Mosque of Oklahoma beheader receives visit, praise from Obama administration

Mosque of Oklahoma beheader receives visit, praise from Obama administration

However you parse the story, it boils down to more bad optics for an administration whose actions have given rise to more than its share. Who can ever forget the president’s hitting the golf links within ten minutes of eulogizing beheaded American journalist James Wright Foley?

The topic of his latest miscue is another beheading. On Saturday, the Obama White House dispatched its director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Faith-based & Neighborhood Partnerships to Moore, Okla., to praise the Muslim community there. Moore, in case the name has already slipped from your personal news radar, is the town where Alton Nolen, a Muslim convert, beheaded a former co-worker last month.

According to Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller, Director David Myers spoke to congregants at the Greater Islamic Society of Oklahoma City, the mosque Nolen attended.

“Your service is a powerful example of the shared roots of the Abrahamic faiths and how our communities can come together in shared peace with dignity and a sense of justice,” said Myers, reading from a letter penned by President Barack Obama.

Station KFOR, which Ross cites as a source for his article, offers up a somewhat different interpretation of the reason for Myers’s visit, claiming he was not on hand so much to praise the mosque as to reassure its congregants that Obama has their back. As the video report below notes:

[V]icious messages are being left for Oklahoma Muslims, telling them to get out of Oklahoma and threatening to behead them all because the man behind the beheading claimed to be Muslim.

[…]

The Imam, the leader of the prayer service, stated during his sermon that the Muslim faith has been called a “cancer that needs to be cut off from the American society.”

These reports warrant the attention of local law enforcement, especially any specific threats on the lives of individuals. That still fails to explain why Obama saw a need to wade into another controversy. It appears he hasn’t learned that much since the time early in his presidency when he accused the Cambridge Police Force of “acting stupidly” without knowing the facts of the case.

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Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy has written for The Blaze, HotAir, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, Conservative Firing Line, RedCounty, and New York’s Daily News. He has one published novel, Hot Rain, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and has been a guest on Radio Vice Online with Jim Vicevich, The Alana Burke Show, Smart Life with Dr. Gina, and The George Espenlaub Show.

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