the FBI found plans for a “grand jihad” in America within the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America. Yet, the SPLC has applied the hate label to Muslim critics of Islam, such as Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Both are listed in its Field Guide to Muslim Extremists.

The SPLC attacks and smears mainstream public service organizations, including churches, ministries, and various pro-family entities.

Targeted organizations include the American Family Association, Alliance Defending Freedom, Act for America, the Center for Immigration Studies, Center for Security Policy, D. James Kennedy Ministries, Family Research Council, Liberty Counsel and the Traditional Values Coalition*. These groups are lumped together by the SPLC with the Aryan Nations, KKK, and neo-Nazis. Preposterous.

Note: labelling an organization as a hate group hurts its fundraising and hinders access to credit card-processing vendors, search engine rankings, and ministry partners.

The SPLC bashes conservatives while pushing a liberal agenda that empowers and supports leftists, communists, and anarchists.

The SPLC regularly bashes President Donald Trump, blaming him for the growth of white nationalism. Their analysis fails to acknowledge that the rise of white nationalism predates the election of Trump by more than two decades. Much of what the president says or does is framed as an attack on civil rights.

Curiously, after violence in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017, the SPLC republished a map detailing the location of more than 1,500 Confederate monuments and symbols. Consider the map a field guide for anarchists.

The SPLC’s labeling of groups and individuals has inspired acts of violence against its targets.

The SPLC is the common thread in two violent hate crimes against conservatives. After the SPLC listed the Family Research Council (FRC) on its hate map, Floyd Lee Corkins II entered FRC headquarters in August 2012 intending to commit mass murder. He was subdued by a security guard who was shot in the process. Likewise, James T. Hodgkinson, who in 2017 shot U.S. House Majority Whip Representative Steve Scalise (R-La.), was an SPLC social media fan.

The SPLC is an irresponsible public charity.

The SPLC has violated the public trust. Nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations are expected to operate in a nonpartisan manner with the public interest at heart. The SPLC, however, is a radical activist group dedicated to suppressing political dissent.

As of 2016, the SPLC had $319 million in net assets with $69 million parked in offshore accounts. Despite its name, the SPLC does not fight poverty. Its salaries are bloated, and only a fraction of its annual contributions are used to support its programs. Writing for Philanthropy Roundtable, a nonprofit group informing the public on philanthropic activity and groups, executive director Karl Zinsmeister wrote:

The SPLC is a cash-collecting machine. In 2015 it vacuumed up $50 million in contributions and foundation grants, a tidy addition to its $334 million holdings of cash and securities and its headquarters worth $34 million. They’ve never spent more than 31 percent of the money they were bringing in on programs, and sometimes they spent as little as 18 percent. Most nonprofits spend about 75 percent on programs.

A strong case can be made to strip the SPLC of its nonprofit, tax-exempt status.

Congress and the media need to take a fresh look at the SPLC. It no longer serves the public interest.

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[*Editor’s note: The Illinois Family Institute is also on the SPLC “hate groups” list. Read more here and here.]

Carol Swain is a former associate professor of politics at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and former professor of both political science and law at Vanderbilt University. She holds a master of studies in law from Yale University and a Ph.D from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This article was originally posted at AmericanThinker.com

Written by Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (Ret.)

In response to the July 14 Nice, France terrorist attack that killed 84, former House Speaker Newt Gringrich called for deportation of Muslims supporting sharia law. President Barack Obama immediately criticized the suggestion as “repugnant” and “un-American.”

Shariah law evolves primarily from the Koran, a body of moral and religious laws dictating almost every aspect of Muslim life. Coming from the lips of Allah, they supposedly represent perfection and are incorruptible by man’s interpretation.

However, many verses of the Koran conflict with each other. This led Muslim clerics to adopt the concept of abrogation – giving later verses preference – lest Allah be deemed imperfect!

Application of shariah should concern any rational person for various reasons including intolerance for non-Muslims, brutal punishments for sinning Muslims and oppression of women.

Why has the media failed to query Obama on such aspects of Islamic law? Why specifically should Obama believe it repugnant to oppose such intolerance, brutality and inequality simply because it is packaged as a religion?

A recent poll of young (18-29) American adherents to Islam and its law reveals a startling 26 percent believe suicide bombings are justified against non-believers, with another 15 percent more lukewarm to the idea, believing justification is warranted only “often/sometimes.” In France, among the same age group, 42 percent believe it always justified and 19 percent often/sometimes justified.

Why has the media failed to query Obama on such numbers of young people justifying violence based on their religion while he sees no connection?

As we witness a world in turmoil-caused by millions of fleeing Middle East Muslim refugees, by ungrateful Muslim immigrants expecting host nations in Europe to tolerate their religious beliefs while they refuse to reciprocate, by Muslims murdering Muslims in Muslim lands, by the West repeatedly being targeted by Muslim terrorists – only to hear Obama declare Islam is peaceful, why does the media fail to query him on his belief?

A website monitoring the number of Islamic terrorist attacks taking place globally since 9/11 records more than 28,800 occurrences. These are not acts of “violent extremism” as Obama labels them; these are calculated acts of terrorism by Muslims seeking to kill apostates or infidels in the name of their religion.

Why has the media failed to query Obama on his refusal to distinguish between violent and Islamic extremism?

In June alone, 238 such Islamic terrorist acts were committed in 33 different countries. Another source reports since 9/11, a total of 89 Islamist terror attack plots have been uncovered in the U.S.

Why has the media failed to query Obama on his refusal to link terrorism and Islam to these plots?

Muslim leaders, such as Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, have acknowledged Islam is not peaceful and in need of reform to accommodate a 21st century world. Obama has yet to support Sisi’s call for reform.

Why has the media failed to query Obama about Sisi’s call for a not-so-peaceful religion’s reformation?

Islamist threats have prompted Middle East states to start monitoring mosques in their countries (more than 3000 in Egypt and 20,000 in Saudi Arabia).

Why has the media failed to query Obama on why such monitoring is necessary if Islam is a peaceful religion?

Obama chastises our police officers for failing to acknowledge internal problems have caused deaths of black suspects during arrests.

Why has the media failed to query Obama on acknowledging his own problem – leading to far many more deaths – in refusing to recognize Islam’s violent side?

In addition to Obama, only one other American president has read the Koran. Having learned from Islam’s holy book and a Muslim ambassador in 1805 at the end of the first Barbary War that the Koran encouraged unprovoked attacks against non-Muslims, Thomas Jefferson sought funding to build a navy. His knowledge of the Koran’s mandate enabled the U.S. Navy to defeat the Muslim pirates in the second war.

Why has the media failed to query Obama on why he remains blind to Jefferson’s justified concerns about Islam’s aggressive mandate?

The Muslim Brotherhood, which declared war against America in 2010, has been embraced by Obama. This is in spite of its once-secret but still operational war plan to undermine U.S. laws by “civilization jihad,” forcing America’s submission to sharia. A 2015 poll indicates 51 percent of American Muslims seek to make this happen.

Why has the media failed to query Obama on the Brotherhood’s nefarious war plan – a president who instead of banning its leadership from the White House welcomes it? He continues to embrace it even as Congress considers legislation to join our allies in declaring it a terrorist organization.

In choosing a site to give his 2009 kumbaya speech concerning U.S. relations with the Muslim world, Obama selected Egypt’s al-Azhar University – the most influential Islamic learning center in the Sunni world. Al-Azhar endorses the centuries old “Conditions of Omar” as a mandate of the Koran by which non-Muslims are forced to convert to Islam, die or pay tribute. Astonishingly despite this Obama praised al-Azhar in his speech for carrying “the light of learning through so many centuries…”

Why has the media failed to query Obama on selecting a university of Islamic learning still adhering to non-Muslim intolerance?

Polls also report 83 percent of Palestinian Muslims, 62 percent of Jordanians and 61 percent of Egyptians approve of jihadist attacks on Americans; 1.5 million British Muslims support Islamic State; 45 percent of British Muslims say clerics preaching violence against the West is representative of “mainstream Islam;” 80 percent of young Dutch Muslims approve of holy war against non-believers.

Why has the media failed to demand Obama defend his position Islam is peaceful in the face of such overwhelming numbers revealing otherwise?

Sadly, at a time we suffer an incompetent president, we also suffer an incompetent media.

This article was originally posted at Accuracy in Media.

Written by William Kilpatrick

In a speech delivered to the Annual MAS-ICNA (Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle of North America) Convention in December 2015, Nihad Awad, the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), urged Muslim Americans to take up the cause of Black Lives Matter. “Black Lives Matter is our matter,” he said; “Black Lives Matter is our campaign.”

At the same conference, Khalilah Sabra, another activist, told the Muslim audience, “Basically you are the new black people of America… We are the “community that staged a revolution across the world. If we could do that, why can’t we have that revolution in America?” “That revolution” is apparently a reference to the “Arab Spring” revolutions which were inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood and which brought death and destruction to wide swaths of the Middle East and North Africa.

Do CAIR and other activist groups merely want to support Black Lives Matter, or do they hope to recruit blacks to their own cause? In 2014, ISIS used the protests and clashes in Ferguson, Missouri as an opportunity to attempt to recruit blacks to radical Islam. But ISIS is a known terrorist organization while CAIR, despite its shady history, is considered by many to be a moderate, mainstream Muslim organization. Thus, if it wanted to convert blacks, it would presumably want to convert them to a moderate version of Islam.

Or would it? According to Paul Sperry and David Gaubatz, the authors of Muslim Mafia, the supposedly moderate CAIR acts like an underworld cospiracy. In fact, it (along with numerous other prominent Muslim groups) was named by a U.S. court as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorist funding case. In addition, CAIR has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates. Moreover, CAIR is a direct outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is also listed as a terrorist group by the UAE, as well as by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. That’s the same Muslim Brotherhood that fomented the “Arab Spring” revolutions, the likes of which Khalilah Sabra wants to bring to America.

The move to bring black Americans into the Islamic fold actually predates CAIR and ISIS by quite a few generations. Black Muslim organizations such as Louis Farrakhan’s The Nation of Islam have been recruiting blacks to their unorthodox brand of Islam for decades. The vast majority of blacks have resisted the temptation to join, perhaps because of NOI’s overt racism, its anti-Semitism, and its criticism of Christianity. In any event, it seems that the Black Muslim movement is being gradually displaced by traditional Sunni Islam. That’s because Sunni Islam has a much better claim to legitimacy—it being a worldwide religion that traces its roots back not to a 1930s Detroit preacher named Wallace Fard Muhammad, but to a seventh century prophet named Muhammad.

Will Islam catch on with black Americans? A great many blacks in America have a strong commitment to Christianity, which serves to act as a buffer against conversion to Islam. Still, it’s likely that Islam will make more inroads into the black community than it has in the past. For one thing, traditional Islam doesn’t have the “kook” factor which keeps most blacks at a distance from The Nation of Islam. The NOI belief system includes giant space ships, an evil scientist who created a race of “white devils,” and, most recently, an embrace of Dianetics.

By contrast, traditional Islam looks much more like … well, like a traditional religion. Indeed, when approaching Christians, Islamic apologists like to play up the similarities between the two religions. Each year around Christmastime, Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s Public Relations Director, sends out a Christmas letter with the message, “We have more in common than you think.”

One of the common elements is Jesus, who is honored as a great prophet in Islam. The self-proclaimed leader of the Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas on July 7, 2016 once wrote of feeling called to follow Jesus into Islam. In November 2015, the Reverend Jeff Hood, a white leftist pastor, wrote:

I have no question that Jesus is so intimately incarnated with and connected to our Muslim friends that he has become one. If we want to walk with Jesus in this moment of extreme oppression and marginalization, we will too.

Islam is an equal-opportunity recruiter. It is open to white leftists and black boxers alike. But Islamic proselytizers may see the present moment as an opportune time to concentrate on blacks. Why is that? Perhaps mainly because our educational system has managed to convince both black and white students that America is a racist society that was built on the back of slavery. Almost all students have been indoctrinated in the narrative that America has a shameful history and heritage. For blacks, however, this version of American history is more plausible because their ancestors actually did suffer from the ravages of slavery and the humiliation of Jim Crow laws.

Nevertheless, during the Civil Rights era and afterwards, both blacks and whites worked hard to heal racial divisions. Racism—both black and white—seemed to be dying a natural death until leftists, with the aid of the media and the Obama administration, managed to resuscitate it. Despite the two-time election of a black president and the appointment or election of black Attorney Generals, black Secretaries of State, black U.S. Supreme Court justices, a black chief of Homeland Security, black mayors, and black police chiefs, a number of blacks seem convinced that white racism is the number one factor that is keeping them down.

Enter CAIR and other Muslim “civil rights” groups that are only too happy to reinforce this narrative. They profess to understand the plight of American blacks because they claim to be victims of a similar oppression—victims of colonialism, racism, and Islamophobia. Part of their pitch is that there is no discrimination in Islam. That might seem a hard sell if you’re familiar with the history of the Arab slave trade or with Islam’s own version of Jim Crow, the dhimmi system. The trouble is, those items have been dropped down the memory hole. The same teachers and textbooks that excoriate the Christian West tend to present Islam as though it were the font of all science and learning.

It might be hoped that blacks who convert will choose some milder form of Islam—something like the Sufi version practiced by Muhammad Ali after he left The Nation of Islam. Unfortunately, that’s not likely because CAIR, ISNA, and similar Islamist groups are practically the only game in town. They have successfully managed to present themselves as the official face of Islam in America, and ISNA, along with the Muslim Brotherhood-linked North American Islamic Trust, controls a majority of the major mosques.

In backing Black Lives Matter, CAIR and company run the risk that their own radicalism will be revealed. Apparently, they don’t consider that to be much of a risk. They know that the court eunuchs in the media will do their best to mainstream Black Lives Matter as a peaceful movement, just as the media has accepted the premise that CAIR itself is a mainstream, moderate organization.

CAIR can also count on President Obama to take the side of Black Lives Matter. Recently, he went so far as to compare it to the Abolitionist Movement against slavery. CAIR is no doubt confident that Obama has its back too. After all, the president made it clear from the start of his administration that he supported the Muslim Brotherhood—the “Mothership” (to borrow an NOI term) out of which CAIR sprang.

At the MSA-ICNA Convention, CAIR and associates felt safe to reveal their revolutionary side. They understand that Obama has a penchant for revolutionary causes—provided that they are leftist (the Castro brothers in Cuba) or Islamist (the “Arab Spring” revolutions) in nature. Before his first election, Obama promised a fundamental transformation of American society. CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood are also interested in a fundamental transformation. Indeed, the chief theorists of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, were heavily influenced by Lenin and by communist revolutionary thought. So was Maulana Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, the Asian equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood. “Islam,” wrote Maududi, “is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals.” He added, “‘Muslim’ is the title of that International Revolutionary Party organized by Islam to carry into effect its revolutionary program.”

That statement has to rank fairly high on the fundamental-transformation scale, and it bears a striking resemblance to the tear-it-down-to-build-it-up leftist school of thought to which Obama belongs. Whether or not the fundamental transformation that Obama desires is the same as that sought by Islamists, he does seem anxious to effect one before his term in office runs out.

The emerging confluence of interests between radical Muslim groups, radical black groups, and a leftist president bent on a radical transformation of America should give us more than pause; it should alarm us. Does Obama intend to speed up the leftward movement of American society during his remaining months in office? Does he hope to accelerate the Islamization of America through a coalition of radical black, leftist, and Islamist groups? Or does he even care what the change is, as long as it’s revolutionary in nature?

Most Americans tend to assume that we are still operating under the same rules that have governed our society since its founding. They have not come to terms with the possibility that some of our leaders are operating under a completely different set of rules—what leftist activist Saul Alinsky called “rules for radicals.”

Read more about Jeff Hood HERE.

Read more about Black Lives Matter HERE.

This article was originally posted at Crisis Magazine.

William Kilpatrick taught for many years at Boston College. He is the author of several books about cultural and religious issues, includingPsychological Seduction; Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right From Wrong; and Christianity, Islam and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West and the forthcoming The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad.  For more on his work and writings, visit his website, turningpointproject.com

We at the Center for Security Policy feel it is important for Americans to better understand– and, then, be able to successfully contend with– those that attempt to destroy or subvert our way of life. As making our nation’s enemies’ threat doctrines available is a key part of our educational efforts, we are pleased to present the blueprint for the Muslim Brotherhood in America, known as An Explanatory Memorandum: On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America or, in America’s largest terrorist prosecution in US federal court, Government Exhibit 003-0085 3:04-CR-240-G in U.S. v Holy Land Foundation, et al.

[CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD PDF]

In August of 2004, an alert Maryland Transportation Authority Police officer observed a woman wearing traditional Islamic garb videotaping the support structures of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and conducted a traffic stop. The driver was Ismail Elbarasse and detained on an outstanding material witness warrant issued in Chicago in connection with fundraising for Hamas.The FBI’s Washington Field Office subsequently executed a search warrant on Elbarasse’s residence in Annandale, Virginia. In the basement of his home, a hidden sub-basement was found; it revealed over 80 banker boxes of the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America. One of the most important of these documents made public to date was entered into evidence during the Holy Land Foundation trial. It amounted to the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic plan for the United States and was entitled, “An Explanatory Memorandum: On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.” The Explanatory Memorandum was written in 1991 by a member of the Board of Directors for the Muslim Brotherhood in North America and senior Hamas leader named Mohammed Akram. It had been approved by the Brotherhood’s Shura Council and Organizational Conference and was meant for internal review by the Brothers’ leadership in Egypt. It was certainly not intended for public consumption, particularly in the targeted society: the United States. For these reasons, the memo constitutes a Rosetta stone for the Muslim Brotherhood, its goals, modus operandi and infrastructure in America. It is arguably the single most important vehicle for understanding a secretive organization and should, therefore, be considered required reading for policy-makers and the public, alike.

Written by Dennis Prager

President Barack Obama declared in his recent address to the nation that “ISIL is not Islamic.”

But how does he know? On what basis did the president of the United States declare that a group of Muslims that calls itself the “Islamic State” is “not Islamic?”

Has he studied Islam and Islamic history and concluded that ISIL, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Jamaat-e-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba (the group that slaughtered 166 people in Mumbai, most especially guests at the Taj Hotel, and that tortured to death a rabbi and his wife), the various Palestinian terrorist groups (all of which have been Muslim, even though there are many Christian Palestinians), and the Muslim terror groups in Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere are also all “not Islamic?”

Has he concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood, which won Egypt’s most open election ever, is “not Islamic?”

And what about Saudi Arabia? Is that country “not Islamic” too?

Oh, and what about Iran? Also “not Islamic?”

Isn’t that a lot of Muslims, Muslim groups, and even nations — all of whom claim Islam as their religion — to dismiss as “not Islamic?”

To be fair: These baseless generalizations about what is and what is not Islamic started with Obama’s predecessor, President George W. Bush, who regularly announced that “Islam is a religion of peace.” And it is equally unlikely that his assertion came from a study of Islam and Islamic history.

The fact is that a study of Islamic history could not lead any fair-minded individual to conclude that all these Muslims and Islamic groups are “not Islamic.” Neither Islamic history, which, from its origins, offered vast numbers of people a choice between Islam and death, nor Islam as reflected in its greatest works would lead one to draw that conclusion.

Killing “unbelievers” has been part of — of course, not all of — Islam since its inception. Within ten years of Muhammad’s death, Muslims had conquered and violently converted whole peoples from Iran to Egypt and from Yemen to Syria. Muslims have offered conquered people death or conversion since that time.

The Hindu Kush, the vast, 500-mile-long, 150-mile-wide mountain range stretching from Afghanistan to Pakistan, was populated by Hindus until the Muslim invasions beginning around the year 1000. The Persian name Hindu Kush was proudly given by Muslims. It means “Hindu-killer.” At least 60 million Hindus were killed by Muslims during the thousand years of Muslim rule. Though virtually unknown, it may be the greatest mass murder in history next to Mao’s.

The groups named above are following some dictates of the Koran.

A few of many such examples:

“I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them” (8:12).

“When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful” (9:5).

“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth” (9:29).

There is also a different admonition in the Koran: “In matters of faith there shall be no compulsion” (2:256).

So a Muslim can also cite the Koran if he wishes to allow non-Muslims to live in peace.

The problem is that Muslim theological tradition, affirmed by many scholars, holds that later revelation to Muhammad supersedes prior revelation (a doctrine known as “abrogation”). And the Koranic verses ordering Muslims to fight and slay non-believers came after those admonishing Muslims to live with non-believers in peace and without religious compulsion.

The problem is that Muslim history, in keeping with the doctrine of abrogation, has far more often practiced the violent admonitions.

The problem is that more than 600 years after Muhammad, Ibn Khaldun, the greatest Muslim writer who ever lived, explained why Islam is the superior religion in the most highly regarded Muslim work ever written, Muqaddimah, orIntroduction to History: “In the Muslim community, the holy war is religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.”

In other words, Ibn Khaldun boasts, whereas no other religion commands converting the world through force, Islam does. Was Ibn Khaldun also “not Islamic?” And so much for the president’s other claim that “no religion condones the killing of innocents.”

None of this justifies bigotry against Muslims. There are hundreds of millions of non-Islamist Muslims (an Islamist is a Muslim who seeks to impose sharia on others), including many “cultural” or secular Muslims. And individual Muslims are risking their lives every day to provide the intelligence needed to forestall terror attacks in America and elsewhere.

It is only a call to clarity amid the falsehoods coming from the president, the secretary of state, and especially the universities.

As the courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born woman who leads a worldwide effort on behalf of Muslim women and for reforming Islam, asked in a speech at Yale University this month: If Islam is a religion of peace, why is there a sword on the Saudi flag?

If the president feels he has to obfuscate for the sake of gaining Muslim allies, so be it. But the rest of us don’t have to make believe what he said is true.

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His most recent book is Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

This article was originally posted at the NationalReview.com website.