A guest on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” morning program Friday argued that the New York high school that led its students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic this week unintentionally put its students in alignment with Islamic State terrorists.
The problem, according to Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, was that the students would have had to say to “under God, or under Allah.”
“[Islamic State leader Abu Bakr] Al-Baghdadi is trying to unify the caliphate under that,” he said. “The youth, our Muslim youth who might be radicalized, they’re Islamopatriots going to fight with ISIS. So the pledge strikes at the core of what we’re fighting.”
“We are at war against radical Islam, which uses the Arabic language,” Jasser said.
Jasser also said that having students recite the pledge in Arabic today would be like having students during World War II recite the pledge in German. “We weren’t fighting all Germans, but we were fighting a war against evil German nationalists,” he said. “That would have struck a nerve in America.”
Watch below via Fox News:
h/t Media Matters
Actually, it would have been like speaking German during World War One, when the US succumbed to a Fox-style wave of ignorant anti-German feeling (“Liberty Cabbage” instead of sauerkraut). In World War Two, when the stakes were much higher and head much clearer, the allies adopted a symphony by an echt-German composer Ludwig van Beethoven as one of its Victory symbols.
Oh, and you would think a self-identified Muslim would know better than to make a big deal out of saying “under Allah” - once and for all, ‘Allah’ is not the scary name of their terrifying death-cult deity, it is simply the Arabic word for ‘God’.
The pledge is to the flag “and to the Republic for which it stands.” The language the pledge is spoken in is irrelevant–it’s analogous to people’s getting upset over American patriotic songs sung in other languages. It’s not the language that matters; it’s the meanings of the words those languages convey.
I’m thinking the FOX people aren’t thinking things through.
If instead of ostracising the “Arabs” wouldn’t welcoming them and embracing their culture actually be more effective, especially since the vast majority of them have zero tolerance for terrorists? I’ll never understand conservatives.
Germany declared war on the US. Don’t think “Arabic” has.
I was looking to post Coca-Cola’s Superbowl commercial with people singing America the Beautiful in different languages. Coke has taken it private. Interesting.