Obama Gets it Wrong on Slavery and the Crusades

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 on Thursday 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.

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