{"id":111,"date":"2009-06-04T14:34:06","date_gmt":"2009-06-04T14:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/06\/a-challenge-to-islam-bashers.html"},"modified":"2009-06-04T14:34:06","modified_gmt":"2009-06-04T14:34:06","slug":"a-challenge-to-islam-bashers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/06\/a-challenge-to-islam-bashers.html","title":{"rendered":"A Challenge to Islam-Bashers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To conservatives who this morning are decrying Obama&#8217;s Cairo speech for making nice with Islam, I would ask, realistically, what would you have had him say? Should he have condemned Islam, really raked it over the coals, as some conservative bloggers never tire of doing? If you had been asked to write the speech, please tell me how you would have the President of the United States address the Islamic world. <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">If it would have been your preference that he stand up there before the red curtain and let Muslims have it, how would that have helped our country or anyone else&#8217;s?<\/span> Realistically, now.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I think <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\"><a href=\"http:\/\/corner.nationalreview.com\/post\/?q=ZmVkNWE3MDdkY2Q0Mzg0OTUzNTg1YzU5YTA0M2VkYzQ=\">NR<\/a><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/corner.nationalreview.com\/post\/?q=ZmVkNWE3MDdkY2Q0Mzg0OTUzNTg1YzU5YTA0M2VkYzQ=\">&#8216;s Rich Lowry<\/a> has it exactly right:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p>The speech was an act of diplomacy and as such, it inevitably was going to skate over some inconvenient truths and tilt its presentation in a way to try to make it more persuasive to its target audience. Fundamentally, Obama&#8217;s goal was to tell the Muslim world, &#8220;We respect and value you, your religion and your civilization, and only ask that you don&#8217;t hate us and murder us in return.&#8221; Bush tried to deliver the same message over and over again. The difference with Obama is that people might actually be willing to listen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To conservatives who this morning are decrying Obama&#8217;s Cairo speech for making nice with Islam, I would ask, realistically, what would you have had him say? Should he have condemned Islam, really raked it over the coals, as some conservative bloggers never tire of doing? If you had been asked to write the speech, please&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-faiths"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Challenge to Islam-Bashers - Kingdom of Priests<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/06\/a-challenge-to-islam-bashers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Challenge to Islam-Bashers - Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"To conservatives who this morning are decrying Obama&#8217;s Cairo speech for making nice with Islam, I would ask, realistically, what would you have had him say? Should he have condemned Islam, really raked it over the coals, as some conservative bloggers never tire of doing? If you had been asked to write the speech, please&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/06\/a-challenge-to-islam-bashers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-06-04T14:34:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Klinghoffer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Challenge to Islam-Bashers - Kingdom of Priests","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/06\/a-challenge-to-islam-bashers.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Challenge to Islam-Bashers - Kingdom of Priests","og_description":"To conservatives who this morning are decrying Obama&#8217;s Cairo speech for making nice with Islam, I would ask, realistically, what would you have had him say? Should he have condemned Islam, really raked it over the coals, as some conservative bloggers never tire of doing? 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His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Jewish Forward. A California native, he currently lives on Mercer Island, Washington, with his wife and five children.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/author\/dklinghoffer"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}