Theodore C. Sorensen Quotes
We have convinced over one billion members of the Islamic faith that we are prejudiced against their religion, that we would deny them freedom of religion, that we want suppress their culture and invade their governments.
Sorensen, Theodore C. Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History. HarperCollins, 2008.
The attitude of the non-Muslims at that time was based on the Muslim attacks in the Punjab on Sikhs where entire Sikh villages and neighborhoods in towns and cities were murdered—every man woman and child. In many cases women were first raped. The Muslims had been whipped up by the leaders of the Muslim League to put terrorist pressure on the Sikh, Hindu and British to meet the League's political and territorial demands for an Independent Pakistan. Soon there was retaliation in kind and there were many Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims engaged in internecine slaughter and behaving "little better than animals".
Just days before September 11. While in America, such a remark would just be considered an insensitive and inappropriate utterance, in France, he was brought before the courts and threatened with jail and a large monetary fine under a 1972 French law which bans hate speech. See {595311}
This Sura of the Koran warns the faithful that the non-Muslims of the world have as a major objective the Conversion of Muslims. While this was and has been the case in times past starting even before the Crusades, many Christians felt it as an obligation to either convert the Muslims or to kill them. In modern times there have been Christian missionaries who have had an objective of converting Muslims, but no Christian government has had that as a policy for a long time now. But most Muslims are told this is so today and the Koran warned of this. The result is that many Muslims—particularly those who have not had much contact with other religions—believe that because of this, they will be forever fighting heretics like Christians. For this reason, Islam’s future is under attack.
Al-Omar is one of Saudi’s leading clerics and the Saudi Arabian government—supposedly is a major ally of the United States—not only tolerates this type of inflammatory rhetoric but it makes no effort to repudiate this and other radical Islamic statements. There is no freedom of Speech in Saudi Arabia, and people are arrested all the time for saying things that are displeasing to the Royal Family. But no attempt to suppress this kind of virulent anti-American attack.
This quotation is used by many to illustrate the discrimination that Muslims face in America. The President and almost all other national leaders rejected ideas like this.
Theodore Chaikin Sorensen was an American lawyer, writer, and presidential adviser. He was a speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy, as well as one of his closest advisers. President Kennedy once called him his "intellectual blood bank". Most notably, he was generally regarded as the author of Profiles in Courage even before fully admitting it in his 2008 memoir. The book won Kennedy the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957. Sorensen was also the primary author of Kennedy's 1962 "We choose to go to the Moon" speech.
