President Obama's remarks about the "terrible deeds" of Christianity committed during the Crusades have drawn the ire of many on the right.  But Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal got off the zinger of the week when he took the president to task for not facing the "reality" of radical Islam.

Washington Post:

“It was nice of the President to give us a history lesson at the Prayer breakfast,” said the likely presidential candidate, according to a statement first reported by National Review. “We will be happy to keep an eye out for runaway Christians, but it would be nice if he would face the reality of the situation today. The Medieval Christian threat is under control, Mr. President. Please deal with the Radical Islamic threat today.”

The president’s critics were incensed after Obama cited the Crusades and the Inquisition in his remarks, noting – clumsily, his opponents argue – that religion can be corrupted and inspire “terrible deeds.”

“Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history,” Obama told the group. “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.”

Those remarks have caused an uproar among some Republicans who feel the president’s comments undercut the spirit of the service.

Jindal also seized the moment to accuse the president of failing to deal with terrorism abroad.

“Today, however, the issue right in front of his nose, in the here and now, is the terrorism of Radical Islam, the assassination of journalists, the beheading and burning alive of captives,” he said.

Jindal makes an excellent point.  There was no reason for the president to bring up 1,000-year-old Christian excesses during the Crusades when the challenge of dealing with radical Islam is right in front of him.  This is especially true when you consider the president's simple-minded interpretation of history, which has nothing to do with the facts and everything to do with appeasing Muslim sensibilities.

The president is constantly trying to prove his understanding of the Muslim point of view.  He believes that harping on terrorism hurts the feelings of Muslims, so his gratuitous references to Chrstianity having done bad things is an effort to assuage the anxiousness of Muslims about their religion being singled out because of terrorism.

But the hurt feelings of Muslims have less to do with terrorism and more to do with the notion of Islamic supremacy.  Muslims believe that Islam is the one, true religion and that conflating the Crusades with Islamic terrorism is proper in that context.

There is no logic to the president's position because Islam itself is illogical.  Pointing out the fact that Christian knights slaughtered Jews and Muslims for 200 years is a non sequitur and may as well have taken place on the surface of the moon as the Holy Land for all the relevance it holds to the argument against Islamic terrorism.