Barack Obama appeared at the National Prayer Breakfast yesterday and his speech there, delivered in a somnolent, and desultory way, called out the horribly cruel burning of a Jordanian pilot and other barbaric Islamic acts.  He then turned, and where he has been unable to mention that these barbaric acts were done in the name of Muhammed, he mentioned that horrible acts during the crusades, the inquisition, and then leaped forward to slavery and Jim Crow laws in the US were done in the name of Christ.   So, according to Obama, who was raised in a Muslim country and attended an Islamic Madrassa (religious school) when young and impressionable, makes the case that Islamic barbarity is done by a fringe element and is not done in the name of Muhammed, but he claims the Crusades, Inquisition, slavery and Jim Crow were done in the name of Christ! There is a difference here and it is disturbing. Obama is giving us the Islamic version of history!!

Obama’s version of history is also wrong. The Crusades were a Christian response to the Ottoman conquest of the Holy Land. When one mentions Ottoman Conquest, Ottoman desecration is also included as Christians were slaughtered, churches were burned, artifacts destroyed, art defaced, literally. The Holy Land had been Christian since Roman times and were overrun by Muslims in the seventh century and the Crusades were several hundred years later, from 1095 to about 1350. They were undertaken in the name of Christ, obviously, to recover historically Christian lands. As we know all too well today, the Crusades failed. 

The Inquisiton is an interesting subject for Obama to raise.  This is as close to Muslim orthodoxy as Catholicism has ever been. The major crime in the Inquisition was apostasy, or leaving the religion, That is a capital offense under Islam and, at times, under the Inquisition. The deaths caused by the Inquisiton over hundreds of years would rise to a slow Tuesday for Boko Haram.
 
This leads to Obama’s most outrageous comment which was that Slavery and Jim Crow were undertaken in the name of Christ. Obama cites a vague reference in the Old Testament about “slaves obeying their masters.”  for his claim, he forgets that was not Christ. He has shown that he has little knowledge of history, but this shows him to be ignorant of the anti-slavery and civil rights movement, as slavery was not undertaken in the name of Christ, it was ended in the name of Christ, as William WIlberforce in England and the Abolitionists in the US were deeply Christian in their fervent hatred of Slavery. John Brown carried Christ’s words in the bible as he attacked the slave establishment in Harper’s Ferry.

The most contemporary and egregious claim is that Jim Crow laws were instituted in the name of Christ. Even a person as unaware of History as Obama should recognize that it was Christ’s followers who lead the fight to eliminate Jim Crow laws. Reverends Ralph Abernathy, and Martin Luther King, Jr were men of the church,  lead a religious movement to eliminate Jim Crow under the banner of the Southern Christian Leadership Council. How could Obama miss this fact?

Obama, as stated above, is poorly educated in history, but he is politically clever.  By attempting to equate terror now with the Crusades and Inquisition and blaming Christ he is delving into the realm of the progressive movements belief in Moral Relativism, the idea that there is no universal truth, and, if you think Muslims are bad now, you should have seen the Crusaders in 1100.  Yes, it is absurd, but remember what Professor Gruber said about Obama voters!.The politically adept Obama is speaking to his flock.