We all know the Left has turned this country into a house of lies. Singling out the worst of them is thus difficult. But how about these three? Men can get pregnant. Math is racist. Climate change will kill tens of millions this century. After such absurd meta mendacities, it’s hard to take the merely political ones seriously.

Democrats’ Old Lies Are New Again

Like the slimy seven in Joe Biden’s reelection commercial last week. 1) “MAGA extremists” (are there any other kind?) have already, or plan to…

2) “Cut Social Security

3) Cut taxes for the wealthy

4) Dictate what health care decisions a woman can make

5) Ban books

6) Tell people who they can love

7) Make it more difficult for you to vote.”

Most of these we’ve been hearing from the Democrats since at least Reagan. (Don’t get me started on the inconvenient fact, which even the GOP won’t discuss, that “cuts” are really only smaller spending increases.) And so most of us dismiss them as the same old tired propaganda. Which they are. But which, alas, doesn’t mean everyone does. Just remember that repeating lies does embed them in peoples’ brains — even if, contra Goebbels, it doesn’t actually make them true.

This Time It’s Historical

So why even pay attention to yet another official Biden falsehood? (Leaving aside, for now, his tranche of inveterate fibs about his personal life.) Well, because now POTUS is lying about American history, not just quotidian cheap political campaign points. Last week Biden or, more accurately perhaps, the Ivy League Gender Studies major who runs the POTUS Twitter feed, put this out:

Muslim culture has been woven throughout American culture from the very start.

We must always stand against anti-Muslim hate. And stand up for the rights and dignity of all people.

It's essential to who we are: a nation founded on the idea of freedom and justice for all.

— President Biden (@POTUS) May 2, 2023

Biden’s staff no doubt wanted to ingratiate themselves to the Muslim community as Ramadan wound down. (Their prophylactic damage control was probably needed. At the White House Eid al Fitr — end of Ramadan — dinner the next day, multi-ethnic Joe undiplomatically told one of the guests “hush up, boy.” Plus, his Secret Service refused entry to a long-time Muslim-American mayor.) But doing so at the cost of rewriting American history? Come on, man!

American Culture Is Profoundly Christian and European

Has “Muslim culture” really “been woven throughout American culture from the very start?” This continent was discovered and settled by Europeans. Spanish, Dutch, English and Russians (yes, the latter way over there on the Pacific side). All were Christian. The Spanish, Catholic. The Dutch and English, Protestant. The Russians, Orthodox. Germans, who make up the largest single bloc of American ancestry, were here by the late 17th century. These were Lutheran or Catholic. A number of the 13 colonies were founded as havens for Christians persecuted in Europe. Massachusetts for Puritans, Maryland for Catholics, Pennsylvania for Quakers.

The Revolution and then Constitutional Convention was led by overt Christians, Enlightenment-style Deists, and men who were probably somewhere in-between. But all-in-all, “Christianity had a profound influence on the Founders.” The intellectual background of each had been shaped by the Bible, the history of Christianity in Europe and, before that, the Greeks and Romans. The overall culture, of course, was European-derived, albeit from a mosaic of countries and regions within those (Scots-Irish, for example). English was the common language (although German was widely spoken, as well).

This all should be obvious to anyone with a high school education (yes, I know — should). But clearly it’s not to folks working in the White House. Or at least not important.

Some Muslims in Early America Does Not Equal “Muslim Culture”

What evidence is there of “Muslim culture” in this country early on? Practically none. Despite the media trumpeting anecdotal cases of prominent Muslims in colonial or early Republic times. Such as that of Abdul Rahman bin Sori, an (alleged) Guinean Muslim “prince” who was captured and sold to slave traders, winding up in Mississippi, in 1788. Or Bilali Muhammad, also from West Africa, who served as the imam to other Muslim slaves on Sapelo Island, Georgia. Such rare examples can be gleaned. But these hardly constitute “Muslim culture” being “woven” into the American tapestry. They’re at best a few stray strands. Pull at them, and this attempted narrative unravels. Some journalists and academics realize this, and so change tack. They claim that an unspecified substantial percentage of all slaves in America were Muslim. This is done by supposition.

Since many Africans were captured or purchased by slave traders in West Africa, a predominantly Muslim region, it’s assumed that a large percentage of those enslaved had to be of that religion. But that’s not necessarily true. In fact, in Africa it was normal for the Muslim states of the north to enslave other Africans further south who were NOT co-religionists. Pagans were fair-game for enslaving, under Islamic law. Often such Muslim polities were the ones who sold their fellow Africans to Europeans — and these slaves would not have been Muslim.

The U.S. population at independence was just under 3 million, and the number of slaves at most 700,000. A more realistic case is that maybe 10%, or some 70,000 might have been Muslim — at most. But even if so, Muslim culture never spread beyond a few isolated slave holdings. Thus, the claim that it was “woven throughout American culture” doesn’t even qualify as made up of whole cloth.

No, “anti-Muslim hate” Is Not A Problem Here

Biden also implied that “anti-Muslim hate” is a problem in this country. But is it? According to the FBI, there were 133 “anti-Muslim incidents” in 2021. That’s 133 too many. But this data is self-reported from local enforcement agencies across the country, so … how reliable is it? The data also shows 240 anti-Christian/Catholic/Protestant/Orthodox incidents that year. And we do know that dozens of Catholic churches were vandalized. But our second Catholic President can’t bother to tweet about that. Instead, he looks away as his FBI goes after conservative Catholics.

If there’s an actual problem with hate directed against anyone, it’s of course Jews. That 1.9 percent of the population was on the receiving end of 396 incidents. Furthermore, the Muslim population in America has exploded. Which would not be the case if “anti-Muslim hate” were actually problematic. Prior to 9/11/2001, there were about 1 million Muslims in America. Now there are almost 4 million, and in a few years they will surpass Jews as the second-largest religion. Mosques? About 1200 when the millennium began. Almost 3000 now. So if anything America has been extraordinarily open and welcoming to Muslims — despite their not, in fact, having been part of our original culture.

History is Far More than Convenient Lies

In the vast web of the Left’s lies, this Joe Biden tweet might seem inconsequential. But it not only falsifies American history. It slanders modern Americans as hateful. Biden can fabricate his own personal story all he wants. But let’s draw the line at his doing so with that of our entire country. History is not simply a set of agreed-upon lies. And we need to keep the Democrats from spinning theirs.

 

Timothy Furnish holds a Ph.D. in Islamic, World and African history from Ohio State University and a M.A. in Theology from Concordia Seminary. He is a former U.S. Army Arabic linguist and, later, civilian consultant to U.S. Special Operations Command. He’s the author of books on the Middle East and Middle-earth, a history professor and sometime media opiner (as, for example, on Fox News Channel’s War Stories: Fighting ISIS). He currently writes for and consults The Stream on International Security matters.