A fatal witch’s brew of arrogance, ignorance, and patronizing was broadcast from the podium of the White House pressroom yesterday by Imam Josh Earnest.  Daniel Halper of the Weekly Standard reports:

White House press secretary Josh Earnest explained to reporters today that the United States needs to "redouble" efforts to explain "what the tenets of Islam actually are."

Here is the full quote (emphases added by Halper):

"There are some individuals that are using a peaceful religion and grossly distorting it, and trying to use its tenets to inspire people around the globe to carry out acts of violence. And we have enjoyed significant success in enlisting leaders in the Muslim community, like I said, both in the United States and around the world to condemn that kind of messaging, to condemn those efforts to radicalize individuals, and to be clear about what the tenets of Islam actually are.  And we’re going to redouble those efforts in the days and weeks ahead.

How many jihadists (or, for that matter, how many Muslims) will be persuaded about the tenets of their religion by a White House effort?

Why haven’t Earnest or his boss spoken up in praise of Egyptian president Sisi, who has laid on the line to his people the necessity of modernizing Islam?  Pretending that Koranic and other scriptural imperatives to violence don’t exist is futile.  The argument has to be made that they are self-defeating.

“It’s inconceivable,” he [Sisi] said, “that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.  Impossible!” (snip)

That thinking [that is responsible for producing “anxiety, danger, killing and destruction” around the world] -- I am not saying “religion” but “thinking” -- that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world.  It’s antagonizing the entire world.

Of course, President Obama supported the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt, which Sisi overthrew with popular support.  The cold shoulder given to him by the Obama administration is a historic blunder, in the most charitable interpretation.