At this past weekend’s National Prayer Breakfast, Master Moralist Obama took the occasion to admonish Christians not to a get on any moral high horse in their revulsion at and castigation of the Islamic State for its ongoing atrocities by recalling that the Crusades and slavery were also justified in the name of Jesus Christ. Apart from this comparison being invidious and inapposite based on guiding scriptural authority (more on that below), his assertion reflects a classic tenet of the Left’s catechism: That no single thought system, philosophy, religion, or even person is inherently morally better or superior than any other because, whatever the infraction or behavior being complained about, everyone’s either done it at some time in the personal or historical past or is currently doing it. Here, to generalize in this context, their key principle is: Because every religion has committed atrocities, there can be no modern moral accountability or odium heaped on any particular religion today that is a current malefactor. Claiming moral equivalence is the Left’s way of deflecting criticism of anyone, anything, or any activity that works to its political or social advantage but which evokes the outrage of all people who are capable of making rather basic moral distinctions based on time-tested humanitarian values. Hey, let’s not ever judge negatively or, to use a beloved mantra of the New Age, We’re All One — unless such judgments pertain to Israel, Christianity, the Constitution, or capitalism, to name a few acceptable demons.

That the president’s smug finger-wagging is shallow, invidious, and obtuse should be evident to just about anyone with a proper grade-school education. Apart from the historical facts that the Crusades ended about 700 years ago and slavery in the West was overturned by the last third of the 19th century, nowhere in the New Testament are Christians instructed to hunt down and kill unbelievers or even enslave them; Jews, similarly, get no such celestial guidance from the Tanakh or Talmud. In sum, neither Christians nor Jews have engaged, or been authorized to engage, in any wanton mass killing or enslavement based on express Biblical imperatives; their commandments are, rather, expressly about loving their neighbors and being kind to strangers. Whatever murderousness has been perpetrated, say by the Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century, has been isolated and aberrational.

In contradistinction, orthodox Muslims are instructed repeatedly in the Qur’an and the Sunnah to make war on unbelievers, forcibly convert them, turn them effectively into slaves (“dhimmis”), or kill or exile them. And, here, with some rare exceptions historically, form has followed fashion – wherever Islam has been regnant, there has been little religious or civil freedom for followers of any other faith. Today, Islamic fundamentalists are following the uniquely and doricly articulated tenets of their total way of life, of which religious practice is but one component: Strive to create a world caliphate, country by country, where Shari’a law rules absolutely, by force and violence where da’wa (persuasion) does not work. That is, the kuffar (infidels) may be asked to convert to Islam, but shall be killed if they refuse to do so or pay the jizya (high, punitive tax) to live as dhimmis (third-class citizens) amongst the Muslims. And that is precisely what is happening as these words are being written, actuated not by religious renegades or rogue teachings but by the truest adherents of Islam following both historical practice and strict holy writ.

To return to the original point of this little epistle: The only significant “religious” savagery that has taken place on earth in the last several hundred years has been perpetrated by barbarians doing it all resolutely in the name of Allah, not Jesus or HaShem, with the unambiguous aim of global submission to the dictates of Shari’a law. And, such butchery will not abate should the Islamists ultimately win the dominion they seek, but will be institutionalized and universalized until violent death and barbarism are more the norm than peaceable living. And, contrary to the meme informing Obama’s words spoken last weekend, nobody else has done that before at that level in the name of religion, and nobody else is trying to do that today. NOBODY.

William Pippin
The Rational Empiricist