Blog | Yes, atrocities have been committed in the name of Islam - and modern-day Christianity

There has been a week-long freakout over something President Barack Obama said at the annual prayer breakfast.

After talking about the awful and evil that is ISIL, he reminded people that bad things have been done in the name of religion for a long - long - time, including Christianity.

For that, he is said to have attacked Christians and justified ISIL’s actions.

Most of the critique, as usual, is coming from the hyper right, including the Fox News Channel, because Obama dared to be historically accurate about religion and crimes against humanity.

Apparently, as Stephen Colbert said, facts must have a liberal bias.

Here are a few others Obama could have mentioned, but didn’t:

There is the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which operated in South Carolina while I was growing up (I witnessed at least 2 klan marches) but now reportedly is in North Carolina.

There is the guy last year who almost cut off a man’s head.

There is Eric Rudolph and snipers who kill abortion doctors.

And there are a ton of others.

I detailed some of it in a blog post and asked this question:

If ISIS gets to define Islam, why can’t the KKK define Christianity? Graham wants to declare a religious war against Islam today. Should civil rights leaders in the ‘60s have declared war against Christianity? Remember, Christians were on both sides of the civil rights movement and the fight against domestic terror then just as Muslims are on both sides of what’s happening today.

Or maybe we shouldn’t allow bad actors to define either group?

Read more here.

A writer for The Atlantic pointed out how the South used Christianity to justify slavery and the Civil War:

There were a fair number of pretexts given for slavery and Jim Crow, but Christianity provided the moral justification. On the cusp of plunging his country into a war that would cost some 750,000 lives, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens paused to offer some explanation. His justification was not secular. The Confederacy was to be:

[T]he first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society ... With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so.

It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. For His own purposes, He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made "one star to differ from another star in glory." The great objects of humanity are best attained when there is conformity to His laws and decrees, in the formation of governments as well as in all things else. Our confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws.

Read more here.

What I failed to mention in my earlier blog post was something more egregious, in terms of how this issue is handled in media and by some conservative commentators.

A couple of years ago, the Obama administration sent 100 military advisers to parts of Africa to help track down the terrorist organization called the Lord’s Resistance Army.

One of it’s goal is to create a place fashioned upon the 10 Commandments.

In other words, it is moved by its view of Christianity in the same way ISIL is moved by its version of Islam.

Out of ignorance, and a knee-jerk hatred of Obama, Rush Limbaugh came to the LRA’s defense, claiming that Obama was sending troops to Africa to kill Christians. (Surprisingly, when I searched for Fox News Channel personalities slamming Limbaugh the way they have been Obama, I found little.)

Here is a bit of that background:

Apparently sensing an opportunity to tarnish President Obama’s standing with listeners who were unaware of the suffering caused by the African rebels who call themselves the Lord’s Resistance Army, Rush Limbaugh responded to the president’s deployment of 100 military advisers to combat the group in central Africa on Friday in a segment of his radio show headlined, “Obama Invades Uganda, Targets Christians.”

Mr. Limbaugh began his discussion of the group — described by my colleagues Thom Shanker and Rick Gladstone as “a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity” — by explaining that the “Lord” referred to in their name is not someone named Lord, but “God.” He said:

Now, up until today, most Americans have never heard of the combat Lord’s Resistance Army. And here we are at war with them. Have you ever heard of Lord’s Resistance Army, Dawn? How about you, Brian? Snerdley, have you? You never heard of Lord’s Resistance Army? Well, proves my contention, most Americans have never heard of it, and here we are at war with them. Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians. It means God.

Overlooking the detailed record of their brutality and bizarre practices, Mr. Limbaugh then added: “They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops, to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them. So that’s a new war, a hundred troops to wipe out Christians in Sudan, Uganda.”

Read more here.

It was so awful, even a staunchly conservative U.S. Senator took to the floor to officially correct Limbaugh’s ignorance.

The point, though, is that we try to pretend that Islam is the only religion that has ever been used to justify atrocities. That’s simply not true. When people want to do dastardly things, they find any reason that might make sense to them, be it religion or the color of the flowers in their backyard.

It is extremely easy to point out when this is done in the name of something others hold dear - not so easy when it is done in the name of something you love.

The only problem I have with Obama’s comments? He didn’t have to go back to the Crusades to point out how Christianity has been used to justify evil.

And that doesn’t include how some 21st century Christians use the law - here and in places like Uganda - to persecute and make second-class citizens of gay people.

Here is the thing. There are millions of Americans, tens of millions, even, who would love to set up a society based upon the 10 Commandments to subjugate women and children and black people all over again. But they can’t - because we have a secular government that has been forced to uphold basic ideals and human rights.

Is that the difference between us and some other countries in the Middle East? Here, there are societal structures, and pressures, in place to tamp down on religious extremism.

Can the U.S. help those other countries set up the same kinds of protections?

This story was originally published February 9, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Blog | Yes, atrocities have been committed in the name of Islam - and modern-day Christianity."