NASA's new mission: Muslim outreach

NASA was created to explore outer space, not to be an out-reach agency. I'm increasingly concerned that our government has lost its mind.

Byron York uncovered an al-Jazeera interview of Charles F. Bolden, Jr. Obama picked him to go where no man has gone before.

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, math, and engineering.

Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes adds some needed levity to the discussion, a discussion, that really isn't necessary, when you think about it.

First, it is inordinately patronizing for Americans to make Muslims "feel good" about their medieval contributions to science. This will lead to more resentment than gratitude.

Second, Muslims at present do lag in the sciences and the way to fix this is not condescension from NASA but some deep Muslim introspection. Put differently, accomplished scientists of Muslim origin — including NASA's Farouk El-Baz, who is of Egyptian origins — do exist. The problem lies in societies, and include everything from insufficient resources to poor education to the ravages of Islamism.

Third, polls indicate that Obama's effort to win Muslim public opinion has been a failure, with his popularity in majority-Muslim countries hardly better than George W. Bush's. Why continue with these farcical and failed attempts to win good will?

Finally, it's a perversion of American scientific investment to distort a space agency into a feel-good tool of soft diplomacy. Just as soldiers are meant to fight, not carry out social programs, so scientists must work to expand the frontiers of knowledge, not to make select people "feel good."

Related post:

Political correctness at Chicago's Adler Planetarium