Catholic League head Bill Donohue complained on Thursday that President Barack Obama did not criticize Islamic extremists by name in a speech mentioning attacks done in the name of religion -- only he did, Crooks & Liars reported.
"We have a problem with Islam, okay?" Donohue told Fox News host Neil Cavuto. "Not just with Islamists. We have a problem with Islam."
Donohue said he was criticizing the president for allegedly only mentioning the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades during his appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier in the day.
"Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history," Obama said. "And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."
According to Donohue, Obama would have been justified in speaking of violence done on religious grounds in a more general sense.
"Who could argue with that?" Donohue explained. "But he didn't do that, did he? He spoke with specificity. he singled out the Crusades and the Inquisition."
But as both Crooks & Liars and the Washington Post noted, Obama also specifically mentioned the Islamic State group as an example of "violence and terror" committed by people claiming "to stand up for Islam."
"We see ISIL, a brutal, vicious, death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism, terrorizing religious minorities like the Yazidis, subjecting women to rape as a weapon of war, and claiming the mantle of religious authority for such actions," Obama said.
Watch Donohue's interview with Cavuto, as posted by Crooks & Liars on Thursday, below.
