Mike Huckabee is still complaining about President Barack Obama’s speech last week during the National Prayer Breakfast, but he must not have listened very closely to it.
The former Fox News host and Arkansas governor ripped Obama in an interview posted online Tuesday by Newsmax TV, saying the president refuses to describe the Islamic State as a “perversion” of Islam.
Yet the president did exactly that in his remarks Thursday during the interfaith event, reported Right Wing Watch.
Obama described ISIS in his remarks as "a brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism."
“This is not unique to one group or one religion,” Obama said. “There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith. In today’s world, when hate groups have their own Twitter accounts and bigotry can fester in hidden places in cyberspace, it can be even harder to counteract such intolerance. But God compels us to try.”
Huckabee, however, interpreted the remarks as a defense of Islamic extremism.
“It is just unimaginable why he feels that he has to be the No. 1 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."
The likely 2016 Republican presidential candidate said moderate Muslims were appalled that Obama allegedly refused to condemn Islamic State militants.
"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,” Huckabee said. “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.”
Watch portions of the interview with Huckabee posted online by RWW Blog:
