In an interview on Newsmax today, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee complained about President Obama’s National Prayer Breakfast speech — in which he said that groups like the so-called Islamic State “pervert and distort” the Muslim faith — by claiming that the president refuses to say that the Islamic State’s ideology is a “perversion” of Islam, and implying that the president has blamed Christians for the group’s violence.
“It is just unimaginable why he feels that he has to be the number one defender of all things Islam,” Huckabee said. “I’m not an anti-Islamicist, I’m not. But I feel like I can call something out for what it is.”
“And there are many moderate Muslims across the world who are appalled by this,” he continued. “Thank god for King Abdullah, thank God for President al-Sisi in Egypt, thank God here in America for Dr. Zuhdi Jasser and others who are willing to speak out. But they’re willing to say something that the American president won’t say, that it is Islam and that there is a perversion of it that is very deadly and dangerous, and that it isn’t Christians’ fault that people are having their heads cut off.”
President Obama and members of his administration, of course, have repeatedly stated that terrorist groups like the Islamic State distort Islam, something for which they get endlessly attacked by the Religious Right.
