Blaming the Victims:
Disinformation on the Crusades from President Obama
At
ACT for America it is no secret that we have not been in agreement with President Obama’s
national security policies, but have always been respectful of the office
which he holds.
Unfortunately, President Obama has not always been respectful of others
and perhaps the worst example of disrespect came at, of all events, the
National Prayer Breakfast.
It was in that setting that President Obama delivered remarks comparing
the actions of the Islamic State to things done “in the name of
Jesus Christ.” Among those things according to President Obama: slavery.
He then cited the Crusades.
Not only were his remarks inappropriate for the occasion and insulting
to peace loving Christians everywhere, they were historically inaccurate.
In terms of slavery, while it is true that Christians owned slaves, slavery
is not an integral part of Christian doctrine. Jesus did not own slaves.
The same cannot be said of Islam. Mohammed owned many slaves and even
shared concubines with his warriors. There are today forty different words
in Arabic to describe slaves; that’s how prominent slavery has been
in the Islamic world. The slave trade in Africa was largely run by Muslims.
And when Western nations finally abolished the evil practice of slavery,
that slave trade in Africa persisted without them. Remember, Saudi Arabia,
the site of Islam’s holiest sites, did not outlaw slavery until
the 1960s. Moreover, slavery is still practiced today in parts of Islamic
Africa, notably Sudan.
But Obama’s biggest dose of disinformation came in the form of his
remarks on the Crusades.
There is a myth that the Crusades were nothing but an aggressive series
of wars in which Christendom attacked the Muslim world and committed atrocities.
The reality is somewhat different.
The Crusades actually began after centuries of Islamic jihad invading,
pillaging and conquering Christian lands in present-day North Africa and
parts of Europe.
After 400 years of systematic genocide of Christians at the hands of Islamic
jihadists, Pope Urban II, acting on a plea from the Byzantine emperor
whose people had been attacked by Muslim hoards, finally called on “Christ’s
heralds” to sound the call for help for the Christians in the east
and free the Holy Land.
So, the first Crusade was a defensive action in response to Islamic jihad.
This is an historical fact that our president unfortunately left out of
his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast.
