Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a potential 2016 Republican presidential contender, said Monday that President Barack Obama's recent National Prayer Breakfast speech demonstrated that only Muslims have his "undying" and "unfailing" support.
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"Everything he does is against what Christians stand for, and he's against the Jews in Israel. The one group of people that can know they have his undying, unfailing support would be the Muslim community. It doesn't matter whether it's the radical Muslim community or the more moderate Muslim community," Huckabee said on "Fox and Friends."
"Everything he does is against what Christians stand for, and he’s against the Jews in Israel."'
Huckabee, a Baptist-pastor-turned-politician, was referring to Obama's controversial comments last Thursday comparing the Crusades to modern-day terror groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In his prepared remarks, the president argued that Christians shouldn't get on a "high horse" about violence in the name of religion, noting that Christians used their faith to justify Jim Crow laws and slavery.
ISIS has generated worldwide headlines for a series of brutal executions of western hostages and the barbaric treatment of women, children, and non-Muslims. Last week, the militants claimed that an American aid worker who was still held captive by ISIS, Kayla Mueller, had been killed by a Jordanian airstrike. But Secretary of State John Kerry said over the weekend that U.S. officials haven't confirmed if the group’s claims about Mueller are true. Last Tuesday, ISIS militants released a video purporting to show a captive Jordanian pilot being burned alive in a cage, just days after the militants beheaded a Japanese journalist.
On Fox News Monday, Huckabee expressed disbelief over Obama's State of the Union declaration that climate change is the most dangerous threat to future generations. “I assure you that a beheading is much worse than a sunburn, and this president couldn't watch a western from the '50s and know the difference between the good guys and the bad guys," he said.
"I assure you that a beheading is much worse than a sunburn."'
In his National Prayer Breakfast speech last week, Obama condemned groups like ISIS for committing violence in the name of religion. At the same time, he urged the attendees to use religion to unite instead of divide, and to push back "against those who would distort our religion for their nihilistic ends."
"We see faith driving us to do right," he said. "But we also see faith being twisted and distorted, being used as a wedge — or worse, sometimes used as a weapon."
Obama has received criticism from across the political spectrum for referencing Christianity's history and religious violence in the context of Islamic extremism.