Devout Christian Mike Huckabee is having a hard time understanding the concept of charity. The former Arkansas governor and potential 2012 hopeful visited Fox and Friends to discuss a small church that had allowed Muslims to worship when mosques in the area proved too small or were under construction, something he considered shocking and the beginning of a slippery slope: “Should the church be rented out to show adult movies on the weekend?”

Huckabee was clearly incensed with the news that Muslims were worshipping in a church. “As much as I respect the autonomy of each local church, you just wonder, what are they thinking?” he told the Fox and Friends crew. “If the purpose of a church is to push forward the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then you have a muslim group that says that Jesus Christ and all the people that follow him are a bunch of infidels who should be essentially obliterated, I have a hard time understanding that.”

He then goes on to make the argument that the church should not be open to pornographic film screenings, either, to which he is asked directly whether he is “likening Islam to pornography.” “I’m sure bloggers will say that,” he answered coyly. “I’ll read 300 blog accounts that will say that by noon today.” Close, but anyone who expects bloggers to be up early enough to work at noon on a Saturday clearly doesn’t understand how blogs work. Huckabee concludes his argument by saying that Christian duty “doesn’t mean to give my home or my place of worship to praise something other than Jesus.”

Yes, the pornography point is the most obvious blog-link bait in this discussion, but it is far from the most offensive thing Huckabee proposes therein. Huckabee does a fairly terrible job of hiding the fact that he only made the argument to get into the blogs (which, if that’s the case, congratulations are in order). That isn’t the substantive point he is pushing. Beyond that shallow blog-bait, he completely ignores the fact that the Judeo-Christian god is an equivalent to Allah and that Muslims actually believe in Jesus Christ. The argument that all Muslims consider non-Muslims to be worthy of destruction is borderline abhorrent at best, also, but the most problematic aspect of Huckabee’s analysis is that he seems not to understand the teachings of the god he so zealously defends. To argue that the teachings of the New Testament to mean something other than “to give my home or place of worship” to those in need flies in the face of the entire text. And, to continue in the biblical vein, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”– many, many churches under the sect Huckabee is a member of break the most cardinal rule of churches under Christianity– no merchant business in the churches– the only thing, according to gospel, that ever made Jesus angry.

So yes, “likening Islam to pornography” is offensive, but it is merely a distraction to the deeper meanings of Huckabee’s argument. This stance will win him plenty of allies among those that blindly refuse to understand Islam as a movement separate from radical fundamentalist terrorism, and those that audibly gasp at the horror of even the mention of pornography, but should anyone actually challenge Huckabee on his religious beliefs– and, politically, no one should; that’s the entire point of the First Amendment– he is going to have to answer to a lot more than his perception of Islam.

The segment via Fox News below:



(h/t)

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