Are Muslims Tolerant, As Obama Claims?

Islamofascism: President Obama seems to be under the illusion the Muslim world is more tolerant than the West.  Its immigration policies are perhaps the clearest evidence that's wildly untrue.

Referring to the Muhammad video during his U.N. speech last week, Obama lectured Americans about "intolerance" toward Islam.  "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam," he said.  "It is time to heed the words of Gandhi: 'Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.'"

He actually believes Muslims have heeded those words. "Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance," he intoned during his 2009 Cairo speech.  "Throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality."

Obama must have learned his history at that Jakarta madrassa he attended.

We won't litigate the ugly past of Islam here.  We don't have to: A 2010 congressional study found that 20 of the 23 nations that ban Christian religious workers are  -  surprise  -  Muslim nations.

Egypt,Saudi Arabia and most other Middle Eastern countries still refuse to offer religious visas and deny entry to U.S. clergy as official policy, according to the report by the Law Library of Congress, the foreign legal research arm of the U.S. Congress.

Even U.S. allies Afghanistan and Iraq, which have enshrined Islam in their constitutions, made the list.  "Of this group, the vast majority constitute Arab or Muslim states," the three-page report said.  "Since Islam prohibits proselytism by other religions, foreign religious workers will in effect be denied entry to conduct religious work."

Yet the U.S. State Department continues to grant R-1 religious visas for Islamic clerics from Muslim nations  -  including jihadist hotbeds Egypt and Saudi  -  even though we've had to arrest a number of these foreign imams for inciting anti-American violence.  Muslim countries discriminate against us based on religion, but we don't discriminate against them  -  even when it's totally justified.

Homeland Security considers visiting imams as non-threatening as Buddhist monks. Border agents don't screen them any differently.  Also, R-2 visas are routinely granted to relatives of foreign imams.  Most overstay their visas without consequence, even as they radicalize Muslims at our mosques  -  Islamic centers often built with Saudi money and run by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

In contrast, Saudi religious police in recent years have accused dozens of foreign Christians living in the kingdom of worshipping in their homes, and ordered them deported.  Non-Muslim "infidels" have to take a separate highway into the "holy city" of Mecca.  And they are banned from Islamic shrines.

Bibles are confiscated at the airport.

In Egypt, meanwhile, more than 100,000 Christians have fled the country since Egypt's new president Mohamed Morsi and the Brotherhood took over and started torching churches and jailing Coptics.  Yet Morsi had the gall to scold Americans about "Islamophobia" as he gave his own speech in New York before the U.N.  He demanded respect for "Islamic sanctities" even as his Islamofascist thugs burn Christian sanctuaries.

Americans have been remarkably tolerant toward Muslims, considering they account for over 80% of all terrorism convictions in America.  The FBI says hate crimes against Muslims in America have dropped 50% since 2001, and have always been well below hate crimes against Jews.

Speaking of Jews, Morsi has called them "descendents of apes and pigs" and called for the destruction of their homeland. 

So who's more tolerant, Mr. President, the Muslim world or America?  It's not even a contest.  You're lecturing the wrong people.

Editorial, Invenstors Business Daily, Sept. 28, 2012