Obama’s Islamization of NASA

Obama sometimes seems to be all campaign all the time. But is he running for president of theOIC? Earlier this year his budget raised hackles and eyebrows by cutting out the Constellation program, intended to develop new rockets to carry people into space — such as the Ares rocket, meant to replace the aging shuttle. Now we are informed that NASA is instructed to run a Mohammedan outreach program … overseas, on earth.

No. This is not a story from the Onion. It was reported by Fox news here. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden apparently gave an interview to, wait for it … Al Jazeera, in which he said:

“When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he [the president] charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering,”

Yes, you read that correctly, “… and perhaps foremost … engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering“.

Where can one even begin? A prominent lie is always a good start. Muslim contributions to math and science are a famous and very stylish bit of pseudo-academic puffery. This is not to say that, historically speaking, the Mohammedan nations produced no eminent scientists or mathematicians, they did (although there is some debate over whether they were all believers.) But what history shows, is that such nations did not possess a cultural environment that was friendly to the development of further study and research or schools based on those initial advances. So, whereas the geniuses of Europe could claim to have stood on the shoulders of giants, the eminent scientific minds of the Islamic nations were left standing on the ground, often alone. The sciences were left to progress elsewhere, Europe actually.

An excellent debunking of Mohammedan science mythology by Fjordman, a scholar of the subject, can be found in his open letter to President Obama.

It’s not altogether shocking that Islamic countries would need help to “feel good about their historic contribution to science“. A realistic view of the matter would inspire some cultural self-questioning.

But why has our Community Organizer in Chief chosen to spend even a tiny fraction of NASA’s budget on this? Leaving off the gross and obvious religious favoritism of the mission, (why Mohammedan nations, why not Buddhist nations?) there is no sensible connection between NASA’s mission and anybody’s feelings about anything.

Neither is NASA part of the State Department. If feel good missions to foreign nations have any use at all, certainly they fall under the purview of State and its diplomatic responsibilities. But we are informed that this is not, repeat not a diplomatic mission. Mr. Bolden tells us:

“Not at all. It’s not a diplomatic anything,”

Hmmm…

Perhaps Obama gave the answer himself in his address to Cairo. You will recall this was a priority matter early in his tenure. From Egypt’s capital our solicitous president told us that:

I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.

It was a curious declaration to be sure, and came as a surprise to many. Certainly the common understanding of his responsibility was that he would “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”. It’s hard to see how “fight[ing] against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear” figures into that. Perhaps it’s something in the penumbras and emanations clause.

But it would, at least, explain why NASA’s Mohammedan outreach program takes priority over designing rockets.