Obama On ISIS Atrocities: "Christians Did Bad Things, Too"

by JASmius



Unnamed "bad things," of course.  None of which were ever done to members of other "faiths," least of all Muslims.  And no things that remotely resemble the atrocities being committed today, on an ongoing basis, by Islamic Fundamentalists worldwide.

But otherwise, they're exactly the same:

Barack Obama stirred outrage with his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday, comparing the atrocities committed by ISIS to those of Christians "in the name of Christ."

"Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," Obama said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."

"So it is not unique to one group or one religion," Obama said. "There is a tendency in us, a simple tendency that can pervert and distort our faith."

Not if that "faith" actually commands its adherents to commit atrocities against "infidels".  In which case those "terrible deeds" exemplify it.  Which is precisely the case with Islamic Fundamentalism.

Parenthetically, isn't the presence of Barack Hussein Obama at a National Prayer Breakfast more incongruous than than a slant pass across the middle at the one-yard line with under a minute left with a Super Bowl repeat on the line?  How did he speak without choking on his rug?

At any rate, as I'm sure he intended with this latest rhetorical middle finger, the reaction from our lines was immediate and incendiary:

Appearing on The Steve Malzberg Show on Newsmax TV, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan fumed at Obama comparing the extreme barbarity of ISIS to the Crusades.

"He's trying to give them all equivalence to what happened in the 11th century to what's happening today? It's astonishing," Buchanan said.

"The whole idea of the Inquisition in Spain – I mean these things are hundreds of years ago. That was a thirty-year war long, long ago.

That was intra-Christian - Protestant vs. Catholic [as well as "Judeo vs Christian] - just for the historical record.

"I can't think of any atrocities that have really been committed in the name of Christ …

And PJB qualifies as a lay Catholic scholar, again, just for the record.

There's no justification anywhere in all the books of the New Testament for any kind of violence on the scale of what we just saw with that Jordanian pilot."....

Christ and His apostles taught peace; "the Prophet of Islam" taught war, religious cleansing, enslavement, and genocide.

Former U.S. Representative Allen West said: "President Obama is the gift that keeps on giving,' "The Islamapologist-in-Chief attempted to find moral equivalency between the brutality of ISIS and Christianity."

And in a statement on his website, Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said "the president should apologize for his insulting comparison."

But would you take such an apology at face value, Bill?  I wouldn't.

Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, a Republican, said Obama's remarks were "the most offensive I’ve ever heard a President make in my lifetime."

Or even from this president in the past six years.  And that's really saying something.

Gilmore said it illustrated that "Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.

What was your first clue, Governor?  Or, "slowly but surely, the world is inexorably coming to agree with JASmius".

For those of us who are veterans of political debate message boards, Obama's is an all-too-familiar Christophobic argument.  Noah Rothman expandingly expounds:

If you were to engage in a debate about religious violence with your average high school senior, you might encounter the [sneering] claim that the modern scourge of religiously-inspired barbarity attributable to those who consider themselves Muslims is no historical anomaly. They might contend that the Christian world engaged in its own form of fundamentalism at the turn of the first millennium when the medieval European world embarked on a campaign to liberate the Middle Eastern territories conquered by Muslim armies.

That was not Christian "fundamentalism," of course, which didn't begin to reemerge until the Martin Luther-led Christian Reformation that brought the Church out of the Dark Ages.  That's why I "contend" that the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism - or what even so many conservatives redundantly refer to as "radical Islam" - is, in fact, the Muslim "Reformation," in that jihadists are actually putting into practice what the Qu'ran teaches.  What we need today is a Muslim "Deformation," a mass turn to Islamic apostasy, which is the only way that that "faith" can ever become a genuine "religion of peace".

Either that or another "prophet" who will (1) be accepted as such and (2) completely repudiates everything Mohammed ever said or wrote.

Having erected a dubious moral equivalency, your interlocutor is likely to then insist that it is hypocritical for Westerners to scold the Muslim world for incubating a violent strain of Islam that has become one of the predominant threats to international security.

Or resist it, for that matter.

This was essentially the familiar argument President Barack Obama made at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday.

And when "your average high school senior" makes this Islamophilic argument, s/he's just being an obnoxious child spouting the Islamophilia with which s/he is being programmed in "social studies" class.  When the purportedly American president advances it - which implies that he's speaking for "Us, The People" - it is both a middle finger to, well, Us, as well as yet another embarrassment of propaganda riches to our jihadist enemies.  Hell, it's why they don't even really need to propagandize against us themselves, since they have such an eager fount of dia-Sharia in the White House itself.

Rothman does go on to argue that O may be shooting off his own argument's feet, though:

Entering into arguments over which great religion holds the most defensible claim to moral purity is often a waste of effort. What is noteworthy in Obama’s comments is not his attempt to establish an equivalency between Christian and Islamic violence, but that he has undermined his oft-repeated claim that ISIS and its cadre of supporters are unrepresentative of their faith....

[Obama], and many of his allies on the left, frequently trip over themselves to emphasize – [in]correctly, as it happens – that ISIS’s acts of brutality are not archetypical Islamic behavior....

But to assert this and in the same breath suggest [slanderously] that Christianity was also a violent, expansionist religion a mere eight hundred years ago is a contradiction. Why make this comparison if ISIS is not representative of Islam? Isn’t the concession in this claim that those who commit acts of violence in the name of their religion, regardless of whether those acts are supported by a majority of coreligionists, that they are representative of their faith? Therefore, by perfunctorily nodding in the direction of a moral equivalency between Christian and Islamic violence, isn’t the president invalidating his own claim that ISIS, Boko Haram, Ansar al-Sharia, al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiah, Abu Sayyaf, and a host of other fundamentalist Islamic terror groups are agents of a violent strain of the Islamic faith?

Mr. Rothman would be on to something if Obama's target audience- or The One himself -could be credited with the capability for that level and degree of critical thought.  But this was simply another of O's not-very-disguised cultural "dog whistles" to his leftwing extremist, Christian-hating "homies," as well as yet another public attempt to extol Islam and insulate his favorite "faith" from the "inconvenient" PR consequences of its jihadist agents' continuing implementation of what that faith actually teaches and commands.  To do otherwise would be to push the American people toward a collective demand to do that for which Jordan's King Abdullah is already loudly and bitterly calling.  And that wouldn't be good for either the overlapping agendas of either ISIS or King Hussein, now would it?

But redundantly smearing Christians and fellating Mohammed wasn't the only nefarious purpose for O's NPB address, or the most insidious, as Eric Odom deciphers:

And so, as people of faith, we are summoned to push back against those who try to distort our religion — any religion — for their own nihilistic ends. And here at home and around the world, we will constantly reaffirm that fundamental freedom — freedom of religion — the right to practice our faith how we choose, to change our faith if we choose, to practice no faith at all if we choose, and to do so free of persecution and fear and discrimination.

There’s wisdom in our founders writing in those documents that help found this nation the notion of freedom of religion, because they understood the need for humility. They also understood the need to uphold freedom of speech, that there was a connection between freedom of speech and freedom of religion. For to infringe on one right under the pretext of protecting another is a betrayal of both.

But part of humility is also recognizing in modern, complicated, diverse societies, the functioning of these rights, the concern for the protection of these rights calls for each of us to exercise civility and restraint and judgment. And if, in fact, we defend the legal right of a person to insult another’s religion, we’re equally obligated to use our free speech to condemn such insults — (applause) — and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with religious communities, particularly religious minorities who are the targets of such attacks. Just because you have the right to say something doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t question those who would insult others in the name of free speech. Because we know that our nations are stronger when people of all faiths feel that they are welcome, that they, too, are full and equal members of our countries.

The conclusion?  Barack Obama is "fundamentally transforming" the First Amendment to require "infidels" to refrain, and defend Islam, from any and all criticism - "blasphemy," in other words - while all other "faiths" are fair game for that and worse:

If you read between the lines here you’ll see a terrifying theme. First, publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in no way equates to “persecution” or “discrimination.” Yet, Obama is blatantly suggesting it does. In the first paragraph above Obama openly ignores the fact that Muslims take offense to published depictions of Muhammad not because they’re offensive, but because their religion commands against doing so. Obama ignores this and instead equates it to persecution.

And thus, by his own definition, he "persecuted" Christians in this very same speech.  Except the definition doesn't apply to Christianity.

Then in the second paragraph we see Obama assert that offending a Muslim is, according to him, violating his or her right to freedom of religion.

Or Muslim "freedom of religion" trumps everybody else's freedom of speech.

Last but not least, Obama is the sitting President of the United States. Therefor he speaks on behalf of and as the U.S. government. Not only does he defend and agree with Muslims in that publishing Muslim cartoons is an insult (it’s not an insult), he actually says “we,” as in the government for which he speaks, have an obligation to condemn those who might offend Islam. Essentially what we’re seeing here is a President who should be standing by publishers of such cartoons saying the federal government should instead condemn those who would practice free speech by publishing cartoons that might offend [Muslims]. [emphases added]

I've said on many occasions that I don't believe Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim because that would require him to take a demotion and rather large cut in "pay".  But it's getting harder and harder not to wonder, even for me, if there's more to his latent and virulent Christophobia than just his rancid ideology and colossal ego.