Islam

Once upon a time, John Guandolo was an FBI agent until he was supposedly forced out after the Bureau was taken over by those with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Since then, he has gone on to become a full-time anti-Islam activist of high-regard among the Right. 

The fact that Guandolo - while working on the corruption case against former Rep. William Jefferson, engaged in a sexual relationship with a key witness and resigned before he could be questioned about it - seems to have, in no way, damaged his credibility, which is why WND is reporting Guandolo's latest claim that John Brennan, President Obama's nominee to head the CIA, converted to Islam when he served in Saudi Arabia as the "culmination of a counterintelligence operation against him to recruit him":

“Mr. Brennan did convert to Islam when he served in an official capacity on the behalf of the United States in Saudi Arabia,” Guandolo told interviewer and radio host Tom Trento.

“That fact alone is not what is most disturbing,” Guandolo continued. “His conversion to Islam was the culmination of a counterintelligence operation against him to recruit him. The fact that foreign intelligence service operatives recruited Mr. Brennan when he was in a very sensitive and senior U.S. government position in a foreign country means that he either a traitor … [or] he has the inability to discern and understand how to walk in those kinds of environments, which makes him completely unfit to the be the director of Central Intelligence.”

UPDATE: It appears that Calvin College will no longer be hosting the event.

The American Decency Association plans to host Kamal Saleem, who claims to be a former terrorist, at Calvin College as part of a tour of Michigan. Saleem’s story of working as a terrorist all over the globe has been thoroughly debunked, but he continues to be an idol of Religious Right groups. He even spoke at last year’s Values Voter Summit following Paul Ryan where he warned that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to “shut down” churches and synagogues.

Saleem has argued that President Obama is a Muslim who is using Roe v. Wade “to bring Sharia law” to the U.S. He maintains that Obama wants to make sure that “Sharia law will be supreme in America” by working with “Hamas to import Muslim people to the United States” and “legalizing terrorism.” Saleem even claims that “there are many generals who swore to destroy the United States of America are generals in the United States [military]” and that an Islamic shadow government is secretly running the U.S. through the Obama family babysitter.

He spoke at Calvin College in 2007, where he met Professor Doug Howard, who went on to write an article for Christianity Today on the “bizarre” and fantastical claims that Saleem makes in his book, The Blood of Lambs.

Because Howard, like others, raised serious doubts about Saleem’s story, Saleem has accused him of working for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Michelle Goldberg of The Daily Beast reports that “Saleem told me that Howard is an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood” and in an interview with Tim Murphy of Mother Jones, Saleem asserted that Howard supports radical Islam:

But Saleem didn't flinch. "He's related to a special group called the Muslim Brotherhood, and he works with them, he went to DC, he was with CAIR," he said.

I mentioned that Howard is a Christian, which makes him an odd fit for the Brotherhood.

"So? He's a professor of history. Islamic history professor, and he's writing on what? On Islamic history glory. So the group he's with, there are different groups. He rallied with them in DC, and he invited an Iranian radical to Calvin University. They spoke right there." That Iranian radical, it turns out, was Reza Aslan, who in addition to being an American citizen raised in the Bay Area, is famous mostly for suggesting that democracy is a useful weapon against terrorism.

("I don't know what to say! Maybe I should add that to my faculty web page," joked Howard in an email, adding that as part of his semester in DC, he took students to meet with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, AIPAC, the Mennonites Central Committee, and, yes, one trip to a mosque.)

But now, Saleem is once again set to speak at a college which he believes is employing a Muslim Brotherhood agent who is part of an alliance between professors and terrorists.

The claim that progressives and radical Islamists are secretly working together would be considered laughable if it didn’t inspire violent terrorists like Norway’s Anders Breivik and emerge as a frequent talking point among right-wing activists. Christian Broadcasting Network’s sports reporter/terrorism “expert” Erick Stakelbeck hosted Jamie Glazov of the David Horowitz Freedom Center to explain the purported alliance.

According to Glazov, both liberals and Islamic extremists “share the agenda to destroy freedom, capitalism, democracy, American and Israel” in order to establish Sharia law and communism! Liberalism and Islamism, he claims, both have “a hatred for humans for who and what they are.”

“I haven’t been this scared since I was watching eleven years old watching the Exorcist,” Glazov said, “we have our first political prisoner in the United States.” He was referring to the producer of an anti-Islam film who was put back in prison for violating his probation agreement following a bank fraud conviction.

Later, Glazov explained that Islamic-aligned leftists “are in the White House” and “infiltrating the State Department” to advance their goal of “destroying this country.”

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Earlier this year, Rep. Michele Bachmann said that Muslim Brotherhood agents had penetrated the Obama administration, which she claimed was attempting to “enforce Islamic speech codes.” While Bachmann was roundly mocked and criticized for the baseless remarks, they were a hit in conspiratorial right-wing circles. Bachmann took her crusade against the supposed Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the government to Jan Markell’s radio show this weekend, where she again claimed that Obama is “aiding and abetting” radical Islamist groups.

Markell is an End Times broadcaster and a close ally of Bachmann, who attended her “Understanding the Times” conference this year. She has previously claimed that Mattel’s Little Mommy Cuddle ‘n Coo doll is promoting Islam to children, demanded the government begin monitoring mosques and in 2007 predicted a terrorist attack as a result of a Hindu prayer in the U.S. Senate. Markell has also suggested that a tornado in Minnesota was a “warning from God” meant to punish the Lutheran Church for affirming gay pastors and alleged that the deadly 2011 earthquake in Japan was divine judgment.

Markell charged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, and Barger said that the supposed rise of Sharia law in the U.S. is proof that the Antichrist is coming.

Markell: Hillary, she’s a woman from Arkansas who used to be an attorney and rose to the White House, why would somebody like Hillary Clinton let herself get embroiled in things that are so Islamic? I’ve done entire programs on her assistant Huma Abedin connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. Why do you think someone like Hillary is getting so enmeshed in all things Muslim Brotherhood that this is absolutely a danger to the nation at this point because of the intricate nature of Muslim Brotherhood, Washington D.C., homeland security, national security, the State Department and the rabbit trails just keep going, and everybody is wondering who has looked into these kinds of issues, what is in the mind of somebody like Hillary Clinton that she is willing to sacrifice the safety of the nation by getting so embroiled in Muslim Brotherhood?

Barger: Jan, it is simply baffling to me. To be honest with you, I’ve thought about that so much and I’ve been living with this research now for several weeks that we’re using on the air. Somebody has her ear, obviously; maybe she is convinced that she can be a catalyst for world peace. You know, if you understand Islam at all you understand that the goal is not world peace, this is world domination, they have said it over and over; it’s in the Koran.

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Barger: Can you imagine Sunday sermons across our land soon being scrutinized by a panel by religious examiners to see if the words used pass the left-wing litmus test or the Muslim litmus test or however it’s viewed, to see if they become hate crimes or to see who would be called a renegade preacher is really just inciting his people? That’s where we’re going and eventually that’s the case Antichrist will make against people who disagree with him and who would stand against him and stand against everything that he will stand for. The thought police have now moved to the mouth and I think we need to see that and understand it. How soon will our legal ability to witness and defend the faith and preach the unadulterated Gospel be hampered or stopped? This is the important question, you see.

During the interview, Bachmann warned that Israel and the American people are in grave danger due to President Obama’s purported support of radical Islamists: “President Obama, if you look at nearly every decision he has made about this issue, it is to lift up the Islamists and to take down Israel.”

She also claimed that the Obama administration’s supposed “Islamic speech codes” could be “deadly for the American people.”

Bachmann also told Barger that everyone who is not an Islamist will “lose their right of speech and expression” as there is “no tolerance for dissent or disagreeing in any way with the goals or the beliefs of the Islamists.”

Bachmann: Not just verbal speech, but written, a cartoon, a painting, whatever it is, if it is in any way construed as being against Islam that is where the confrontation comes from the Islamist world and they want to stop anyone in the world from saying anything negative about Islam. Which means there is only one free speech right and that would belong to the Islamists. Everyone else would lose their right of speech and expression.

The reason why this is important is because this is the whole game, it is game over if we who are in the non-Islamist world lose the right to criticize what the Islamist does, because the Islamist tries to advocate Islamic Sharia law and so anything that we would say in the future, once you criminalized anti-Islamic speech, anything that we would say that would be critical in any way of anything Islam does would be considered criminalized. That’s why I say it is game over; the Islamists will have won everything. That’s why they are willing to put ten years into achieving this objective of silencing any form of dissent to Islam.

Barger: That goes right along with the idea that in Islam you are either a member of the house of peace or the house of war, there is no live and let live or peaceful coexistence.

Bachmann: There is no tolerance. There is no tolerance for dissent or disagreeing in any way with the goals or the beliefs of the Islamists, there is only one way.

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Bachmann: Once you take away people’s ability to be able to speak, this is not a small right, this is everything, it is game over because then all of the power and authority has been given over to the Islamist. The Islamist is the only one who gets to dictate what we can say and what we can do, and what we can print and what we not print, and who can assembly and how they can assemble, because at that point Sharia Islamic law in effect becomes the law of the land because the Islamist gets to have the authority, not anyone who opposes Islam. This is a very, very important issue.

She accused the Obama administration of supporting the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s advocacy of blasphemy laws, which the U.S. unambiguously opposed. Bachmann said that Americans must study Islamic materials in the same way people studied Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf during WWII and alleged that a letter from Muslim-American groups [PDF] regarding anti-Muslim instructional material is “proof positive” that the Obama administration wants to introduce Sharia law to the U.S.

Bachmann: That’s what I spent my whole year doing was talking about this issue of what the OIC was trying to do with their ten year plan and all of these efforts in the Obama administration. The only conclusion you could make is that they are embracing the ten year plan and are supporting it and that’s why this October 19 document is so important because that is proof positive that every piece that is put into place is leading to one direction, this isn’t deviating it’s leading to one direction, and that ultimate goal it seems to be is to allow for mandating, following, every demand of the Islamist and we know what their ultimate demand is.

Barger: Sharia law.

Bachmann: That’s right. That’s why we need to know what their belief system is; we need to know what they truly believe. That’s why the most important thing a person could do in WWII was to read the book that the leader of Germany wrote.

Barger: Mein Kampf.

Bachmann: Because he laid out very clearly what his intention was, he wasn’t hiding it, the Islamist does the same thing. They do not hide it, they lay it out very clearly. But what we’ve never seen before is the United States aiding and abetting that goal.

Bachmann concluded by making the absurd claim that Obama and Clinton are going to do away with people’s First Amendment rights and “take away the free speech rights of the American people.”

Barger: We know that our Constitution certainly doesn’t match what the OIC and the Muslim Brotherhood want, nor what the United Nations seems to be doing with Resolution 16/18 and with some other things that are going on there. How much should we worry about executive orders and how they might become, instead of the legislation that should be passed through Congress, might become the law of the land that way?

Bachmann: We’ve already seen that President Obama has given himself a very free hand at writing any executive order that he wants because he said it himself that if the United States Congress won’t agree with him, he’ll just take matters into his own hand and he’ll become his own Congress and he’ll sign his own executive order and thereby put into practical effect a law that he wants to see passed. This is completely against our Constitution.

But even more importantly, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton she helped to formulate and write and pass UN Resolution 16/18, which calls for the criminalization—anti-free speech measures. This is very concerning that she went down that road. It doesn’t specifically say Islam, it talks about religious speech, but let’s face it there is only one religion that the OIC—the Organization of Islamic Cooperative [sic]—cares about and that’s Islam. Hillary Clinton was involved from the very beginning in writing this resolution. She’s already signed this. While a UN resolution doesn’t bind United States law, how in the world could the President allow the Secretary of State to sign a resolution that indicates that we are willing to take away the free speech rights of the American people?

This is game over, as I’ve said before, because when you limit the right to dissent from the American people, the Founders made this the First Amendment because they understood this is our most sacred right, our right to speak, our right to practice our faith the way that we want to, the right to publish what we want to publish, the right to assemble and talk about whatever we want to talk about. That’s freedom, that’s the essence of freedom, that’s the First Amendment, and that is what UN Resolution 16/18 which Hillary Clinton signed, presumably with the affirmation of President Obama, and that’s the first step in a big step for taking away from you and me and all of your listeners our right of free speech and expression, religious practice, freedom of assembly, freedom of the printing press but even more importantly, it will empower the Islamist to use that against us.

Either Bachmann never read UN Resolution 16/18 or is simply misrepresenting it, as the resolution [PDF] actually defends the freedom of religion while at the same time expressing “deep concern” over religious intolerance, discrimination and violence.

Human Rights First also debunks the assertion that the resolution somehow curtails freedom of speech:

Myth 1: The U.N. resolution opens the door to limiting freedom of speech.

Wrong. The resolution acknowledges the language of article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), notably that “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.” It calls on states to take measures “consistent with their obligations under international human rights law, to address and combat such incidents.”

The United States has a reservation to that provision, to the extent that it violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, so it is not bound by the obligation. In fact, the U.S. has the highest threshold of free speech in the world, and the U.S. government has expressed no intention of lowering those standards. However, that does not exempt all other states from their legal obligations to fight “incitement, hostility or violence” according to article 20 of the ICCPR. After all, that is what they signed up to, so they have an obligation by law to honor their commitment.

In all respects though, the implementation of Article 20 must not infringe Article 19, which reasserts everyone’s right to freedom of expression. Rather than imposing new restrictions on freedom of speech, which it does not, the new consensus resolution opens the door to an action-oriented approach to fighting religious intolerance. That is very consistent with the U.S. policies and practices – combat violence, discrimination and hatred without restricting freedom of speech. Resolution 16/18 urges states to train government officials to address religious tensions, to harmonize actions at local and national level, to raise awareness of negative stereotyping of persons, to promote interfaith and intercultural dialogue, to foster religious freedom and to speak out against intolerance (among other recommendations. The only limitation on speech that is in the operative part of the resolution is incitement to “imminent violence”, which is in accordance with US law.

Phony ex-terrorist Kamal Saleem last week promoted his discredited book, The Blood of Lambs, on pastor Rick Joyner’s show Prophetic Perspectives on Current Events, where he said that the left and an Islamic “shadow government” have formed an “unholy alliance” against him. Saleem has a tendency to accuse his detractors of working on behalf of radical Islamists, even accusing a Christian professor at Calvin College who has debunked his work of being a Muslim Brotherhood agent. Indeed, Saleem believes that Hillary Clinton, college professors, generals in the U.S. military and Obama’s babysitter are all aiding Islamic extremists.

He claimed that major Muslim-American political and affinity groups “are fronts of the Muslim Brotherhood and operate government places linked together to create a shadow government inside the United States of America.”

“Today we the enemy of Islam, the liberal movement, the socialist movement, the communist movement, the women movement, Cod Pink, all of them are coming against me, the Occupy, all of these are coming against me,” he later told Joyner. “They have unholy alliances together with Islam, whether it’s homosexual or baby-killer, all these have unholy alliances.”

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On yesterday's radio program, Bryan Fischer speculated that now that former CIA Director David Petraeus has resigned from his position following revelations that he had engaged in an extra-marital affair, he'd now be free to tell the truth about what happen in Benghazi, Libya and, by doing so, "could bring Obama presidency down." 

The real tragedy, Fischer insisted, about the whole Benghazi issue was that the "completely innocent civilian" behind the anti-Islam film that was initially blamed for setting off riots in Muslim countries has now been sent to prison for violating an "Obama de facto blasphemy law against criticizing Islam, criticizing the prophet":

Of course, the man in question was really sent back to prison for violating the terms of his probation stemming from a bank fraud conviction by "using aliases, fraudulently obtaining a California driver's license under an assumed name and lying to probation officers."

During a speech at Rick Joyner’s MorningStar Ministry, phony ex-terrorist and Values Voter Summit headliner Kamal Saleem said that the Obama administration has established a stealth Islamic “shadow government” to control the United States. Saleem repeated many of usual claims in his address, including his belief that Hillary Clinton is planning to shut down churches and that even U.S. military leaders are working on the behalf of radical Islamists, but now he contends that “Islam is creeping into our government and a shadow government has been established by our current government and now they are a leader within.”

Saleem alleged that Obama’s top speech writer and Sasha and Malia's babysitter are both Islamic fundamentalists that are wielding secret power. “The right-hand of our President today, his name is Hasan Rashad, and he is sworn to destroy the United States of America,” Saleem said (possibly referring to OIC representative Rashad Hussain), “our President’s babysitter wears abaya and keffiyeh just like those ninjas, you don’t see her face everything is covered, that’s the babysitter of his children.”

“America, wake up and smell the hummus,” Saleem warned. He then falsely asserted that the Democratic National Convention invited “20,000 Muslims” and said the convention was filled with “socialism, Islamism, communism, fascism, homosexuality and lesbianism, and Code Pink, which is abortionists and what so have you, and now we kick God out of our nation.”

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He also described to listeners his prophesy where two eagles were screaming at each other, which he said it means that: “the Lord said America is in trouble and the Church has cried, and I’ve heard their cry and tell them, help is on the way.” But God also told him “9/11 was a disgrace to me, after I saved the nation they turned their back on me and went back to their vomit,” and it is now up to Saleem to spread this message to America.

WorldNetDaily’s intrepid birther Jerome Corsi is out with a new report today, in which he uncovers that President Obama’s wedding band is actually inscribed with the Arabic for “There is no god except Allah.”

Corsi’s source for this revelation? None other than all-purpose anti-Obama conspiracy theorist Joel Gilbert. Gilbert has recently achieved some success with his film “Dreams From My Real Father,” in which he claims that the president’s real father was labor activist and communist organizer Frank Marshall Davis. The film is currently being sent to households around Ohio, with the help of an undisclosed source of funding, and recently received the enthusiastic endorsement of the chairman of the Alabama Republican Party. Gilbert, apparently, believes that Obama is not only a hard-core Marxist, but also a secret Muslim:

"Dreams from My Real Father” producer Joel Gilbert, an Arabic speaker and an expert on the Middle East, was the first to conclude that Obama’s ring, reportedly from Indonesia, bore an Islamic inscription

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Filmmaker Joel Gilbert, an expert on Islamic history, noted Obama wore the ring during his high-profile speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009, in the first months of his presidency.

“Now we have a new context for what Obama meant when he told the Islamic audience in Cairo that he has ‘known Islam on three continents,” Gilbert said. “He also told the Cairo audience that he considered it part of his responsibility as president of the United States ‘to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.’ All religious Muslims are by definition required to defend Islam.”

Before he turned his attention to the president’s supposed Communist genetics, Gilbert directed a number of Bob Dylan documentaries and “Atomic Jihad,” a film accusing President Obama of appeasing Iran.

Corsi has previously speculated that the same ring, which the president has been pictured wearing before his marriage to Michelle Obama, is proof that he was once married to his male Pakistani roommate.

 We know that when Michele Bachmann speaks, even fact-checkers can’t fully cover all of her dubious and debunked claims in just a single article. Now that Bachmann is completely engrossed in promoting her latest conspiracy theory focusing on the supposed Muslim Brotherhood “penetration” of the US government, she took to The Janet Mefferd Show to misrepresent President Obama’s address to the United Nations General Assembly to claim that Obama is not only refusing to defend the freedom of speech but may be even actively backing the curtailment of speech rights in favor of Sharia law.

The congresswoman told Mefferd that Islamic countries may be using “riots and terrorism” to ensure that “Sharia law will dominated over our United States Constitution.” “Our president either doesn’t know what’s happening or he’s playing along with what their goal is,” Bachmann said. “Either option is very dangerous for the free speech rights and the protection and safety of the American people.”

She also failed to mention that when Obama criticized “those who slander the prophet of Islam” it was part of a larger chastisement of religious bigotry, including against desecration of images of Jesus Christ, the destruction of churches and Holocaust denial.

Bachmann: We have just had four Americans killed, including two marines and an ambassador, and our President says to the UN the future does not belong to those who speak against the prophet? We need to remember that the fifty-seven Muslim governments across the world have what they call a ten year plan, it began in 2005 and their goal by 2015 is to criminalize any speech anywhere in the world that speaks against Islam or against the Prophet Mohammad. This is their plan. So their pretext is to find something they can point to and then have riots and terrorism and then force the rest of us to give up our free speech rights so that then that means their law, Sharia law, will dominate over our United States Constitution. That’s really what’s happening. Our president either doesn’t know what’s happening or he’s playing along with what their goal is. Either option is very dangerous for the free speech rights and the protection and safety of the American people.

Bachmann also maintained that Obama was simultaneously fashioning himself to be “‘Emperor of the World,’ telling the world what to do,” while also catering to the wishes of Muslim countries. She said that the President refused to make clear that “under no circumstances will the United States ever subvert the Constitution to Sharia law” and did not “articulate American values” against the coming global Islamic caliphate.

Bachmann: It almost sounds like he’s trying to speak as “‘Emperor of the World,’ telling the world what to do, as opposed to being the President of the United States who should be adamant and say it’s outrageous that these Islamist countries should be calling on the United States to take away the constitutional protections of the American people. This is very important to think that the United States would restrict speech of Americans. Now the president did talk in his remarks about the fact that we do have a constitutional right to free speech but really the only focus of that speech should have been under no circumstances will the United States ever subvert the Constitution to Sharia law. We didn’t get that kind of a forceful statement from our President.

Mefferd: No and that goes back to the day right after the consulate attack I think Mitt Romney did so much better than the President himself and saying we’re Americans, we believe in free speech, this was unacceptable. From Obama, it was sort of a ‘Chris Stevens was a really great guy’ and that was about it.

Bachmann: It was; it was ridiculous. Here we’ve been attacked, these were acts of war, what happened to us in Cairo, what happened to us in Libya, these were acts of war. Again, don’t forget these fifty-seven Muslim governments have a ten year plan: their goal is to criminalize speech against Islam. Why? Because they intend to establish a Caliphate, an Islamic government, across the entire world so that it isn’t just our speech rights that we would give up, we would have to give up all rights eventually and we would have to conform to Sharia law, the Islamic law. As women know, this would be a disaster for women, for freedom, for free speech. We’re not an Islamic nation, people can believe whatever they want to believe here, but we’re not an Islamic nation, we believe in freedom and I only wish our President would articulate American values. That’s one thing we’re getting from Mitt Romney, we are not getting it from Barack Obama. I’ll say it again, I believe he is the most dangerous president we have ever had on foreign policy and for that reason alone he must not have a second term.

Clearly, Bachmann missed the part in Obama’s speech (or all of it) where he forcefully defended the freedom of speech, expression, and religion as American values and unambiguously rejected violent extremism and discrimination against women and minorities.

I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video. And the answer is enshrined in our laws: Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.

Here in the United States, countless publications provoke offense. Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs. As President of our country and Commander-in-Chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day -- (laughter) -- and I will always defend their right to do so.

Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views, even views that we profoundly disagree with. We do not do so because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views and practice their own faith may be threatened. We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities. We do so because given the power of faith in our lives, and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression; it is more speech -- the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.

Now, I know that not all countries in this body share this particular understanding of the protection of free speech. We recognize that. But in 2012, at a time when anyone with a cell phone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button, the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete. The question, then, is how do we respond?

And on this we must agree: There is no speech that justifies mindless violence. There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents. There’s no video that justifies an attack on an embassy. There’s no slander that provides an excuse for people to burn a restaurant in Lebanon, or destroy a school in Tunis, or cause death and destruction in Pakistan.

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The future must not belong to those who target Coptic Christians in Egypt -- it must be claimed by those in Tahrir Square who chanted, “Muslims, Christians, we are one.” The future must not belong to those who bully women -- it must be shaped by girls who go to school, and those who stand for a world where our daughters can live their dreams just like our sons.

The future must not belong to those corrupt few who steal a country’s resources -- it must be won by the students and entrepreneurs, the workers and business owners who seek a broader prosperity for all people. Those are the women and men that America stands with; theirs is the vision we will support.

The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.

Let us condemn incitement against Sufi Muslims and Shiite pilgrims. It’s 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.” Together, we must work towards a world where we are strengthened by our differences, and not defined by them. That is what America embodies, that’s the vision we will support.