Obama: Islamic Terrorism? But What About the Crusades and Jim Crow?

At yesterday’s National Prayer Breakfast, our president once again demonstrated his lack of will to name the enemy and their religion. Why anybody with a functioning brain would deny that global terrorism is Islamic defies reason. It’s obvious even to a five-year-old.

Political expediency and personal prejudice trump truth, integrity, national allegiance, and homeland security.

In his speech, President Barack Obama implied that Islamic terrorists were not true followers of Allah. They are a “death cult…We are summoned to push back against those who would distort our religion for their nihilistic ends.”

The people chopping off heads and burning people alive for religion and entertainment aren’t true Muslims, we’re to believe. And we’re supposed to make the distinction as if we’re Koranic scholars parsing verses and meaning while people die gruesome deaths. No, Mr. President, until we see worldwide, strong condemnation of this barbarity from other Muslims, the burden of proof is on them.

The president also brought up the past to illustrate that Christians did bad things in the name of religion. He noted that some Christians used the Bible to justify slavery and racial segregation back in the day. Naturally, he didn’t make the connection that it was Christians who ended such practices after realizing they were incompatible with biblical teachings.

Ever the politician, the president did throw Christians a bone:

But Obama did acknowledge the good Christians do around the world and highlighted the plight of those persecuted for their faith. He noted the work of medical missionaries, including Dr. Kent Brantly, who attended the breakfast and offered one of the prayers. Brantly, who works with Samaritan’s Purse, contracted Ebola while serving at a hospital in Liberia operated by the Christian aid group SIM.

Obama also mentioned Saeed Abedini, the Iranian-American pastor jailed for more than two years in Iran because of his faith. The president referenced his meeting last week with Abedini’s wife, Nagmeh, and pledged to keep working for the pastor’s release. He also noted Christian Kenneth Bae, who recently was released from a prison in North Korea. He said the United States would continue to advocate for religious liberty around the world.

The president touched on the Crusades. History is replete with groups invoking religion to take what they want, but the Crusades were of a different nature. The Roman Catholic Church commissioned men to take back the Holy Land from invading Muslims. Columnist Jonah Goldberg writes that “as odd as it may sound for a guy named Goldberg to point it out, the Inquisition and the Crusades aren’t the indictments Obama thinks they are. For starters, the Crusades — despite their terrible organized cruelties — were a defensive war.”

How do the Crusades compare in any way to Muslims infiltrating western countries and recruiting people to murder? What are Muslims defending when they chop off heads and burn people alive? Islam is wholly incompatible with western democracies.

Even if Christianity were a murderous cult a millennia ago, what’s the point of trying to draw parallels to what happened then to events happening right now?

If Barack Obama’s intent is to get Americans to stop recognizing terrorism as Islamic, he’s wasting his time and insulting our intelligence.