Question: President Obama has recently stated..."America is not-and never will be-at war with Islam." At the same time, we have seen the shooting of two U.S. soldiers outside a recruiting office by a convert to Islam. What do you think?

Question: President Obama has recently stated, "If you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." He also seems to be apologizing for America's cultural "arrogance" and no longer refers to the "war on terror." Instead, he speaks about the need to learn about Islam and repeated a statement he made in Turkey in April 2009. "In Ankara, I made clear that America is not--and never will be--at war with Islam." At the same time, we have seen the shooting of two U.S. soldiers outside a recruiting office by a convert to Islam. What do you think?

Response: Whether or not we acknowledge it, we are indeed at war with those promoting the core beliefs of Islam. Some people were shocked with the release of a report in 2008 showing "Nearly one third of Muslim students believe it can be acceptable to kill in the name of religion, according to a survey published [July 27, 2008]. It also found that 40 percent want to see the introduction of Islamic sharia law in Britain, 40 percent think it wrong for Muslim men and women to mix freely together, and 33 percent want to see a worldwide Islamic government based on sharia law." ("One third of British Muslim students say it's acceptable to kill for Islam," This is London, July 28, 2008). It must be borne in mind that these are not recent immigrants but many who had been raised and educated in English schools and who have long interacted with English culture.

Their attitudes really should not be surprising, as jihad is something openly advocated by Islam: "Allah's Apostle was asked, 'What is the best deed?' He replied, 'To believe in Allah and His Apostle (Muhammad).' The questioner then asked, 'What is the next (in goodness)?' He replied, 'To participate in Jihad [religious war] in Allah's Cause'" (The Hadith, Volume 1, Book 2, Number 25).

In what has been described as Obama's sugarcoating of "the pathologies of the Islamic world," the president glossed over the tyranny of its various regimes, its very vocal hatred of Jews, and the institutionalized intolerance in its societies. It must be remembered that Islamic eschatology demands the complete and utter destruction of every Jew from the face of the earth. The pronouncements in the hadith and other writings have not been hidden but are often quoted by their religious teachers: "...Allah's Apostle said, 'The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say, "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him"'" (Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177). "The Hour" being "established" means, "the last day [the day of resurrection] will not come" until the last Jew hiding is located and killed. (One must profess belief in the "last day" to be a Muslim.)

To be fair, the president did say (regarding the inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank), "They have to deal with incitement issues. There's still a tendency, even within --among Palestinians who say they are interested in peace with Israel, to engage in statements that are--that incite a hatred of Israel or are not constructive to the peace process. Now I think, to his credit, President Abbas has made progress on this issue--but not enough" (Remarks by U.S. President Barack Obama [June 5] at a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at Dresden Castle, Germany). It is disappointing, however, that these same remarks were not emphasized more during the speech in Cairo to those who needed most to hear them. Further, the PLO has never removed the clause.

Although no one would disagree that the Arabs of Gaza must abandon their plans for the destruction of Israel (something still contained in the Palestinian Charter), how can the incitement "of hatred" cease, inasmuchas it is a core value of the religion taught by Muhammad?

Consider the case of the convert to Islam who recently shot two U.S. soldiers at a recruiting center in Arkansas. He was described as "the latest in a series of Muslim converts accused of planning or launching violent attacks in the U.S., part of what security experts call an alarming domestic trend" (Abrams, Fox News Online, 06/02/09: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,524799,00.html). After converting to Islam as a teenager and changing his name in March 2006 to Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the young man went to Yemen in 2007 to teach English. "There, 'he felt at peace with these people,' even marrying a Yemeni," and was reported to have "studied jihad with an Islamic scholar" (Ibid.), before ending up in a Yemeni prison, where it is alleged that he was tortured and brainwashed into becoming a jihadist for Islam.

He may have felt at peace "with these people," but he came back from Yemen with a plan to target others as he practiced jihad. Because of this, we do need to learn the real nature of Islam and avoid the popular, though fallacious, "understanding" promoted by the president and, unfortunately, past presidents.

The 1968 amended text of the Palestinian Charter contained a number of clauses calling for the destruction of Israel. Prior to the 1993 Oslo Accords, PLO Chairman Arafat agreed that those clauses would be removed from the document. The Palestine National Council voted on April 26, 1996, to nullify or amend all such clauses. President Clinton received a further letter from Arafat in 1998 listing the same clauses to be removed. Nevertheless, a new Charter with these clauses actually removed has never been produced. In 2002, PLO Foreign Minister Farouk Kaddoumi acknowledged that the PLO National Covenant (with its many clauses calling for violence and the destruction of Israel) has never been changed (http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29242).

Concerning his remarks that the United States is "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world," depending upon actual population data, there are 30-35 countries with a larger percentage and population of Muslims.