In a misguided and thoroughly offensive speech at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama lectured attendees with a basically puerile moral equivocation of ISIS atrocities to historical events of hundreds of years in the past. Why would this man be the first president in 45 years to use the occasion for divisive rhetoric instead of a unifying call for prayer?
Evidently, President Obama sees a need for rationalizing Islamic evil by using a very tired, old red herring. “OK, so they’re bad… but we were too!” It’s merely juvenile hearing that during a playground argument. It’s horrific coming from the lips of the President of the United States as he insults our Christian leaders. So what is his need to be the apologist for Islam?
Why does Obama feel there is a need to rationalize? Does he think Islam is a superior religion and requires his defense? Worse, why did he choose to do so by insulting every Christian leader in attendance? Who does that? These are all questions every clear thinking American should be asking because they deserve an answer. It was incredibly offensive, wholly unnecessary and totally without justification. He tells his hosts they should “get off their high horse.” What “high horse?” Are we on our high horse for calling evil for what it is? (On the Current Issues page of this site, you can find the link to the full transcript of the speech released by the White House.)
I rather like the rip from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal on Friday: “It was nice of the President to give us a history lesson at the Prayer breakfast,” Jindal said. “Today, however, the issue right in front of his nose, in the here and now, is the terrorism of Radical Islam, the assassination of journalists, the beheading and burning alive of captives. We will be happy to keep an eye out for runaway Christians, but it would be nice if he would face the reality of the situation today. The Medieval Christian threat is under control, Mr. President. Please deal with the Radical Islamic threat today.”
It can be said the Crusades began in the eleventh century and were the Roman Catholic Church’s response to the slaughter, persecution and humiliation of some 3,000 pilgrims in Jerusalem by the Seljukian Turks – a prominent Tarter tribe and zealous followers of Islam. There is little doubt the Turks were fueled by their religious beliefs as articulated in the Koran and the Hadith. These same beliefs are still used for justification to rape women and young girls, decapitate men and boys, bury children alive, burn men alive, car-bomb shopping malls and fly airliners into tall buildings. It’s happening now. Not a thousand years ago, Mr. President. Your moral equivalence is simply absurd. It can be successfully argued that Christians have managed to downgrade militant and savage members of the Church.
The strife with Islam and the Catholic Church was hardly new by the time of the Crusades anyway. In the 400 odd years of the Middle Ages, the Church – with the help of feudal armies, battled with Muslim forces of the Umayyad Caliphate throughout southern and eastern Europe defending holy shrines and strategic sites. Read the amazing chronology of the Jihad that led to the Crusades presented by Political Islam: An organization dedicated to “educating the world about political Islam, its founder Mohammed, his political doctrine and his god, Allah.” This site is one of the more important resources for studying Islam without the added confusion produced by political correctness. If most Americans became familiar with Islam as a political force, which it has been essentially from its inception, there would be little room for debate on how it represents an existential threat to western civilization.
The history of Islam is figuratively written with the blood of countless victims of religious conquest. The translation of the name Islam means “submission”. It is not, as so many want to believe a “religion of peace”. If we want to see how history is repeating itself, watch the news each day. (If you have the stomach for it) These horrific acts of brutality and terror – by the extreme Islamic faithful have been committed time and again since the conquest of Damascus in 613 AD to this very day. If there is an apt comparison here with Christianity during all that time, I fail to see it.
There may an underlying reason President Obama chose to use the National Prayer Breakfast to lecture the 3,500 attendees there. For Obama, time is running out to establish his legacy and his worldview that America and by some strange extension his contempt for all colonial powers as the true enemy of peace.
An excellent argument for this possibility can be found in this transcript from the Rush Limbaugh program dated February 5th.
And for a riveting, and by turns amusing presentation by Newt Gingrich at the recent Iowa Freedom Summit, please watch this:
Mr. President, you are delusional. But we will pray for you.