On Tuesday, we learned that Islamic State militants had kidnapped some
220 Assyrian Christians innortheastern Syria. The week before, ISIS released a video of 21 Egyptian Christians getting beheaded, in which a jihadist declares, “We will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission.”
Preceding these atrocities was another controversy, this one oratorical. At the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this month, President Obama beseeched his listeners to “remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.” Many people took offense at this remark, not because of its historical veracity but because of its context. Here was the president, like a middle-aged man reminiscing about high school, discoursing on ancient history because he didn’t want to talk about the present.
It is important to remember, when remembering the Crusades and the Inquisition, that they happened a long time ago—as far back as the 11th century—so long ago that their respective dates are of importance only to historians and players of Trivial Pursuit.
Jihadist violence, on the other hand, is still in progress. The day before Obama’s speech, the United Nations issued a report detailing ISIS’s various crimes, including “mass executions of boys, as well as reports of beheadings, crucifixions of children and burying children alive.”
What we in the West consider to be atrocities, many Muslims perceive as righteous acts. Throughout much of the Muslim world, suicide bombings are called “sacred explosions.” In 2002, a global survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 73 percent of Lebanese respondents believed “suicide bombing in defense of Islam” was justified. The percentage undoubtedly would have been higher had Saudis or Afghanis been polled.
Read more:
The Lessons of Recent History | The American Spectator
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