IS OUTRAGE! Obama Likens ISIS to Crusades?

If you’re going to attack Christianity for what some guys did 1,100 years ago, why not do it at the National Prayer Breakfast?

I am, frankly, struggling to wrap my head around this:

WHY THE HELL would the President of the United States, invited to lead our nation in prayer at the National Prayer Breakfast, choose that moment to insult the 76% of the U.S. population who identify themselves as Christian?

The blogosphere is filling with outrage today, after Obama’s latest insult of Christians, warning them not to get on their “high horse” and think they’re any better than those who burned the Jordanian pilot alive or who toppled the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center.  After all,

On the Brutally Honest website:

“The President, in the minutiae of his words to the attendees of this morning’s Prayer Breakfast, may have been correct but in the larger picture, in the realm of the here and now, he has yet again squandered an opportunity to lead.”

Ryan Gorman, writing for AOL.com, listed some of the complaints which followed the President’s remarks on Twitter and in cyberspace.  Gorman said,

“Obama recalled the savagery carried out nearly one thousand years ago in the name of Christ while speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., but his equivocation fell on outraged ears.”

Bizpac Review said:

“President Obama raised the bar on being out of touch by comparing historical acts in the name of Christianity with murderous Islamic terrorism in the world today.”

The article goes on to remind the President that the Crusades, slavery and Jim Crow laws–which he also attributed to Christianity–aren’t exactly a problem for the civilized world.  So his attempt to draw a moral equivalency–aside from being intellectually dishonest–is likely to do more harm than good by emboldening Islamic terrorists.

Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights president Bill Donohue said this of Obama’s remarks:

In an attempt to deflect guilt from Muslim madmen, President Obama said, “Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.” Obama’s ignorance is astounding and his comparison is pernicious.

Donohue also quotes St. Louis University professor and chair of the department of history Thomas Madden, a scholar of the Crusades, who said:

“All the Crusades met the criteria of just wars.”

How many ISIS atrocities, Mr. President, have met the criteria of just wars? The ones where they buried people alive, stoned children, raped women, and crucified men? Moreover, according to Henry Kamen, the leading authority on the Inquisition, a total of 1,394 people were killed during the Inquisition. Today, Muslim madmen kill more than that in a few months.

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And just for the record:  The Crusades were regarded as Holy Wars until the 16th century, when Martin Luther began to preach that they were power-grabbing incursions on the part of the Holy Father.  Since it’s become de rigeur to criticize the Crusades, let me explain what was going on back then.

Then, as now, Muslims were engaged in jihad, raping and killing and pillaging and taking slaves, taking over first one country, then another.  Islam had usurped power over many of the sacred shrines in the Holy Land, and Pope Urban II ordered the first offensive maneuver in an effort to reclaim the lost shrines for Christendom.

Were there Crusaders who abused their power, misguided attempts by some, errors and sins on the part of some Crusaders?  Yes, being human, some of them committed serious sins under the guise of “religious motivation.”  Perhaps the worst failure was the Fifth Crusade, the so-called “Children’s Crusade,” in which as many as 40,000 children, mostly from France and Germany, boarded ships in the hopes of arriving in the Holy Land to help the cause, and ended up in Muslim slave markets.  But over all, the intent was noble.  It’s only our politically correct pandering to Islam that makes it difficult to remember that.

For more information, check out Thomas Madden’s excellent article on Crusade Myths in Ignatius Insight.

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Finally, while I’m grumbling, let me add one more item to the Grouse List:

President Obama, who inflamed the blogosphere with his deep bows toward the Saudi king and the Japanese emperor, offered a Namaste gesture toward the Dalai Lama at this year’s breakfast.

What, you ask, is a Namaste gesture?  The gesture Namaste represents the belief that there is a Divine spark within each of us that is located in the heart chakra.  In Hindu it means “I bow to the divine in you.”