Obama as usual, just speaking to the wrong people at Muslim Mosque.

King O Misaims at mosque

 By Kevin OBrien

President Barack Obama visited a mosque in Baltimore on Wednesday that probably shouldn't have been his first choice.

The mosque, the Islamic Society of Baltimore, had been thoroughly vetted — by no less than the FBI, which has watched it for years and even had an undercover agent skulking about the place for a while.

The FBI's interest was piqued when one of the mosque's members turned up with a plan to bomb an Army recruiting post. Where he would get such an idea is anybody's guess, although the FBI had a notion that he got it while attending the Islamic Society of Baltimore. He's now doing 25 years in prison.

But, hey, one bad apple, right?

Obama made his visit to demonstrate that the rest of the barrel is fully worthy of the trust of non-Muslims everywhere and the affection of all Americans. And maybe it is. It's hard to say for sure, though Obama refuses to admit that it's hard to say for sure.

Obama specializes in saying things for sure that are actually in dispute. That trait just about always shows up in his pronouncements about what is or is not proper Islamic belief and practice.

His predecessor, George W. Bush, took the same approach.

Presidents want Americans to understand that the fundamental tenets of Islam do not condone acts of terrorism. They do not condone suicide. So suicide bombings that take innocent lives are not OK. Flying hijacked airliners into skyscrapers is all wrong, according to the fundamental tenets of Islam.

Americans get that. The problem is terrorists don't.

Terrorists operate by violating the fundamental tenets of Islam. So every time radicalized Muslims shoot up a roomful of innocents or bombard a shopping mall, Americans are bombarded in the media, with citations from the Koran and the Hadith — injunctions against murder and suicide, and exhortations to religious tolerance and hospitality.

And then, from the same Islamic writings, the citations inciting believers to kill Jews and other infidels come zinging back.

So which is it? What is official Islam and what does it teach?

Those answers aren't any easier with Islam than they are with any other major religion.

What is official Judaism? Only the Orthodox tradition? Only the Conservative approach? Only the Reform point of view?

What is official Christianity? Completely Catholic? Exclusively Episcopalian? Purely Presbyterian? Solely Seventh Day Adventist?

Non-Muslims have seen their own faiths change in practice, emphasis and even basic belief over the centuries. Today's heresy becomes tomorrow's breakaway sect, with a church on Main Street where respectable people go.

Rejection of one religious authority leads to the establishment of a competing authority with a different message and a different following.

And as Obama likes to point out, sectarian warfare among Christians has gotten a lot of people killed down through history. In those fights, it's safe to say every sectarian warrior was quite certain he was a better Christian than the fellow he'd just slain.

That's what's going on in the Islamic world today, as Obama admitted during his speech in Baltimore: "But right now, there is a organized extremist element that draws selectively from Islamic texts, twists them in an attempt to justify their killing and their terror. They combine it with false claims that America and the West are at war with Islam. And this warped thinking that has found adherents around the world — including, as we saw, tragically, in Boston and Chattanooga and San Bernardino."

Then he lost his grip on reality: "Groups like ISIL are desperate for legitimacy. They try to portray themselves as religious leaders and holy warriors who speak for Islam. I refuse to give them legitimacy."

Unfortunately, the determination of their legitimacy as Muslims is not up to Obama. And the fact is that a segment of Muslim believers accords terrorists not only legitimacy, but also financial, moral and physical support. A segment of Muslims firmly believes the terrorists are holy warriors who champion a more legitimate form of Islam than exists in any nation at this moment.

Thus, Obama's solution — "So none of us can be silent. We can't be bystanders to bigotry. And together, we've got to show that America truly protects all faiths" — is a noble sentiment completely unsuited to the problem.

Americans aren't the bigots.

The bigots are the followers of Sayyid Qutb, a founder of the Muslim Brotherhoodwhose declaration of a holy war against secular governments in the Middle East and against the depravities of Western civilization remains the driving force of terrorism today. Qutb was also the key proponent of takfirism — the doctrine that encourages the killing of even fellow Muslims if they can be deemed infidels for political purposes.

The bigots are the Salafists, who dream of a worldwide caliphate and the imposition of Sharia law on everyone.

So when Obama said, "And so if we're serious about freedom of religion — and I'm speaking now to my fellow Christians who remain the majority in this country — we have to understand an attack on one faith is an attack on all our faiths. When any religious group is targeted, we all have a responsibility to speak up. And we have to reject a politics that seeks to manipulate prejudice or bias, and targets people because of religion," he was right.

He was, as usual, just speaking to the wrong people.

O'Brien is The Plain Dealer's deputy editorial page editor.