The oddball thing about the president’s political correctness in suggesting that there’s a “universality of freedom” wherein all cultures seek the same kind of freedom, even if they manifest it in different ways or achieve at different paces, is that he is (unintentionally, no doubt) insulting Muslims.

When it comes to the concept of “freedom,” Islam and the West are not even speaking the same language, as this FPM article by Andrew Bostom, citing lavishly from other experts including Bernard Lewis, explains. Islam is all about submission to the will of Allah, which has been expressed in Islamic scripture — not just a belief system but a fully developed social system which dictates all facets of life. Islamic freedom is a form of surrender, the giving of oneself totally to this expression of divine will. It is not freedom of choice or freedom of conscience as the West understands these concepts. In fact, it rejects such liberty, for it implies that the person exercising it has the right to reject Allah’s law and go his own way.

The reason I say it’s insulting to Muslims is this: many would tell you they are not denied freedom. They have, instead, made the choice to submit. Again, it’s not that they don’t grasp the freedom that the West has to offer. It’s that they reject it. We’re talking about an entirely different framework for looking at the world. If our policy is to do what it takes to get them to sign onto our gameplan, that’s a disaster. If they are committed to remaining culturally Islamic, western notions of freedom and reform of Islam’s more troublesome tenets are not in the cards.

Apart from that, I just hate this idea of “the capacity of forms of government to transform regions.” It’s not forms of governments that transform regions. Its peoples and cultures. A people has to be a people first; then come forms of government suitable to it. One of the reasons Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People is such a tour de force is it begins American history in the fifteenth century, about 300 years before the Constitution was adopted.