Why did Obama compare Crusades to Islamic State at prayer breakfast?

At the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Obama made a reference to Christianity that infuriated some conservatives.

Speaking in general, Mr. Obama began by condemning zealots who hijack religion “for their own murderous ends.” He cited the recent massacre at a Pakistani school carried out by the Taliban, the assault on Charlie Hebdo headquarters in Paris perpetrated by radical Islamists, and the terrible murders carried out by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS or ISIS).

He widened his lens a bit, talking about the killings of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria and religious war in the Central African Republic.

Then the president said this: “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."

This did not go down well with right-leaning pundits. They noted that Obama had not actually said “Taliban” when he mentioned the school attack or “radical Islam” in the Charlie Hebdo reference.

“ISIS chops off heads, incinerates hostages, kills gays, enslaves girls. Obama: Blame the Crusades,” tweeted Michelle Malkin, conservative talker and author.

Right-side radio host Rush Limbaugh made the Christianity reference the subject of one of his segments on Thursday’s show.

“Why would you attempt to downplay Islamist extremism?” Mr. Limbaugh said. “Why would you attempt to put in perspective the actions taken today by Al Qaeda and ISIS and Boko Haram and the Khorasan Group and all of the rest of them by claiming that just as many atrocities have taken place in the name of Christ?”
So what was Obama thinking when he mentioned Christianity in this way?

First, it’s possible he was just trolling, knowing that Limbaugh et al. are always looking for ways to stimulate anger in their audience. But it’s more likely that he was taking the ecumenical setting of the prayer breakfast to try to reiterate something that’s been a US talking point since the Bush administration: America is not at war with Islam. It is fighting individuals who use distorted versions of faith as a weapon.

That’s the context of the remark. He leads into it by talking about the way religion can be misused.

“Part of what I want to touch on today is the degree to which we’ve seen the professions of faith used both as an instrument of great good, but also twisted and misused in the name of evil,” the president said.

Then he tries to make clear that it is people who are doing the twisting and misusing here. It is not inherent in religion itself. And he tries to link this thought to Islam in particular.

“We have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for their faith, professed to stand up for Islam, but in fact are betraying it,” he said.

Obama then muses on how people of faith can reconcile these matters, the good of religion and the evil of those who misuse it. That’s when the Christianity reference comes in, as a kind of aside to try to establish that it’s not just Muslims who have this problem.

Conservatives have several issues with this line of reasoning. Some – certainly not all – on the right think the premise is wrong. They believe the United States is indeed at war with Islam as a whole, or at least a broad strain of Islam, and the sooner we recognize this, the better.

Here’s Limbaugh from Thursday’s show: “Sharia law is the present-day threat to individual and civil liberties all over the world. Sharia is not a narrow cult. Sharia law is Islam.”

Others agree that we’re not at war with a religion itself, but just think Obama expressed himself poorly and made an inapt comparison.

The president specifically noted that the violent acts of Islam are carried out by “twisted” individuals. But his reference to Christianity, the Crusades, and Jim Crow was less about individuals and more about the religion as a whole, writes Noah Rothman at the right-leaning Hot Air.

“The president, and many of his allies on the left, frequently trip over themselves to emphasize – correctly, as it happens – that ISIS’s acts of brutality are not archetypical Islamic behavior.... But to assert this and in the same breath suggest that Christianity was also a violent, expansionist religion a mere 800 years ago is a contradiction. Why make this comparison if ISIS is not representative of Islam?”

So there you have it. The president’s full remarks are worth reading if you want to make up your own mind. It’s possible he knew they would blow some of his opponents' stacks; it’s possible he’s surprised by the controversy. But controversy there is, manufactured or genuine.

As Washington Examiner political correspondent Rebecca Berg tweeted Thursday: “Today in hyperbole: Former VA Gov Jim Gilmore calls Obama’s Prayer Breakfast remarks ‘the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make.’ ”

Via yahoo news and The Christian Science Moniter

http://news.yahoo.com/why-did-obama-compare-crusades-islamic-state-prayer-003808359.html

RIP Peter Kassig

BEIRUT (AP) — The Islamic State group has beheaded Peter Kassig, releasing a video Sunday showing a masked militant standing over the severed head of a man it said was the former U.S. Army Ranger-turned-aid worker, who was seized while delivering relief supplies in Syria last year.


President Barack Obama confirmed Kassig's slaying after a U.S. review of the video, which also showed the mass beheadings of a dozen Syrian soldiers.


The 26-year-old Kassig, who founded an aid group to help Syrians caught in their country's brutal civil war, "was taken from us in an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity," Obama said in a statement.


He denounced the extremist group, which he said "revels in the slaughter of innocents, including Muslims, and is bent only on sowing death and destruction."


The slain hostage's parents, Ed and Paula Kassig, said they were "heartbroken" by their son's killing, but "incredibly proud" of his humanitarian work. Kassig "lost his life as a result of his love for the Syrian people and his desire to ease their suffering," the parents said in a statement from Indianapolis.


With Kassig's death, the Islamic State group has killed five Westerners it was holding. American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were beheaded, as were British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning.
Unlike previous videos of slain Western hostages, the footage released Sunday did not show the decapitation of Kassig or the moments leading up to his death.


"This is Peter Edward Kassig, a U.S. citizen ... who fought against the Muslims in Iraq," said the black-clad militant, who spoke with a British accent that was distorted in the video, apparently to disguise his identity. Previous videos featured a militant with a British accent that the FBI says it has identified, though it hasn't named him publicly.


The footage released Sunday identifies the militants' location as Dabiq, a town in northern Syria that the Islamic State group uses as the title of its English-language propaganda magazine and where they believe an apocalyptic battle between Muslims and their enemies will occur.


The high-definition video also showed the beheadings of about a dozen men identified as Syrian military officers and pilots, all dressed in blue jumpsuits. The black-clad militant warns that U.S. soldiers will meet a similar fate.
"We say to you, Obama: You claim to have withdrawn from Iraq four years ago," the militant said. "Here you are: You have not withdrawn. Rather, you hid some of your forces behind your proxies." A U.S.-led coalition is targeting the Islamic State group in airstrikes, supporting Western-backed Syrian rebels, Kurdish fighters and the Iraqi military.


Kassig, who served in the U.S. Army's 75th Ranger Regiment, a special operations unit, deployed to Iraq in 2007. After being medically discharged, he returned to the Middle East in 2012 and formed a relief group, Special Emergency Response and Assistance, to aid Syrian refugees.


A certified EMT, Kassig had delivered food and medical supplies and provided trauma care to wounded Syrians before being captured in eastern Syria on Oct. 1, 2013. Friends say he converted to Islam in captivity and took the first name Abdul-Rahman.


In a statement issued as he flew back to Washington from the Asia-Pacific region, Obama said Kassig "was a humanitarian who worked to save the lives of Syrians injured and dispossessed" by war. The president offered prayers and condolences to Kassig's family.
"We cannot begin to imagine their anguish at this painful time," he said.


Burhan Agha, a Syrian who worked with Kassig in Lebanon, wept when recounting his friend's humanitarian work.


"If I could apologize to each American, one by one, I would, because Peter died in Syria, while he was helping the Syrian people," Agha told The Associated Press by telephone from Switzerland, where he is seeking asylum.


"Those who killed him claimed to have done it in the name of Islam. I am a Muslim and am from Syria. ... (His killers) are not Muslims."
British Prime Minister David Cameron said he was "horrified by the cold-blooded murder," saying that the Islamic State group had "again shown their depravity."


In previous videos showing the beheadings of the two American journalists and two British aid workers, the hostages were shown kneeling in orange jumpsuits as they were forced to make speeches before their killer lifted a knife to their throats.


The latest video did not show Kassig being beheaded. And unlike previous videos, it did not show other Western captives or directly threaten to behead anyone else. It also had lingering close-ups on some militants' exposed faces, a few of whom appeared to be foreigners.


The video appeared on websites used in the past by the Islamic State group, which now controls a third of Syria and Iraq.


The Islamic State group still holds other captives, including British photojournalist John Cantlie, who has appeared in several videos delivering statements for the group, likely under duress, and a 26-year-old American woman captured last year in Syria while working for aid groups. U.S. officials have asked that the woman not be identified out of fears for her safety.


The video appeared to be part of continuous efforts to strike at the U.S., which is leading an aerial campaign against the group that began in August in Iraq and spread to Syria the following month.


The video came two days after a recording by the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was uploaded to the Internet. The militant leader warned that the U.S.-led coalition's campaign had failed and it would eventually have to send ground troops into battle.


The group has declared a self-styled Islamic caliphate in areas under its control, which it governs according to its violent interpretation of Shariah law, including massacring rebellious tribes and selling women and children of religious minorities into slavery.


The group's militants have also beheaded and shot dead hundreds of captives, mostly Syrian and Iraqi soldiers, during its sweep across the two countries, and has celebrated its mass killings in extremely graphic videos.


The Islamic State group has its roots in al-Qaida's Iraqi affiliate but was expelled from the global terror network over its brutal tactics and refusal to obey orders to confine its activities to Iraq. It became even more extreme amid the bloody civil war in neighboring Syria and grew strong enough to launch a lightning offensive across Iraq.


Syria's war began as an uprising against President Bashar Assad. Activists say that conflict has killed more than 200,000 people.
___
Associated Press writers Julie Pace in Brisbane, Australia, David Aguilar in Detroit, Jon Gambrell in Cairo, Vivian Salama in Baghdad and Josh Lederman aboard Air Force One contributed to this report. Via Yahoo News

President Obama Seeks Out To Plan To Go On An Offensive Against Islamic State And Smash, Destroy It

An excerpt:

"I just want the American people to understand the nature of the threat and how we're going to deal with it and to have confidence that we'll be able to deal with it," Obama said in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that aired on Sunday. The interview was conducted in Washington on Saturday.

"The next phase is now to start going on some offense," he said.

The Wednesday speech will come a day ahead of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, killing about 3,000 people.

Via Yahoo News

You can read the rest of the article here:

President Obama Seeks To Smash And Destroy IS

Obama Says US Will 'Degrade and Ultimately Defeat' ISIS Like Al Qaeda -ABC News

"The militant group, also known as ISIS, “poses a long-term threat to the safety and security of NATO members,” Obama said at a press conference in Newport, Wales. “We have a critical role to play in rolling back this savage organization.”

The president advocated systematically “taking the fight to” ISIS in much the same way the U.S. combated al Qaeda.

“You initially push them back, you systematically degrade their capabilities, you narrow their scope of action, you slowly shrink the space, the territory that they control, you take out their leadership, and over time, they are not able to conduct the same kinds of terrorist attacks that they once could,” Obama said, adding that U.S. combat troops would not be deployed to the region.

“I don’t think that’s necessary for us to accomplish our goal,” he said. Instead, the American military will work to strengthen Iraqi and Syrian forces already on the ground.

Obama also called for a “strategic communications effort so that we are discouraging people from thinking that [ISIS] represents a state, much less a caliphate.”

“That’s not what Islam is about,” he added.

Obama, in Wales for a NATO summit, joined British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday in pressing the alliance to stand firm against ISIS’ “brutal and poisonous extremism.”

In a London Times Op-Ed, the leaders panned an “isolationist approach” and vowed that America and Britain “will not be cowed” by ISIS.

“Whether it is regional aggression going unchecked or the prospect that foreign fighters could return from Iraq and Syria to pose a threat in our countries, the problems we face today threaten the security of British and American people,” they wrote.

Obama, who has authorized over 100 airstrikes to aid Iraqi and Kurdish forces combating ISIS in Iraq
, last week acknowledged “we don’t have a strategy yet” to confront the militant group in neighboring Syria." -ABC News

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obama-isis-action/story?id=25261946