With less than two years left in his last term, President Barack Obama isn’t shy about what he hopes to achieve and what he wants to say, even if it offends right-wing Americans.
And at Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast, the president stepped forth again with his no-holds barred attitude to drop knowledge about religion, specifically Christianity, that prompted this scathing response from Jim Gilmore, the former Republican governor of Virginia:
“The president’s comments this morning at the prayer breakfast are the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime. He has offended every believing Christian in the United States.”
The comment? The president simply stated that Christianity has often been appropriated and abused, like many religions, to oppress and instill fear. Same goes for Islam, Obama suggested, which has been used by radical groups to terrorize and destruct in recent years.
“Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history,” he told the group, speaking of the tension between the compassionate and murderous acts religion can inspire. “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.”
But suggesting that the religion of America could ever be used to justify such horror was too much for Republicans, who boiled down Obama’s statement to an obtuse comparison between terrorists who abuse Islam and good ol’ Christianity.
“This goes further to the point that Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share,” Gilmore said.
Um, that statement, when put into the context of Jim Crow laws and slavery, is pretty telling, Gilmore.
Obama’s comments come a day after he met with Muslim leaders — his first roundtable discussion with a Muslim-only group since taking office. And seeing that Islam is the third-largest faith in America, it’s only proper that the president discuss ways to protect the population, especially in the wake of brutal ISIS attacks that falsely perpetuate the accepted criminalization of the religion.
From the Washington Post:
The Muslim leaders who argued that they feel their community has faced unfair scrutiny in the wake of terrorist attacks overseas. Although the White House released only a broad description of the meeting — which touched on issues including racial profiling — participants said it gave them a chance to express their concerns directly to the president.
Farhana Khera, executive director of the civil rights group Muslim Advocates, one of 13 participants, said the session gave Obama a chance to focus on Muslim Americans the way he has done with other constituencies, such as African American and Jewish groups.
“I started off by saying the biggest concern I hear from Muslim parents is their fear that their children will be ashamed to be Muslim” because of discrimination, Khera said. “We are asking him to use his bully pulpit to have a White House summit on hate crimes against religious minorities, much like the summit on bullying reset the conversation around LGBT youth.”
We can only hope that by putting Obama’s latest comments on religion in context, maybe Republicans will see that it wasn’t a dig towards Christians, but insight into a community misunderstood by Americans — an attempt to separate the religious terrorists who use Islam inappropriately and Islam as a whole.
In his speech, Mr. Obama said the use of religion to justify violence and killings “is not unique to one group or one religion.”
“There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency, that can pervert and distort our faith,” he said.
In other words America, your shit reeked at a certain point too. Let’s not forget that.
