There has been an explosion of outrage since Barack Obama made an ill-advised and historically inaccurate statement that appeared to equate ISIS with Christianity. This has resuscitated the notion that he is a closet Muslim. He isn’t. He is a secular-rationalist man of the Left, and views the world through that prism. There is no doubt that he sympathizes with Islam, but not in a way that most Muslims would be comfortable with. He simply expresses the incongruous attitude of many on the radical left who believe that since we are bad, our enemies must either be good or have legitimate grievances due to our misconduct. In this view, we have history of racism and discrimination, and our view of Islam is thus informed by prejudice which must be resisted lest we do bad things to this oppressed minority. Whenever we are attacked they worry not about what we have suffered, but rather that we might react and persecute, which only confirms what deep contempt they have for the American people. What is truly astonishing is that we have a president of the United States who never misses an opportunity to belittle his own country wherever he is in the world.
But it is not just the US, but now christendom that must be admonished. We must get off of our “high horse” regarding radical Islam because after all Christianity has been guilty of many sins as well. The audacity expressing this equivalency is breathtaking, and not just flat out wrong but preposterous. Unless your hatred for western civilization is implacable, it ought to be obvious that there are no Christians anywhere in today’s world committing atrocities in any way comparable to ISIS. Then they will tell you that Christians did much the same to Muslims in the past, notably during the Crusades. Even if that were true how many centuries back are we going to reach?
But it’s not even true. Historically most of the atrocities committed by Christians were perpetrated on other Christians, as in the 17th century when Europe was torn apart by religious warfare. Heretics were considered to be in league with the devil and were treated accordingly and in a most unChristian way. The nonchristians who were persecuted for centuries were not Muslims but Jews. As for those fabled Crusades, for the most part they were attempting to recover territory that previously was part of the Eastern Roman (now called Byzantine) empire which was conquered by Islamic forces. But again the people who got the worst of it were the Christians, as in the 4th crusade. Instead of making war on the Muslims, the Crusaders were transported to Constantinople by the Venetians, who were nominally still under the Byzantine emperor, purportedly to install a pretender to the throne who promised them a great deal of money. When that failed to materialize the barbarians ravaged the city, destroying everything. The Venetians at least had some appreciation for art, and grabbed whatever they could, and took it back to Venice, where it still resides. But the crusaders simply broke or melted down ancient statues and set a fire that destroyed 100,000 homes as well as a library that was the last repository of Greek civilization. The greatest city in the world, which once held a million people was reduced to only 50,000 by the time the Turks finally conquered it two centuries later. The Pope excommunicated these crusaders for their crimes, at least for a time. This was a catastrophe for the west. With the Greek Christians of Byzantium so weakened, they no longer provided a buffer protecting the west from Turkish incursions and Muslim forces poured into Europe, usually massacring or enslaving whoever was in their path. Fear and terror gripped Europe for centuries.
So where is the Christian suppression of Muslims? What history actually shows is centuries of aggression and conquest by… the Muslims. There is no moral equivalency here; none at all. But it is in the past now and no one in the west in walking around holding a grievance about this. But that will probably be news to the conceited ignoramus in the White House.
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