So how do we, as people of faith, reconcile these realities — the profound good, the strength, the tenacity, the compassion and love that can flow from all of our faiths, operating alongside those who seek to hijack religious for their own murderous ends?
Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest 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. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. Michelle and I returned from India — an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity — but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other Peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs — acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhi, the person who helped to liberate that nation.”
Why is that offensive?.
He says violence in the name of religion is to blame, and the only examples he can come up with are age old atrocities done in the name of Christ, but fails to give examples of atrocities done by Radical Islam. In fact he has never used that term, preferring to call it workplace violence or extremism in general.
On slavery in the U.S. it was Abraham Lincoln, a Republican that championed its abolishment.
On Jim Crow laws, it was the nearly exclusive domain of the Democrat party. The Democrat Party identified itself as the “white man’s party” and demonized the Republican Party as being “Negro dominated,” even though whites were in control. Based on Obama’s logic, he and the Democrats should never cease to apologize to the blacks and to the Republican Party.
On violence in the name of Islam is betraying it:
Number of non-Muslims killed since 602 A.D. Between 200 and 400 million. Of these are about 100 million slaves from sub-Saharan Africa that died during their march from their home to the Mediterranean.
Number of Muslims killed by Muslim Governments from 632 to 1945: About 40 million
Number of Muslims killed by Muslim Governments since 1945: About 12 million and rising (Pakistan and Sudan (Darfur) come to mind.
On the Crusades: Obama gives the ISIS propaganda line calling us “The Crusaders”. The truth is that the Crusades were largely in response to relentless Muslim aggression:
The first Crusade began in 1095 after centuries of church burnings, killings, enslavement and forced conversions of Christians…
460 years after the first Christian city was overrun by Muslim armies
457 years after Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies
453 years after Muslims first plundered Italy
427 years after Muslim armies first laid siege to the Christian capital of Constantinople
380 years after France was first attacked by Muslim armies
249 years after the capital of the Catholic world, Rome itself, was sacked by a Muslim army
By the time the Crusades finally began, Muslim armies had conquered two thirds of the Christian World.
On the Inquisition: Total trials: 44674. Conviction rate 1.8% or about 800. About as many convicted in absentia and never executed. Jews were expelled, not executed. Muslims were expelled. The total number of executions performed in all Inquisitions, about 2200.
Obama mentions the genocide of the Yezidis but omits the genocide of Christians, which in much larger.
On Slavery: Muhammad was a slave trader. Mauritania abolished slavery in 2007, Saudi Arabia in the 1950’s. Slaves taken under Muslim rulers, well in excess of 100 million. Slaves taken by Europeans: less than 4 million.
Jan 20: U.S. officials told NBC News late Monday that they don’t plan to evacuate the American embassy in Yemen’s capital, where government soldiers and Shiite rebels fought near the presidential palace and a military before agreeing to a cease-fire.
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 