Barack Obama has said repeatedly that Islam is “a religion of peace.” His administration has accused those who do not agree with this proposition — or who dare mention Islamic violence against women and homicidal oppression of homosexuals — of “Islamophobia.” These are fictions and the President has done the country a fundamental disservice by promulgating them.
The truth? In Saudi Arabia, the existence of Christian churches is prohibited, along with the Bible itself; no Christian or Jew can enter Mecca or Medina lest their mere footsteps desecrate Islam’s holiest sites. In Pakistan and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world, conversion from Islam to Christianity is punishable by death. In Iraq, Syria, Nigeria and even the President’s beloved Indonesia, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and other “infidels” often face acts of religious genocide by fundamentalists who invoke core Islamic texts and teachings to justify their actions.
In short, as Robert Spencer shows in this work, the creed of Muhammad, far from being a religion of peace, has revealed itself in the post-9/11 world to be a religion of bigotry.