Obama’s Umbrella? An Old Islamic Tradition

Did you hear? Obama employed U.S. Marines to hold umbrellas over himself and the Turkish Prime Minister during a drizzle! The right is on fire with righteous indignation because—as everybody knows—Marines are not allowed to hold umbrellas while in uniform. The headlines on the left read “Umbrella-Gate: How the GOP Became ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’” and “Even Obama’s Umbrellas are a scandal now” while on the right the headlines seem more mountainous than the molehill upon which they are built.

When I discovered the “Umbrella Scandal,” I found myself asking “what’s the big deal?” A question which the left has only asked rhetorically and the right has hardly asked at all. It’s important to see events as real occurrences in history, significant in themselves when isolated from the shrill and opportunistic biases that often dominate current events. Americans, especially in the times of political turmoil that have marked the current administration, are easily drawn in to the day-to-day battle of gaining democratic popularity for their own “sides” of things. But we might take a lesson from our enemies, some of whom are broader-minded than the best of us at times.

Radical Islamists, for instance, have a deep and never-sleeping sense of history, rivaled only by their own religious sense. The broadness of their view has aided them in crowning their victories with historical and religious significance. The infamous attacks of September 11th were more horrible than just their body counts; they sent a double-message, both religious and historical: a) In attacking innocent civilians, the Muslim radicals reminded us that they consider “infidels” (Christian Westerners) less than human, b) By attacking on September 11th, radical Islam reminded us that it had not forgotten its defeat at Christian hands in The Battle of Vienna on September 11th, 1683.

It’s time that we made efforts to develop a historical-religious perspective just as robust as that of our enemies. Or re-develop, I should say. After all, this country wasn’t founded by a group of breathless pundits, nor was the revolution just an opportunity to put egg on King George’s face or to make the “other side” look foolish. And, as I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, our first president considered Christianity a necessary part of military success.

In The Pirate Coast by Richard Zacks, we may find another example in Captain William Eaton. Eaton saw things in a religious light, as did his enemies. When U.S. Marines were captured by Turkish pirates during the Barbary Wars, they were stripped of their Western uniforms and made to hold fans for Turkish leaders throughout the Ottoman Empire. “For my part,” Eaton wrote, “it grates me mortally when I see a lazy Turk [a Moslem] reclining at his ease upon an embroidered sofa, with [a] Christian slave to fan away the flies.”

Eaton’s indignation was rooted in history as much as in religion. When he saw people held captive by Muslims, his long memory spurred him on against Turkish piracy. Because of his conviction about freedom, which “literally had its roots near Plymouth Rock with Eaton’s great-great-grandfather,” the man “could not abide this form of persecution.”

Now that I’ve geared up your religious-historical sense, maybe you should make another google image-search for the “umbrella scandal.” You may find yourself doing a double-take. Notice anything you didn’t see before? On either side of Obama is the Turkish flag, bearing the symbol that Al-Qaeda so loves to use. And the umbrellas aren’t only for the President; the Turkish Prime Minister, perhaps the most radical and heavy-hitting Islamist in politics, is also shielded from the drizzle by his own U.S. Marine. An eerie repetition, don’t you think? And if you’d like to shrug this off as an accident, recall the fact that Islam has a longer memory than you most likely have. Radical Muslims see significances that Americans are likely to miss.

The Left and Right alike may wish to see the “Umbrella Scandal” as an opportunity for yet another shouting match. For my part, “it grates me mortally.”